Hypersonic flight research vehicle derived from Commercial Suborbital Reusable Launch Vehicle with future potential for reuse

Since the dawn of the Cold War, the Pentagon had periodically thrown its weight behind the development of maneuverable hypersonic weapons, only to shy away when technological hurdles such as propulsion, control, and heat resistance proved daunting.1 A low-cost testbed is needed for materials, avionics, and software based on commercial equipment to evaluate these technologies in the hypersonic regime.  Rapid interval testing of materials and concepts can be made at a fraction of the costs historically seen. Exos Aerospace proposes to evaluate modifications to our commercially available SARGE Suborbital Reusable Launch Vehicle (SRLV) to leverage its capability as a hypersonic testbed.   This existing vehicle capability was Mach 4.1 when ground-launched.  The study will evaluate the increase in performance when air launching this vehicle using NASA licensed TGALS (Towed Glider Air Launch System).  This configuration will be evaluated to expand the range of speeds attainable with the SARGE platform while still being reusable and providing an enhanced commercial product. The research will evaluate SARGE as an air-launch vehicle providing an agile capability to achieve Mach 4+ to 6+ with various trajectories to be determined in this study.  The SARGE vehicle is a Suborbital Reusable Launch vehicle and the Exos team anticipates being able to develop systems that could support recovery after hypersonic flight testing. We are imagining the ability to test and retest with the same asset multiple times. Our engines have completed thousands of engine relight and hundreds of in air operations in manned flight applicaitons.  1 Stone, Richard.  “' National Pride Is at Stake.' Russia, China, United States Race to Build Hypersonic Weapons.” Science, 9 Jan. 2020, www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/national-pride-stake-russia-china-united-states-race-build-hypersonic-weapons.