Tag: Radian Aerospace

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.

A Seattle-area startup called Radian Aerospace is fine-tuning the design of its orbital space plane, with an eye toward building a subscale prototype as early as this year.

The company is also in the midst of a fresh round of fundraising, following up on $27.5 million in investment that was announced in 2022, according to Livingston Holder, Radian’s co-founder and chief technology officer. “That round will be larger,” Holder told me.

Over the past two years, Radian has made progress on an ambitious plan to create a reusable winged space plane that would be launched toward low Earth orbit by a rocket-propelled sled and its own rocket engines. The single-stage-to-orbit concept, or SSTO, has been called a “holy grail” for cheap access to space.

For years, Renton, Wash.-based Radian Aerospace has been working on a rocket project while holding its cards close to the vest. Now several of the big puzzle pieces have been put together to reveal what Radian’s executives and backers have in mind: a rail-launched space plane that could carry passengers to orbit and back.

The key piece, as reported by Business Insider, is a presentation that Radian CEO Richard Humphrey delivered to potential investors during a virtual conference in June. Citing the presentation, Business Insider said the venture was seeking $20 million in a Series A funding round. The money would fund further development of the orbital launch system, with an eye toward beginning flights to orbit as soon as 2025, Business Insider said.

The video presentation doesn’t appear to be publicly available, and Radian did not respond to my emailed request for more information. In fact, I’ve made inquiries with Radian executives numerous times — by email, by phone and in person at space industry conferences — ever since the venture reported raising $350,000 in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2016.

Despite Radian’s stealthiness, there’s ample evidence that the venture’s plan is more than a pack of PowerPoint slides.

In 2017, for example, Radian struck a deal with the Port of Bremerton to lease a half-acre of land at Bremerton National Airport for a rocket engine test facility. A prototype engine has reportedly gone through many firings, and Radian would like to expand the Bremerton facility.

Radian also is seeking a patent for a concept that calls for launching a winged single-stage-to-orbit craft with an initial boost from a rocket-powered sled on rails. One diagram that’s included in the application shows the plane docking with a space station, shuttle-style. At the end of each mission, the plane would make a horizontal, airplane-style landing on a runway.

Radian says the plane’s design was inspired by Boeing’s concept for a Reusable Aerodynamic Space Vehicle, or RASV, which was proposed in the early 1970s but never built.