Launch Services
The Vision
Our goal at Masten Space Systems is to become the premier provider of unmanned suborbital flight services for the commercial, scientific, and educational communities. In order to meet that goal, we have been developing the eXtreme Altitude (XA) series of reusable vertical takeoff vertical landing (VTVL) suborbital vehicles. The capabilities we are trying to develop for these vehicles will provide researchers and educators with an experience unlike anything possible with current sounding rockets. Our goal is to provide not just a launch system, but also a full suite of services and tools that allow the researcher, technology developer, or educator to focus all of their attention on their specific project. We want to take the hassles, delays, paperwork, and distractions out of performing world-class suborbital science, while providing a solution affordable enough that anyone can participate.
A Focus on Science and Learning
While there are several players in the market developing reusable suborbital flight capabilities, Masten Space Systems is the only one focusing explicitly on the needs of the researcher. There are other companies that are planning on offering suborbital flight services for scientific and educational purposes, but in most cases these are secondary considerations to their primary focus—the manned spaceflight market. There is nothing wrong with pursuing the manned spaceflight market, and in fact we applaud the work of leaders in that market segment such as Scaled Composites, Blue Origin, and XCOR Aerospace. Their systems are useful for some sorts of suborbital research, especially in situations where the experiments need human interaction, and we are planning on developing relationships with those companies in case our customers need those capabilities in some instances.
However, there are many areas of potential suborbital research where an unmanned launch system actually is more useful. There are some areas of research, such as those involving microgravity cryogenic fluid management, where the experiment involves flammable or hazardous materials that may be too dangerous to fly on a manned vehicle. There are other capabilities such as reaching higher altitudes, providing vacuum exposure to space hardware and experiments, or precision pointing or microgravity that are much easier to provide if there are not people on-board. More importantly, a vehicle intended for flying spaceflight participants has to have their safety, comfort, and experience as their primary focus. For such systems, the needs and desires of researchers have to take a secondary priority. In our case, providing a world-class suborbital space research environment is our primary mission.