Boeing Small Launch Vehicle

The Boeing Small Launch Vehicle is an air-launched, three-stage-to-orbit launch vehicle concept aimed at putting small payloads of about 100 pounds into low Earth orbit at low cost, with a stated aim of bringing the price of launching small satellites down to as little as 300,000 US dollars a launch. The first stage would be an air-launched supersonic aircraft reaching Mach 4.5, the second a hypersonic waverider reaching Mach 10, both reusable and carrying only fuel while taking their oxygen from the air, and the third a solid propellant rocket roughly 16 feet long. The carrier aircraft was projected to be a Scaled Composites White Knight Two. In July 2012 DARPA awarded Boeing a 4.5 million dollar contract to refine the concept as part of the ALASA programme.