Suborbital Research – Policy Update and Waiting on Reusable Vehicles

Suborbital Research Enters a Time of Transition, The Space Review
“Several years ago, the idea of using the new generation of suborbital reusable launch vehicles under development, like Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo and XCOR Aerospace’s Lynx, for research applications was not widely accepted. These and other vehicles were seen primarily as serving the space tourism market.”
“Scientists, vehicle developers, and others did come to that NSRC, and the three that followed, including the one last week in the Denver suburb of Broomfield, Colorado. With a community of researchers now sold on the potential benefits of using suborbital reusable launch vehicles–low cost, high flight rates, and in some cases human-tended payloads–versus sounding rockets or orbital platforms, the challenge apparent at last week’s meeting was keeping the timelines for developing experiments and the vehicles that will fly them in sync.”