Astroclipper spaceplane

Earth's gravity well is too deep for single-stage-to-orbit spacecraft.  For example, though SpaceX's Starship would make it to orbit, it would have no fuel to return, let alone be able to carry a payload.  So we need two stages to lift a payload into orbit, and to make launches and space travel cheap (relatively), each stage needs to be re-usable.   SpaceX has done this already, with its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, though Crew Dragon, the re-usable capsule to take crew to the ISS  (International Space Station) hasn't yet flown, and suffered a nasty setback when a previous prototype blew up during testing.  SpaceX's Starship/Super Heavy duo hasn't yet flown, though early tests have been promising.  If Starship/Super Heavy works it will be able to lift 100-150 tonnes into LEO (low Earth orbit) at 1000th the cost of existing launch systems.  But SpaceX's rockets lift off and land vertically, and that is on purpose—Starship is designed to work on celestial bodies where there is no atmosphere, such as the Moon.  Since the earliest days of space travel, the dream has been to have space vehicles which can take off from and land at airports just like planes.

Fraser Cain has done a good video about Astroclipper, a combined plane/rocket, which will do just that.

(All images from Fraser Cain's video)

The X-33, a single-stage-to orbit spaceship which was planned by NASA and then cancelled.  It would take off vertically then coast to a landing like an aircraft.  A 1/3rd size mockup was built, but the project was then cancelled.

But a winged spaceship (to assist re-entry and re-use) was first planned in 1957, and was called the Dynasoar.  It too was cancelled, for budgetary reasons.  This is the wind tunnel test model.

NASA toyed with this version of a re-usable booster, which would take off from an airport (instead of vertically) and then land at an airport.

Exodus Space Corp's solution is a two stage spaceplane.  It takes off from an airport like a jet, using conventional air-breathing jets.  At about 20 kilometres altitude, the rocket engines take over.  In an interesting wrinkle, the oxidiser isn't liquid oxygen (which means cryogenic fuel tanks with all their problems) but hydrogen peroxide.  At 75 to 110 k's, the two stages separate, and the first stage coasts back to land at an airport.

This is the timeline which Exodus Space Corp suggests.  The competitive advantages they point to seem plausible.  The timeline does not. 

The thing is, there is a ferment of new developments in space exploration right now.  SpaceX plans to have commercial launches of Starship by mid 2021, Blue Origin's New Glenn will have commercial launches in 2022, and Sierra Nevada Corporation's Dream Chaser in 2021.  By the mid 2030s, competing technologies will have gone through a couple of iterations.  Exodus Space Corp's offering will be competing against seasoned and familiar technology which will be hard to beat.  Given how rapidly SpaceX is developing its technologies, it's hard to see that they won't see off this competition.  If this two-stage spaceplane is cheap and convenient enough, SpaceX or Blue Origin or Virgin Space will easily be able to copy what Exodus Space Corporation is doing, because these ideas can't be patent-protected, and all the other players will be able to diversify from their existing technologies to produce something comparable.

Extremely interesting, all the same.