Executive Intent

The two crewmembers sat side by side in the cockpit of a XS-19A “Midnight,” a single-stage-to-orbit spacecraft, the larger sibling of the S-9 “Black Stallion” spacecraft, the first conventional takeoff and landing aircraft able to propel itself into Earth orbit. Able to carry 50 percent more payload than the S-9 and more fuel for longer and higher-altitude missions, the XS-19 went into advanced design and development as soon as the Black Stallion proved its worth. Born of the revolutionary SR-71 Blackbird supersonic and XR-A1 Aurora hypersonic reconnaissance planes, the S-series aircraft were sleek, elegantly sculpted blended-wing designs built of advanced heat-resistant carbon-carbon composites. Instead of being nearly hand-built like the Space Shuttle, Aurora, and Black Stallion, the Midnight was able to be assembly-line-manufactured, albeit by robots working inside massive autoclaves and vacuum chambers.

Although just twenty-six years old, Hunter Noble wasn’t giddy because this was his first space flight-he was a veteran of dozens more of them than Bream, thanks to his own creation, which he had first conceived as a freshman engineering student: the Laser Pulse Detonation Rocket System, or “leopards.” Leopards were the hybrid turbojet-scramjet-rocket engine that allowed lightweight aircraft like the Midnight and Black Stallion to take off and land like conventional aircraft but achieve low Earth orbit without the need of massive vertical-launch boosters or rocket launchpads.

Former U.S. Air Force captain Hunter Noble (nicknamed “Boomer” because of what usually happened to his early engine designs during testing) could have left the service and become a multibillionaire from his engine design, but he gave it all to the Air Force in exchange for just one thing: being allowed to fly the final product. It was an easy exchange. But now Boomer had left the Air Force and was a vice president of design and engineering for a small high-tech research-and-development company called Sky Masters Inc., which developed a range of military and commercial aircraft, weapons, communications systems, satellites, and aircraft, and he was making the money he dreamed of and still getting to fly his creations.

The Midnight had four larger leopard engines under the wings. For takeoff and landing, the engines performed like standard aircraft engines. The aircraft performed an aerial refueling with a specially modified tanker that topped off fuel and also loaded hydrogen-peroxide rocket-fuel oxidizer before the craft made its dash into space. This refueling was in essence the spacecraft’s “first stage,” since at thirty thousand feet, over half of the Earth’s atmosphere was below it and the push into space was that much easier.

After the final refueling and positioning in the proper location and direction for orbit, the craft accelerated to Mach 3 on its turbofan engines. Spikes in the engine inlets diverted incoming supersonic air around the turbines to specially shaped ducts that compressed the air hundreds of times greater than the jet turbines before mixing jet fuel and ignition, quickly resulting in speeds in excess of Mach 10 and climb rates approaching that of the Space Shuttle. As the aircraft approached the edge of space, the spikes eventually closed completely and the engines converted into pure rocket engines, using hydrogen peroxide as the jet-fuel oxidizer. Laser igniters burned the fuel more efficiently, giving the engines enormous power, but the lasers had to be “pulsed” several hundred times a second to achieve maximum combustion without blowing the engines apart. As speed increased to Mach 25, the spaceplane reached orbital velocity.

Although the payloads of the S-9 and XS-19 spaceplanes were small-just six and nine thousand pounds respectively, far less than the now-retired Space Shuttle and the Shuttle’s replacement, the Orion crew module, expected to be in service in three to five years-the spaceplanes accomplished what the Shuttle’s designers could only dream about: quick, reliable, and frequent access to space. Orbital flights and dockings with the International Space Station and Armstrong Space Station, America ’s military space platform, were routine; passengers could be flown halfway around the planet in less than two hours; graduates from civilian and military pilot schools could now select “Astronaut” for their next assignment.

Hunter Noble had left the Air Force to work with private industry when it became apparent that President Joseph Gardner wasn’t committed to the military use of outer space except as a support arm of the U.S. Navy. Although there was little money for space other than in satellite communications and surveillance, there was still money for research and development of other space systems, and that’s where Boomer wanted to be. Today’s flight was going to demonstrate one of those new technologies.