A Reference Guide to International Reusable Launch Vehicle Concepts from 1944 to the Present

Space transportation is one of the most essential elements for enabling activities in space.

For current rockets, reliability is too low and launch cost is too high when compared to aircraft operations. Reusable Launch Vehicles could solve these deficiencies and are being investigated by many companies. This book contains a databank of 300 worldwide suborbital and orbital Reusable Launch Vehicle concepts. It covers ideas from the first concepts, such as Silver Bird, proposed by Eugen Saenger in 1944, to present ones such as SpaceShipOne, proposed by Burt Rutan in 2003, as well as all X Prize candidates. For reader friendly use, all information is prepared in the same data style, which makes this book a unique reference for rocket scientists as well as everybody interested in and fascinated by rockets. An introduction to space transportation systems, a study on the motivation for developing Reusable Launch Vehicles and a discussion about the benefit of an international Reusable Launch Vehicle program complete this book.

Robert A. Goehlich was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1975. He studied Aerospace Engineering at the Technical University Berlin from 1996 to 2000 and received his Ph.D. in 2003. He worked at the Israel Institute of Technology (Haifa, Israel), at the University of Washington (Seattle, USA), at the National Aerospace Laboratory (Tokyo, Japan) and at EADS Space (Kourou Spaceport, French Guiana). Since 2003 he has lectured at Keio University (Yokohama, Japan) and working with the Future Space Transportation System Team at Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency JAXA (Tokyo, Japan). He has created and lectured world's first "Space Tourism" and "Economics of Space" courses. At JAXA his investigations are focused on cost optimization for current and future space transportation systems and improvement of aerospace organizations effectiveness.