Spaceplane
Program

Why We're Building Spaceplanes

Our mission is to make spaceflight as common as commercial aviation, enabling truly scalable and sustainable space transportation.

While we require a rocket engine to fly beyond the atmosphere, that is where our “rocket” classification ends. Every element of the vehicle, our processes, our staff, our mentality, even our customers, all draw from the comparatively massive aviation industrial base.

So it follows:

We are building aircraft with the performance of a rocket,

not rockets with wings.

Unsurprisingly, the extreme performance required to reach space demands vehicles of high complexity, making reliability and scalability a challenge. It here that aviation industry has a proven approach to this challenge.

Over the last 100 years, aviation has achieved rapid increases in performance, reliability, and scale simultaneously. Because we at Dawn believe that reliability precedes reusability, and reusability precedes scale, we are applying aviation's proven model to scalable spaceflight.

Three key elements define this approach:

Hardware: Rapid reusability and high reliability create true scalability. "Gas-and-Go" operations. Redundant, fail-safe systems. No jettisoned boosters or single-use elements. Maintainable, flexible, and robust.

Infrastructure: We don’t need specialized launch pads. We operate from standard runways, turning local airports into spaceports.

Regulation: Certified as an aircraft, Aurora integrates with standard air traffic. We fly in uncontrolled airspace alongside other users, eliminating the need for exclusive launch ranges.

Dawn Aerospace has been flying since 2016. Our incremental approach of "design, test, fly, repeat" has allowed us to rapidly expand our flight envelope while maintaining aviation-grade reliability, just as many aircraft have done before us.

The Aurora is a critical step toward our vision of spaceplanes to deliver cargo to orbit. Whether flying sub-orbital research or atmospheric boost-glide profiles, every flight Is a step on our mission of scalable, sustainable space transportation.