PlanetSpace announces Silver Dart orbital vehicle         

[DEC. 19, 2005]  LONDON, Ontario -- PlanetSpace is pleased to unveil to the public what the company expects to be its next step to orbit. Unknown to the world, Canadian Arrow has been collaborating with Paul Czsyz, a well-known hypersonic glider expert, to evaluate and select a design that would provide a solid foundation for an orbital fly-back spacecraft. After four years of research, Canadian Arrow has decided to base its next rocket vehicle on a hypersonic glider known as the Flight Dynamics Laboratory 7, developed in the early '60s. The PlanetSpace version is a 45-foot-long, eight-person hypersonic glider called the Silver Dart.

"The Silver Dart allows us to build on the work we are now doing with our Canadian Arrow rocket," said Geoff Sheerin, president and chief executive officer of PlanetSpace. "A cluster of 10 Canadian Arrow rocket engines provide the 700,000 pounds of thrust required to boost the Silver Dart to orbit. PlanetSpace is one of only a handful of organizations that can provide this kind of thrust in a booster vehicle."

After the first manned flights of the Canadian Arrow rocket, PlanetSpace will focus on development of the heavy lift booster to pave the way for the first flights of the Silver Dart to orbit. Early testing will include the completion of a suborbital version of the Silver Dart.

"The specifications for the Silver Dart were finished back in 2001 in anticipation of a requirement for a space station transport vehicle for use by NASA and other private initiatives," Sheerin said. "We can see in NASA's recent announcements this requirement is fast becoming a reality."

"One of the most practical operational aspects of the FDL-7 class of hypersonic gliders was that the lifting body configuration forms an inherently stable hypersonic glider from Mach 22 to landing," said Czysz, president of HyperTech Concepts LLC and professor emeritus of aerospace engineering at Saint Louis University. "This design came out of work started in the '50s by the Air Force Flight Dynamics Laboratory. When the government decided to exclude the military from space developments, the significance of this design was lost."

Czysz, who is also a part of the PlanetSpace board of advisers, will help guide development of the Silver Dart at Canadian Arrow.

A new book written by Czysz and Claudio Bruno, called "Future Spacecraft Propulsion Systems," tells the history of the FDL-7. The book is published by Springer-Praxis and will be on sale in stores March 2006.

"We have always stated that PlanetSpace will have both suborbital and orbital vehicles in our company," said Chirinjeev Kathuria, chairman of PlanetSpace. "The Silver Dart is the beginning of what will be the orbital vehicle to provide different services and capabilities to our customers, including responding to NASA's request for commercial orbital transportation services."

About PlanetSpace

PlanetSpace Corporation is an international joint venture created by Dr. Chirinjeev Kathuria, his affiliated companies and Canadian Arrow, to capitalize upon a variety of both developed and undeveloped commercial, consumer and industrial spaceflight markets. PlanetSpace expects to be the first company to launch commercial passengers to suborbital space and in the first five years of flight expects to create at least 2,000 "citizen explorers."

As a former founding director of MirCorp, Kathuria broke new ground in privately funded space flight when MirCorp made history on April 4, 2000, with the launch of the world's first privately funded manned space program and signed Dennis Tito to become the Earth's first space tourist or "citizen explorer."

Canadian Arrow has completed a number of increasingly powerful engine tests, as well as a successful drop test of the space capsule and recovery system. Canadian Arrow's most recent engine test achieved 50,000 pounds of thrust, demonstrating Canadian Arrow's ability to achieve suborbital flight and making it the most powerful liquid propellant rocket engine ever built and tested in Canada. Canadian Arrow is now finalizing construction of its initial three-person vehicle.

For more information, visit www.planetspace.org.

[PlanetSpace news release]

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