Our Mission
Our Mission is Simple. It is to Democratize Space
To make humans an interplanetary species the cost of going into outer space and to travel to the moon and the planets needs to come down substantially. Rockets can not escape the rocket equation where nearly all of their fuel is just used to get to space. All that fuel used just to get out of the Earth's gravity well and through the atmosphere around our planet. Xterranautix leverages the efficiency of the jet engine, the oxygen in the atmosphere and aerodynamics to make the rocket equation in a way work in our favor. What we are doing is only engaging the rocket equation when we reach the edge of atmospheric space. For Xterranautix it is at the transition zone between the atmosphere and space when and where the rocket equation begins. By using jet engines and the atmosphere to our advantage Xterranautix saves literally hundreds of tones of fuel. Beginning the rocket equation here requires nearly 90% less fuel to reach outer space than if we were to start the rocket equation from the surface of the Earth. By combining reliable jet engine technology, with sound rocket technology, and partnering those technologies with new reduced friction reentry techniques, Xterranautix creates an easier, safer and more routine way to exit and reenter the Earth's atmosphere. All of the above Xterranautix can do at extremely reduced operating cost with exceptionally quick turn-around times back to space. Our vehicles will be able to carry substantially larger payloads than those of the Space Shuttle, allowing for the placement of larger payloads and even interplanetary spacecraft into orbit. With our particular mix of solutions Xterranautix will make travel into orbit, to the Moon, to other parts of the solar system and perhaps even to the stars someday, possible and routine. Like we said, our mission is to democratize space, making space accessible for everyone.
Every Airport a Spaceport?
Thinking about it. Going to space as easy as flying is today. Xterranautix will make it possible with jets flying into our spaceport, passengers transitioning from their jet planes to Xterranautix space vehicles and then off to the Moon, a space station or even Mars... simple and routine. That is our vision. And we know how to make it happen.
What Did We Learn from the Space Shuttle?
What is pictured above is USSR's version of the Space Shuttle, the Buran Energia that only had one launch in 1988 that was uncrewed. As for the United States of America, we were the first with a vertical take off and horizontal landing spacecraft starting in 1981 and running it with regular crewed launches for 30 years until 2011.. We learned a lot from operating the Space Shuttles, mainly how to create and reuse a flying reentry vehicle that would land horizontally. Our number one problem was we just never learned how to do it at an affordable cost.
Think About How the Advantages of Airplane Flight Can Reduce the Cost of Going into Space
The age of the space-plane is dawning. Clearly the old concept of going to space by riding a single use rocket is over. Today nearly all aerospace companies have rockets or at least rockets on the drawing board that can be reused. But rockets even when reused remain expensive. And they are risky. The percentage of manned space flight failures in the last 20 years was 0.79%, while the percentage of unmanned space flight failures in the last 20 years was 6.68%. Compare those numbers to percentages associated with passenger jet travel, which is somewhere around 0.0014% per million flights. Explosions on the launchpads or something going catastrophically wrong in flight is not a way to engender good feelings from payload providers and would be passengers. Space travel must be much, much safer.
In the United States, some 42,000 planes take flight everyday, according to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration,. And they do so typically without crashing or exploding on the runway. The only viable solution to dramatically reducing cost and risk of going to space is to use the oxygen in the atmosphere, the lift of a wing, and the efficiency of the jet engine.
It isn't necessary to have a solution that incorporates turbofans, ramjets, scramjets and rocket engines to take a vehicle all the way into space. All that is necessary is to translate the savings of the weight of the oxygen, fuel, and the size of the vehicle needed to carry all of that oxygen, fuel and extra vehicle body into space into achieving inexpensive access to space. Xterranautix space-vehicles achieve such savings by incorporating durable, already known solutions for inexpensive and reliable entry and exit of outer space.