Engineering Commons^™

The increasing number of commercial suborbital space flights over the next decade may lead to the development of commercial suborbital transportation. This may lead to risks to civil aviation and the hazards that may arise from the interaction of suborbital spacecraft with controlled air space. To do this the National Airspace System will need to accommodate a growing number of suborbital spacecraft. An example of one of the suborbital vehicles being developed is Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo. This paper analyzes the performance of SpaceShipTwo using simulated nominal flight research data conducted at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s Suborbital Spaceflight Simulator.