**3.2 Making earth orbit an accessible extension of human life**

Like the time revolution that the Concorde provided to cross the Atlantic in the early age of the supersonic civilian flights, a similar revolution could be perceived to go through a certain altitude (stratospheric/sub-orbital, von Karman line, orbital) to fasten travel across opposite sides of Earth. The psychological importance of such a commodity on the human civilization is non-negligeable. Technology mainline acceptance, incremental reliability, robustness, reducing prices, adoption of a way of doing things. In brief, internalization, as a global society, of the extended boundary layer of human daily life. To permit this, the evolving technology should provide extensions of tried and tested means of transport, already widely accepted by all: from an airplane to a spaceplane, there is nearly no psychological barrier when someone climbs in what may look like an airplane, even if it goes much further up, it still may look like what is known to be strongly reliable: an airplane.

Access to LEO by humans on a regular airplane was a long-time revolution to come to fruition. Eventually, evolutions of the 1959 Dyna-Soar [11], the Virgin Galactic Space Ship One [12], the Scaled Composites Model 339 SpaceShipTwo (Scaled Composite, 2010) and the SpaceShipThree released in April 2021 have evolved the spaceplane

**Figure 3.** *Boeing X20 dyna-soar (1959), virgin galactic StarShipTwo (2010) & three (2021).*

*Access to Space, Access to the Moon – Two Sides of the Same Coin? DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.105175*

#### **Figure 4.**

*Operational diagram of Dawn mk-II Aurora single-stage loop to LEO [14].*

concept to reduce the cost of oblation protection to much less than the initial design by using the *feather fall* concept (thus the articulated and elongated winglets) that generates a stable high-drag shape for atmospheric re-entry (**Figure 3**). The SpaceShip planes have three flight controls, depending on the in-atmosphere flight being subsonic (manual control) or supersonic (electric) or space (RCS). This space plane launches from larger airplanes (Scaled Composites Model 318 & 348) with a standard runway though longer and larger [13] compared with the Dyna-Soar which was designed smaller and to be launched on top of a rocket.

And yet, closing the single-stage spaceplane surface-LEO-surface loop might just come from New Zealand, where the New Zealand Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has granted Dawn Aeronautical [14] an Unmanned Aircraft Operator Certificate to fly a suborbital spaceplane from a conventional airport [15]. Dawn aerospace is developing a spaceplane drone (Dawn Mk-II Aurora at this stage of development) in the initial aim at providing a single step to space delivery for smallsat and cubesattype EO platforms in LEO, with a view to scale the spaceplane design with payload requirements onboard the next iteration, the Mk-III, an 18 metric tons spaceplane. Take-off and landing can be done (**Figure 4**) from any standard runway in the world, permitting government and private companies to have at hand the launching platform and insert the payload directly in their premises. In all, spaceplanes, whether airborne launched/runway landing (Virgin Galactic) or runway take-off/ landing (Dawn Aerospace) is decreasing vastly costs to LEO for both passengers and freight. But the most important part is the *ubiquity of launching geolocations* that they address, vastly reducing some of the most common risks and costs to space payloads. Also, bringing spaceplanes one step closer to be visible to all in daily life, a critical part of society adoption of the extended space dimension these carry within.

At this point, we, as a people, reach the very close to Earth external boundary and orbital space. A vastly non-negligeable step in itself to appreciate the civilizational expansion as a daily happening. As with all progresses and development, many steps are intertwined, as it is in these years, both sub-orbital, orbital and the next part to be focussed on. That part is one step further, more difficult, more careful, in terms of engineering, more complex to survive as a human without increasing amount of assistance. Further away, yet also orbitally intertwined with us.
