A sampling of recent items related to traveling to and through space:<\/p>\n
** Randa Milliron and InterOrbital Systems<\/a><\/strong> are profiled in this article: The Rocket Woman and the Smallsat Invasion by Sarah Scoles \u2014 Winter 2019: The New Landscape in Space | The Wilson Quarterly<\/a><\/p>\n Their first simple launcher was a small suborbital rocket, meant to fly high, but not high enough to start circling Earth. Then came the TACHYON, made of tubes of propellant bundled against each other like firewood, rather than stacked like those of a traditional rocket. It also wasn\u2019t meant for orbit, but the design allowed Interorbital to add and subtract the propellant tubes to make the rocket more or less powerful.<\/em><\/p>\n NEPTUNE, also a bundle of fire sticks, is the next step in the company\u2019s evolution \u2013 and the rocket that will compete for DARPA\u2019s attention. Intended to launch things much higher, the smallest configuration can get your little payload to low Earth orbit. If the Pentagon wanted to send a 20-kilogram spy satellite to take pictures from 310 miles above Earth, it could order such a configuration of the rocket. If \u2013 oops! \u2013 it actually wanted two satellites, it could just ask Interorbital to add more fire sticks.<\/em><\/p>\n A recent video from InterOrbital:<\/p>\n