Technology Maturation and Flight Validation for Air Launched Liquid Rockets

Generation Orbit’s (GO) partnership with AFRC involved a flight test campaign for the company’s GOLauncher 1 Inert Test Article (GO1-ITA), a mass properties and aerodynamics simulator.  Researchers plan to launch GOLauncher 1—a single-stage liquid rocket—from a Gulfstream III, which is capable of delivering payloads of up to 1,000 pounds on high-altitude suborbital and suppressed hypersonic trajectories.  In FY2017 the company delivered the GO1-ITA to AFRC, where it underwent ground and telemetry testing and preparation for integration with the Gulfstream aircraft.  In December 2017, AFRC successfully completed a series of flight tests simulating abort release of the ITA.  The flights validated GO’s simulation models and exercised its concept of operations.  The flights also validated AFRC’s engineering analysis of computational fluid dynamics and aircraft flutter and control.   More »