OHB joins Dassault’s project to build a reusable mini-shuttle
Vortex-S with service module attached. Click for original image.
The German aerospace company OHB has now joined with France’s Dassault Aviation in its project to build Vortex, a reusable mini-shuttle that could be used to supply cargo to the future commercial space stations presently under development.
An initial subscale demonstrator of the spaceplane, called the VORTEX-D, is being developed by the company with support from the French Ministry of the Armed Forces. During a 25 June 2025 hearing of the French National Assembly’s Committee on National Defence and the Armed Forces, it was revealed that the demonstrator is expected to be launched in 2028 and has a total project cost of €70 million, with Dassault providing more than half of the funding and the remainder coming from the French government.
The VORTEX-S is expected to follow the VORTEX-D demonstrator. This larger, more complex variant will be developed in partnership with OHB following the finalisation of the 11 May agreement, as the companies seek to secure ESA backing for the project. According to the release announcing the partnership, discussions are also underway with other major European space companies to “expand the team.”
Dassault will remain the lead contractor, building the mini-shuttle. OHB will build the service module. The hope is that later versions of Vortex could also ferry crews to and from space.
This project started in 2023, and initially hoped to do the first test mission to ISS in 2026. That test flight is now targeting 2029, with later missions slipping beyond 2031 and now targeting missions to one of the new stations replacing ISS.
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
Midget shuttles launched on expendable rockets are not going to be a cost-competitive solution to commercial LEO space station cargo and/or crew logistics. This project, as with most such previously abandoned equivalent European projects, is dependent on government development funding, has already schedule-slipped rightward by multiple years and seems doomed to continue that slide until it, like all of its notional predecessors, is finally cancelled. The Europeans simply lack the institutional speed required to keep up with US private sector space efforts.
Dick Eagleson wrote: “Midget shuttles launched on expendable rockets are not going to be a cost-competitive solution to commercial LEO space station cargo and/or crew logistics.”
True, but some of the competition and potential competition fly on the expendable Vulcan. Unfortunately, ten years after reusability was proved, too many launch companies designed expendable rockets instead of reusable, so expendable is what is available for many of today’s planned and existing projects.
“This project, as with most such previously abandoned equivalent European projects, is dependent on government development funding, has already schedule-slipped rightward by multiple years and seems doomed to continue that slide until it, like all of its notional predecessors, is finally cancelled.”
Governments have spent the past many decades running space programs and locking out most commercial operators. This has left the commercial companies in a very real disadvantage with little practical experience. This means that for these countries to shift over to the private sector for their space efforts, some amount of government assistance is in order to develop the practical experience as well as to assure investors that commercial space has a future.
Schedule slips are common in all aerospace efforts. If a schedule slips year for year, then an effort is doomed. If it slips a little bit, then it still has a chance, if the money holds out long enough for the project to start generating revenue. The real question is whether or not current efforts are run by people who have enough experience with successful projects rather than with projects that eventually get cancelled.
Even in the U.S., several OldSpace companies have spent so much time on cost-plus projects that they have too little experience on fixed-price projects to make them work. We saw this problem with Starliner, and we have noticed that other OldSpace companies don’t bother with fixed price projects.
“The Europeans simply lack the institutional speed required to keep up with US private sector space efforts.”
Quite a few U.S. private sector efforts are run by people who also lack the same ability or sense of urgency for speed. Cost-plus projects, these past few decades, didn’t seem urgent enough to be completed in a timely manner. Fortunately, several others are run by alumni of companies who have — or had — that speed. Space companies have been started by ex-Blue Origin employees who had become dissatisfied when that company slowed down its efforts, a decade ago. Other space companies were started or are being started by ex-employees of SpaceX, which still uses rapid development with a sense of urgency.
It is only the past year or three that Europe seems to have started shifting to the private sector for its space business. The world saw how well the U.S. private sector has succeeded in space. Our host has even noted that the U.S. space program has shifted from NASA to our private sector, specifically to SpaceX. I believe that the rest of America’s private sector will soon fill in the gaps in space exploration that SpaceX has not filled.
Rapid development is important in all industries, mostly to keep ahead of the competition. Somehow, rapid development fell out of favor in the space industry — another consequence of government run space programs. After the 1960s, there was not much competition between governments, so the race to the Moon was the only real example of rapid development by government-space, which is now known as OldSpace.
Edward,
The key to affordable LEO space station logistics will be shared launches on a large vehicle such as Starship or some yet-to-appear-or-even-be-spitballed upper stage vehicle that can launch on a New Glenn – probably the 9×4 version. These vehicles would combine crew and cargo resupply and make a number of logistics stops per flight equal to the number of client stations. Launch of small logistics vehicles to single destinations, even on reusable launchers, will not be economically competitive – whether European or American or of any other national origin.
Dick Eagleson,
“The key to affordable LEO space station logistics will be shared launches on a large vehicle such as Starship”
I’m not convinced. There may be benefits, but there are also downsides. One launch servicing all space stations limits their orbits to one plane. It also limits duty cycles to the times that the large vehicle’s launch cadence into that orbital plane, and all missions become the same length, or multiples of this cadence. Astronauts spend downtime on the transport vehicle instead of spending work time on their space station. A large logistics spacecraft will tax a small space station’s attitude control system, and docking forces (and corresponding docking accelerations) will be more severe than for a smaller logistics spacecraft.
I believe that one key to affordable low Earth orbit space station logistics is affordable launches. More affordable launches has already opened up access to space for a wide variety of uses, and the lower the cost of that access, the more uses will benefit us all.
Another key to affordable low Earth orbit space station logistics is affordable spacecraft operations. Right now, a manned Dragon is priced at about $200 million per flight, and the Falcon 9 it launches on is about one third of that price. Cargo Dragon is priced around $130 million, and the Falcon 9 is about half. Operating a manned Dragon is about twice the price of operating a cargo one.
Other space companies could develop cheaper spacecraft for servicing space stations. The Falcons and the Dragons are nice for first generation servicing spacecraft, but it would be better to improve upon them sooner rather than later.