es, and promoted by Buzz Aldrin and Ron Jones. See "Star Booster - A Commercial Solution to Cost Effective and Versatile Reusable Space Transportation".
A TSTO spaceplane design from Space Access LLC. The first stage uses an "ejector ramjet" to power a hybrid airbreathing engine in the first stage to reduce aerodynamic drag.
The second stage, which can use one of several different configurations, is contained inside the first and released at high altitude.
The Canadian Arrow is a two-stage suborbital rocket designed to take three people into space and back.
The first stage is a liquid propellant stage whose aerodynamic shape and thrust chamber are closely based on the V2 rocket, which was also the basis for the Mercury rocket used by Alan Shepard. It boosts the vehicle to the edge of space at a maximum of 4.5G acceleration before detaching and falling back for a parachute-slowed splashdown and recovery. To assist in recovery, the first stage has a natural positive buoyancy achieved without the use of floatation gear.
The second stage uses solid rocket engines to rise to an eventual maximum altitude of approximately 70 miles. It is also designed to be an escape pod and can be separated from the first stage at any point, including the launch pad in an emergency. In normal flight, it will reenter the atmosphere using a reentry ballute and three main parachutes to make its own splashdown roughly 15 miles down range.
The CXV, or Crew Transfer Vehicle, is a second-stage orbital spacecraft capsule from t/Space, launched from underneath a carrier craft such as White Knight Two. CXV is carried into orbit on a booster rocket. The return journey consists of a de-orbit burn, re-entry and parachute-assisted splashdown and recovery.
Like SpaceX's Dragon, CXV is initially targetted at providing service to the ISS, but could also rendezvous with other orbital destinations, or t/Space's CEV (Crew Exploration Vehicle) design, which would be launched unmanned and is aimed at Earth-Moon transit.
The XA ( eXtreme Altitude) is a small suborbital VTOL RLV from Masten Space Systems, designed for scientific and educational payloads.
daVinci is a reusable vertical takeoff and landing vehicle designed to carry three people into space and back. It does not take off from the ground, however. Instead, a piloted hot air balloon lifts the vehicle to an altitude of 40,000 ft. Twin LOX/kerosene engines then ignite with the vehicle suspended at a 60 degree attitude, and daVinci detaches from underneath the balloon before assuming vertical orientation and climbing to 130,000 ft. The engines then cut out and daVinci continues to rise without thrust to an eventual height of 120 km before descending back into the atmosphere, after approximately three minutes of weightlessness.
Reentry and landing is achieved by deploying first an inflated shuttlecock for stability and then a protective inflated cone to shield the engines and cushion the landing. A parachute is deployed at 10,000 ft, slowing daVinci to 4 m/s on contact with the ground.
An interesting feature of the vehicle is the use of external cameras to track the vehicle both on the way up and on reentry.
The Cosmopolis XXI is a two-stage sub-oribtal spacecraft proposed by the Cosmopolis XXI Suborbital Corporation and Myasishchev Design Bureau ( MDB) designed for sub-orbital space tourism. It is an X-Prize contender.
The first stage carrier is the M-55X "Geophysika", which will climb to a 17km altitude before ascending at a steep angle to 20km where the second stage Cosmopolis XXI (or C-21) disengages and separates.
The C-21 second stage is a rocket powered lifting body RLV capable of carrying a pilot and two passengers to a peak altitude of roughly 100km (62 miles). Once the rocket engine burns out the crew compartment separates from it, after which it will enters free-fall for a few minutes before descending and re-entering the atmosphere. Descent is achieved though the deployment of aerodynamic control surfaces, followed by a landing divided into an initial glide-phase and a final parachute-assisted touc