Seattle-based Radian Aerospace has finished the first round of ground taxi testing for a prototype aircraft that’s meant to blaze the trail for a first-of-its-kind, single-stage-to-orbit space plane.
Radian said the low-speed runway tests were successfully completed this month in Abu Dhabi, with the aim of assessing the subscale prototype’s flight characteristics in preparation for building its full-scale Radian One spaceship.
“These successful tests represent an early but significant step in our broader journey to bring Radian One to market,” Richard Humphrey, co-founder and CEO of Radian, said today in a news release. “While we know there is much work ahead, each step in our robust test program brings us closer to transforming access to space with rapid, reusable and cost-effective transport to low Earth orbit.”
Livingston Holder, Radian’s co-founder and chief technology officer, said the uncrewed PFV01 prototype is a one-12th-scale version of Radian One, measuring roughly 15 feet (4.9 meters) long. “It’s powered by two jet engines,” he told GeekWire. “So, it’s not a rocket-powered system, it’s a jet-engine system.”
During the taxi tests, the prototype performed a series of pitch-up maneuvers and short hops, reaching speeds of around 50 knots (57.5 mph). “We have a lot of data that’s come down, and so we really want to understand what that looks like before we move to the longer runway and start pushing higher speeds,” Holder said.
