Suggested Citation:
Sarigul-Klijn, Marti M., Nesrin Sarigul-Klijn, Gary Hudson, Livingston Holder, Gregg Liesman, Dale Shell, Chris Webber (2006) Gravity Air Launching of Earth-to-Orbit Space Vehicles. AIAA Space 2006 Conference and Exposition

AirLaunch LLC is developing small launch vehicle called QuickReachTM that is carried by and launched from an existing military cargo aircraft for the DARPA and USAF Falcon program. One purpose of the QuickReachTM development program was to demonstrate AirLaunch's Gravity Air Launch (GAL) method. For this demonstration, a single inert Drop Test Article (DTA) was successfully dropped from a C-17 aircraft onto the Edwards flight test center range. The DTA was a water-filled steel tank with the same outer mold line, stiffness, and mass properties as the actual launch vehicle and was the longest object ever dropped from the C-17 aircraft. In addition, this paper describes AirLaunch's future development program for GAL.