Semper Fi!

The Sustain system will consist of two stages: a launch craft and a lander. In recent years, NASA, the Air Force and the Navy have created programs to develop new RLVs that will use multi-stage systems and a combination of rockets and hypersonic air-breathing boost engines. Vehicles now in development that could be adapted for a Marine carrier aircraft—the first-stage launcher that will carry the actual spaceship—include the hypersonic aircraft Falcon, which skirts the upper atmosphere; the Boeing X-51 and Lockheed Martin Rattlrs (Revolutionary Approach to Time-Critical Long-Range Strike) hypersonic engine testbeds; and the supersecret two-stage spacecraft Hot Eagle. It’s this constellation of programs, along with aviation designer Burt Rutan’s two-stage spaceplanes, that will ultimately yield Sustain’s RLV transport.
Falcon, a $100-million Air Force program intended for low-orbital operations from a runway, is the centerpiece. The first two Falcon vehicles—long, wedge-shaped craft—are under construction by a Lockheed Martin team in Palmdale, California, and are slated to begin testing in 2008.

Rough Landing
At the core of Sustain is the lander—the actual vehicle in which a squad of 13 Marines [see photo gallery] and their gear will float through space, reenter the atmosphere, and come down right on top of their adversaries. The closest thing to a Sustain lander actually flying today is Rutan’s SpaceShipOne, built by Scaled Composites in Mojave, California. In October 2004, SpaceShipOne piggybacked to 40,000 feet on a carrier aircraft and then boosted to 69 miles with its own rocket and landed like an airplane. This singular feat, perhaps more than any other accomplishment by industry or researchers, has energized proponents of Sustain. “Just a scaled-up version of that would do this [Sustain] mission,” said then–Air Force general S. Pete Worden while observing the launch. A lander based on SpaceShipOne would be bigger, tougher and armed—and reconfigured for longer flights, as opposed to the up-and-down trajectory that SpaceShipOne flies—but the basic concept is broadly the same.

My next door neighbor is a pilot downsized from a major airline who flies the 'beautiful people' in private jet flights. This is a huge market today. I see suborbital transports flying the elite anywhere in the world in an hour starting by 2030.