Suborbital Spaceflight

Abstract

One of the major historical milestones of spaceflight, suborbital flights played a vital role in the development of technologies and procedures for the operation of spacecraft. Today suborbital flights still play an important part in scientific and commercial fields, and in this chapter, the basic terms and values will be defined and also explained in the historical context. Small launching system for scientific applications called sounding rockets have a significant importance due to an unbeatable flexibility and cost effectiveness and the new and emerging field of commercial human flights to the edge of space is growing as an economically sound business model for private participants. Either of them will be detailed in the appropriate sub-chapters, followed by an outlook on the future possibilities of suborbital flights.