Swiss Space Systems
Description
Swiss Space Systems is a company which plans to provide orbital launches of miniaturized satellites and manned suborbital spaceflights. The company is based in Payerne in western Switzerland, near Payerne Air Base, where it plans to build a spaceport in 2015. Suborbital spaceplanes will be launched from an Airbus A300, giving the spacecraft more initial speed and altitude than if it were launched from the ground. The spacecraft, in turn, will release a disposable third stage., the company planned to charge 10 million CHF for a launch, using unmanned suborbital spaceplanes that could carry satellites weighing up to. The costs were expected to be reduced by the reusable nature of the spaceplane and launch facilities and by somewhat lower fuel-consumption than conventional systems.In 2013, S3 also hoped to develop a manned version of its suborbital spaceplane, in order to provide supersonic intercontinental flights to paying customers. According to CEO Pascal Jaussi: "Far from wishing to launch into the space tourism market, we want rather to establish a new mode of air travel based on our satellite launch model that will allow spaceports on different continents to be reached in an hour.", project partners included the European Space Agency, Dassault Aviation and the Von Karman Institute.
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