Artists conception of WhiteKnightTwo and the SpaceShipTwo space tourism vehicle. (Credit: Virgin Galactic)

The War is Boring blog provides an interesting post about how the military is attempting to capitalize on work that Scaled Composites and Virgin Galactic are doing in space tourism:

SUSTAIN would be two vehicles. The jet-powered mother-ship, based in the U.S. or at a secure, overseas facility, would loft a smaller, rocket-powered “lander” to high altitude — say, 50,000 feet — before launching it. The rocket would quickly boost the lander to an altitude of around 400,000 feet, just shy of the orbital threshold. On completing its mission, the lander would deploy air brakes and spiral down to a landing.

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Paul Damphousse, Chief of Advanced Concepts for the National Security Space Office, gave a presentation on Friday at ISDC about SUSTAIN – an advanced vehicle  that would allow the Pentagon to deplay a force of 12-13 Marines anywhere in the world within a few hours.

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Aerospace primes show suborbital military transport interest
Rob Coppinger
Flight International

Potential military applications for suborbital spaceflight are being studied by some of the biggest players in the US defence industry. Northrop Grumman, Pratt & Whitney and Alliant Techsystems (ATK) have all made suborbital transport proposals in closed sessions to the US government’s National Space Security Office (NSSO), Flight International can reveal.

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Flight Global has more information on this week’s National Security Space Office (NSSO) conference on suborbital vehicles. Invited guests to the Texas confab include a who’s who of private companies trying to develop space tourism, including Armadillo Aerospace, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic and XCOR.

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Clark Lindsey over at Hobby Space found this interesting notice about a three-day conference that the U.S. military will be hosting in Texas later this month titled:

2009 National Security Space Technology Forum on Suborbital Missions and the Small Unit Space Transport and Insertion (SUSTAIN) Concept

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