Concept
The suborbital Hopper was a FESTIP (Future European Space Transportation Investigations Programme) system study design selected for further analysis during Future Launchers Preparatory Programme. It would be composed of a single stage reusable vehicle which would not reach orbital velocity. This vehicle was to be launched on a 4 km magnetic horizontal track which would accelerate it to launch speed. At a height of 130 km, the vehicle would fire an expendable rocket powered upper stage which would reach orbital speed and place its satellite payload into orbit. Finally, the vehicle would then glide down to an island in the Atlantic Ocean and be taken back to French Guiana by ship. An EADS spokesperson stated that a reusable launch vehicle like Hopper could halve the cost of sending a satellite into orbit, which now stands at $15,000 USD per kilogram of payload.
Read more about this topic: Hopper (spacecraft)
Famous quotes containing the word concept:
“The concept of a person is logically prior to that of an individual consciousness. The concept of a person is not to be analysed as that of an animated body or an embodied anima.”
—Sir Peter Frederick Strawson (b. 1919)
“The heritage of the American Revolution is forgotten, and the American government, for better and for worse, has entered into the heritage of Europe as though it were its patrimony—unaware, alas, of the fact that Europe’s declining power was preceded and accompanied by political bankruptcy, the bankruptcy of the nation-state and its concept of sovereignty.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“the full analysis of the notions of saying something and understanding what one said inevitably involves a concept which, as I will show in detail, essentially corresponds to the Cartesian idea of thought.”
—Zeno Vendler (b. 1921)