Two Middle Eastern startups sign deal to build a mini-shuttle dubbed Oryx
Leap71’s smallscale aerospike engine during testing.
Click for original image.
A rocket startup in the UAE, Aspire, has signed a partnership deal with a rocket engine startup in Dubai, Leap71, to build a fully reusable mini-shuttle dubbed Oryx, not unlike the Dream Chaser mini-shuttle that Sierra Space has been trying to launch now for more than a decade.
As part of the plan, Leap71 will develop two types of engines for Oryx, including one using an aerospike nozzle.
Building on their ongoing cooperation, Aspire Space is now contracting LEAP 71 to develop the rocket engines powering the Oryx’s second stage. Each engine will produce 20 tons (200 kN) of thrust, and the partners are pursuing two parallel propulsion paths: a conventional engine and a novel aerospike configuration.
The aerospike concept, long studied but never flown, offers superior efficiency across both atmospheric and vacuum flight regimes — making it particularly well suited for reusable launch systems. LEAP 71 gained international recognition in December 2024 for successfully testing a 5 kN aerospike engine, validating key aspects of its design.
The picture to the right shows the LEAP aerospike engine during those 2024 tests. As I noted then, “The spike in the center acts as one wall of the nozzle, and the changing pressure of the atmosphere acting as the other side of the nozzle, allowing the nozzle size to change as the rocket rises, thus making its thrust as efficient as possible.”
Those tests were done in the United Kingdom, suggesting the company relied on British engineers using financing from Dubai. Even so, to go from that smallscale test to a full engine launching both a rocket and a reusable mini-shuttle will be a major challenge. Or to put it another way, to say their plans are aspirational is an understatement.
Hat tip BtB’s stringer Jay.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Leap71’s smallscale aerospike engine during testing.
Click for original image.
A rocket startup in the UAE, Aspire, has signed a partnership deal with a rocket engine startup in Dubai, Leap71, to build a fully reusable mini-shuttle dubbed Oryx, not unlike the Dream Chaser mini-shuttle that Sierra Space has been trying to launch now for more than a decade.
As part of the plan, Leap71 will develop two types of engines for Oryx, including one using an aerospike nozzle.
Building on their ongoing cooperation, Aspire Space is now contracting LEAP 71 to develop the rocket engines powering the Oryx’s second stage. Each engine will produce 20 tons (200 kN) of thrust, and the partners are pursuing two parallel propulsion paths: a conventional engine and a novel aerospike configuration.
The aerospike concept, long studied but never flown, offers superior efficiency across both atmospheric and vacuum flight regimes — making it particularly well suited for reusable launch systems. LEAP 71 gained international recognition in December 2024 for successfully testing a 5 kN aerospike engine, validating key aspects of its design.
The picture to the right shows the LEAP aerospike engine during those 2024 tests. As I noted then, “The spike in the center acts as one wall of the nozzle, and the changing pressure of the atmosphere acting as the other side of the nozzle, allowing the nozzle size to change as the rocket rises, thus making its thrust as efficient as possible.”
Those tests were done in the United Kingdom, suggesting the company relied on British engineers using financing from Dubai. Even so, to go from that smallscale test to a full engine launching both a rocket and a reusable mini-shuttle will be a major challenge. Or to put it another way, to say their plans are aspirational is an understatement.
Hat tip BtB’s stringer Jay.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
To paraphrase Browning, “Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s a Paradise for?”
The Middle East is already on the long-term backslopes of the curves for both petroleum supply, in terms of proven reserves, and demand. Both the exploration/extraction technology and the demand come mainly from places outside of Arabia and Iran. But the still-ongoing American shale revolution now means that a great deal of the needed supply is now also obtainable from a far less problematic place. This will do to the Middle East petro-economies what the Western invention of long-range oceanic shipbuilding and navigation technology did to the Silk Road a few centuries prior.
The political and international legal basis of the Middle Eastern “good times” of the last several decades have, in any case, also derived entirely from sources outside of the region. The Westphalian system of nation-statehood is of European origin and is, frankly, the only thing that has ever stood in the way of Westerners with both the need for, and means to obtain, petroleum simply exterminating Middle Eastern indigenes and taking it.
In return for this principled forbearance, said indigenes have used a non-trivial fraction of their royalties to spread both aggressively medieval sects of Islam and religiously-inspired terrorism worldwide. The Middle Eastern petro-states have also spent much of their income on conspicuous consumption and the hiring of armies of poorly-treated guest-workers from less fortunate nations to do their scut work while the native beneficiaries live lives that more resemble those of trustifarians than of normative Third-Worlders – which they otherwise are.
In the meantime, the ability to also import Western medical care as well as copious food from everywhere on the planet has allowed Middle Eastern populations to grow to where they now vastly exceed the natural carrying capacity of the generally wretched land their nations occupy.
We are not quite to the point where the music consequentially stops for the first time and some are left without seating, but the game of Middle Eastern musical chairs has very much begun.
A few of those with power and influence in this region of the world have noticed that there is at least one bridge out up ahead on the road that has been travelled for much of the past century and that continuing on as before is simply no longer an option. Thus, we have this latter-day attempt at a forced-march to genuine modernity – particularly in the smaller Gulf kingdoms and sheikdoms – instead of the purchased-with-a-platinum-card Potemkin simulacrum that has been seen as sufficient heretofore.
Perhaps this will work and perhaps it will not. I’m inclined toward the former alternative as I think the cultural baggage in that part of the world is simply too heavy to heave across the chasm separating the approaches of that broken bridge up ahead. Clinging to said baggage will render crossing equally impossible for most of the people themselves. The only way to reach that other side is to dump the dysfunctional past, get a good running start and leap for all one is worth. Even then, there will be no guarantees.