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Spacefleet Ltd is a company that is aiming to provide a space transport service to take users' payloads to sub-orbital and orbital space. This website is a shop window for the Spacefleet projects and sales, and it aims to grow a community of space enthusiasts. If you join up (see panel to the right), you will have access to the discussion forum, the Space News archive, you will be able to submit your own articles to the "Space News" section.
The very-long-term aim: an organisation that will provide space transport services on a commercial, international basis. The visionary writer, Arthur C Clarke once proclaimed: "We will take no frontiers into space!". We agree.
Spacefleet sub-orbital space tourism concept vehicle
Contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Unlike some space projects you may see around the web with flashy web sites but no hardware built and no practical progress made, the Spacefleet projects have real hardware, for the EARL, Dart and PDRE projects. Spacefleet Ltd is based in the UK, and we have associates in Romania and Ukraine with workshops dedicated to our shared projects. When we have enough funding we will be able to expand into business premises in the UK and elsewhere. Before we can do that, we have to be able to take the critical step in providing a sub-orbital launch service, which we will do.
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The Spacefleet Team
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We are a small group of individuals with a passion for space technology. We carry out small privately-financed projects focussed on innovation in aerodynamic rocket vehicles and rocket propulsion. Spacefleet Ltd is the company that was set to progress these activities from research to commercial reality. Spacefleet also sponsors the Sunride student rocketry group at the University of Sheffield, UK. We are based in the UK, but have a number of associates in other countiries, including Romania and Ukraine.
Our main project is "EARL" (Experimental Autonomously-piloted Rocket-propelled Lifting body). The picture, below, is of its first test flight, in Eastern Romania. The hull is 2.5 m long and the propulsion is a solid-propellant rocket motor, using a low-cost propellant. The vehicle demonstrated almost everything that we wanted from it. It was stable in flight and followed its pre-programmed circular flight pattern to bring it down for a landing near the take-off point, after having reached a height of , approximately 4 km. However the landing parachute failed to deploy, and the vehicle was too damaged for re-flight, after ploughing into the ground in an excessively hard landing.. we would like to continue this programme, with more efficient propellants. We have a bi-liquid rocket motor of novel design under development. With improvement in the aerodynamics, more powerful propellants, and use of near-identical (no payload) booster hulls in a triamese configuration, we would have a re-usable means of access to great heights and distances, at relative low costs. Sub-orbital space should be accessible with a modest increase in scale.
EARL-D4 taking off at a site in eastern Romania
To build a sub-orbital version of the EARL is something that a small group of sub-millionaire partners, for example, could do, without external finance. A sub-orbital EARL could replace the expendable sounding rockets in current use around the world. The vehicle would be re-usable, like an aircraft, and the payload recovery expedition would be eliminated as well, leading to a big cost saving. Although Spacefleet is based in the UK, our outlook is international.
We have expertise in:
- Rocket propulsion, both solid and liquid propellant
- Guidance, navigation and communications for UAVs
- Aerodynamics
If you would like to know more about this project, or you are interested in-:
- sending small experiments (can-sat format) to the upper atmosphere for micro-gravity or atmospheric measurements
- using our solid-propellant rocket motors, e.g. 120mm diameter motor, 750kg thrust. Motors are re-usable. New motors can be custom-designed to your requirements.
- having a special-purpose UAV designed and built to your requirements.
- rocket propulsion and space technology education and training
then, please ask for more information: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
