 company Rocketplane Inc. (formerly Pioneer Rocketplane)..
A concept for a series of VTOL vehicles leading up to a passenger-carrying version. Currently Kistler Aerospace Corporation is developing a 2-stage VTOL launch vehicle for small satellites.
In 1997 Kistler Aerospace moved to Australia and will start launching from Woomera.
Thunderbird is a low cost fully reusable VTOL rocket from UK based Starchaser Industries, which has an established track record in unmanned rocketry. It is an X-Prize contender, and is designed to carry three people on a short sub-orbital pleasure flights into space.
The vehicle uses existing off-the-shelf components wherever possible to minimize development cost, combined with an advanced composite for the airframe. The primary propulsion is provided by LOX/kerosene engines which carry the vehicle to a maximum altitude of 100km after burnout before re-entering tail-first using a steerable parasail. Reaction control is handled independantly by cold gas thrusters.
The Thunderbird is a single stage vehicle, but composed of two discreet and seperable units: a command module, which includes the cabin, life support, and reaction control system, and a propulsion module comprising the fuel tanks, engines, and landing gear. In an emergency the command module is detachable from the rest of the vehicle, allowing the crew to bebrought down independently.
Nova is a scaled down version of Thunderbird designed to bridge the gap between previously flown unmanned rockets and Thunderbird, and is currently in construction. Standing at roughly 2/3rds of the height of its 52 foot larger sibling, Nova is designed to carry a single person into space, to a maximum altitude of approximately 100km. Although not an X-Prize contender due to its less than three person capacity, Nova is intended to be the world's first privately developed spaceship.
Fully reusable VTOHL first stage launch vehicle for boosting a range of upper stages to orbit. Based on the Ukrainian-built " Zenit" rocket using kerosene and LOX engines, 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