Beal Aerospace, the privately funded company that is developing the Beal satellite launcher, could test fly a version of the booster from Cape Canaveral late next year or in early 2001.
The all-liquid-fuelled three-stage BA-2 model will be as large as the Titan 4B, the USA's most powerful unmanned booster, and will be 69m (220ft) tall, the largest since the Saturn 5. It will be able to place 5,900kg (13,000lb) into geostationary orbit. Beal is also looking at alternative launch sites, such as British Guyana in South America, and Sombrero Island in the West Indies.
• As work at NASA's Kennedy Space Center and the US Air Force's Cape Canaveral Air Station becomes increasingly consolidated, it has been proposed that the area be renamed the Cape Canaveral Spaceport. NASA is considering a $30 million upgrade and enlargement of its microgravity and biotechnology facility.
Source: Flight International
