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Space Truck Recoverable Booster Concept Came Long Before SpaceX, It Inflated to Descend

In a very short period of time, humanity has gone from spending millions on single-use space launch vehicles to spending a lot less on missions that depend on reusable boosters. Made famous by SpaceX, this piece of tech is now at the center of most satellite launches, but also deliveries of supplies and astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS).
ROOST imagined after splashing down 12 photos
Photo: Hazegrayart
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But SpaceX was not the first to think about reusable boosters. In fact, many working in the space exploration business in the 1960s toyed with the idea, but for various reasons, none of them came to be. Not even the insane one dreamed up by aerospace engineer Philip Bono and his team at the Douglas Aircraft Company.

For this purpose Bono, who was responsible for birthing a lot more ideas, including that of a Saturn Application Single Stage to Orbit (SASSTO), cooked up something called the Reusable One-stage Orbital Space Truck (ROOST). It was a contraption 273 feet (83 meters) tall and 9.6 million pounds (4.4 million kg) heavy that could lift up to 320,000 pounds (145,150 kg) of cargo to low-Earth orbit - on paper, at least, as it never got made.

The interesting part about it though was the booster. It came with something Space Flight History describes as its own reentry and recovery system. It was, in fact, an inflatable component that would start to grow in dimensions while the booster was high up above the planet, effectively becoming an enormous drag cone, meant to slow the thing down at re-entry and allow it to float after splashdown.

It's a crazy idea, and one complicated to describe in words. That’s why space tech animation specialist Hazegrayart released a virtual demonstration of ROOST’s capabilities. You can enjoy that in the video attached below.

As for more details on the ROOST, an in-depth look at it, in fact, expect that sometime soon here on autoevolution.

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About the author: Daniel Patrascu
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Daniel loves writing (or so he claims), and he uses this skill to offer readers a "behind the scenes" look at the automotive industry. He also enjoys talking about space exploration and robots, because in his view the only way forward for humanity is away from this planet, in metal bodies.
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