>>12911211Get all the old BLACK ARROW geezers back together that aren't dead, stick them in a building with a few engineers and a surviving Gamma engine, and don't let them leave until they've rediscovered the H2O2 staged combustion secret sauce. Develop a fully reusable Firefly-sized first stage running peroxide and alcohol and a very small autonomous spaceplane using the same fuel/ox combo as a second stage. Launch costs will be pennies on the dollar compared to other companies because cheap propellant+fully reusable+low maintenance costs (low-efficiency, low-temp combustion cycle means little wear on engines)
You don't even need your spaceplane to have payload deployment capabilities. Shit, fucking water land that bitch. Don't even develop landing gear.
Here's your business model: The interior of your spaceplane is literally nothing but experiment racks with power hookups and a kuka arm in the middle. Your low launch/recovery/refurb costs mean that you can undercut the ISS by like 50% to launch, run, and return experiments. Low G forces on entry and landing mean you can market yourself as the most delicate option for biological experiments too. Presumably you'd do this reliably for a few years and then convince some investors to give you enough cash to build a larger rocket and a small crewed spaceplane. Then you launch a micro station (or stations) the same mass as the spaceplane and do the same business model but with crew. Baddabing badda boom you just cornered the LEO research market. Rule Brittania
