How’s this for an afternoon in just a few years time: Lunch in Dubai, a quick visit to space, and dinner in Beijing?
It could be a possibility, if a Chinese start-up named Space Transportation is able to get its exciting venture off the ground.
It could also be coming sooner than you think—point to point suborbital travel could launch its first official flight between Dubai and Beijing in 2024, with a full crewed flight in 2025. 2023, according to a statement from the company, will begin the testing stage.
Dubai Media Office, the Government of Dubai’s official communications channel, shared a rather interesting article from Yahoo this week about the Chinese start up that is looking to revolutionize suborbital flights, linking Beijing and Dubai, for example, for quick and easy one-hour flights between the two cities.
Space Transportation, a Chinese startup wants to revolutionize suborbital flights. The idea is to be able to link two major cities like Beijing and #Dubai in just one hour.https://t.co/PWKndqgcCD
— Dubai Media Office (@DXBMediaOffice) February 16, 2022
Space Transportation’s astounding test video
A video on their website shows what the flight may look like—showing a simulation of a trip between Beijing and Dubai, travelling an astounding 7000km in just 60m minutes.
Click here to watch it.
In the video, the ship shoots all the way to the edge of space, just as Jeff Bezos and William Shatner did last year, with passengers able to look out the window for their quick trip before landing in Dubai. The video also shows the Burj Khalifa and the Dubai’s iconic skyline.
In the end of the video on the Space Transportation’s website, the spacecraft lands vertically, allowing passengers to leave before the plane takes off for a trip back.
“We are developing a winged rocket for high-speed, point-to-point transportation, which is lower in cost than rockets that carry satellites and faster than traditional aircraft,” the company stated in a recent interview with Yicheng Times.
This isn’t launching out of nowhere—in fact, Space Transportation raised $46.3 million for its hypersonic space plane last August, it announced, with tests already underway on its Tianxing 1 and Tianxing 2 vehicles, with a 10th flight test conducted on January 23rd. Another test was held soon after with Tsinghua University.
They’ve kept details of these hypersonic test flights pretty secretive so far, likely due to the sensitive nature of these technologies.
The new Space Race
China has already been dabbling in the suborbital and orbital space travel game, conducting secret tests in 2020 and 2022 through the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, the main space contractor of China.
Virgin Galactic conducted its first crewed suborbital flight in July of last year on the VSS Unity. That was the first flight taken by Richard Branson, fulfilling a life long dream of his.
Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ venture, is in the suborbital travel game too. CAS Space is offering suborbital tourism services, which is a company spun off from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, also in China.
In the US, a new company called Radian Aerospace, based near Seattle, is planning single-stage-to-orbit reusable launch vehicles, raising $27.5 million in funding last week.