The plan is to first launch a service craft -- replete with robotic arms and enough processing horsepower to work independently if needed -- followed by the tiny base-unit skeleton satlets.
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After launching the FireFly probes in 2015, the company seeks to launch a larger craft, named DragonFly, in 2016 which will be able to return between 30 to 60 kgs of material to Earth.
The craft will likely launch vertically from a booster -- just like NASA rockets -- with up to 50 passengers onboard.
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But while the jam-packed launch day at Powell Street Craft Brewery kept beer maker David Bowkett busy, his operation was just the latest in a sudsy wave of new microbreweries and even-smaller nanobreweries that have opened in the city in recent months.
The craft could be modified to launch microsatellites, and Virgin hopes to sell flights to agencies for microgravity or atmospheric experiments.
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The ultimate promise of reusable craft like SpaceShipOne is a vastly reduced launch cost, greater ease of preparing a flight and the prospect of opening space for tourism.
Such issues led Congress to draft the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004, which was designed to make clear that suborbital craft should be regulated as rockets.
It took 60 hours to get to the Moon so we waited until the craft was in orbit and then we had a mad rush to get from Launch Control to Mission Control (in Houston, Texas).
But Dr Winglee estimates that as little as 40kg of gas would be enough to accelerate the craft on its way to the heliopause, where it would arrive about ten years after launch.
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And so, in due course, the alien craft arrive: tetchy pilotless drones in the shape of pizzas, from which individual slices peel off to launch spicy, deep-crust attacks on defenseless mortals.
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