The Swiss-Italian design team "Architecture and Vision" presents first interior designs of the "Enterprise". The "Enterprise" is a rocket plane, which is developed by the Talis Enterprise group and will fly passengers to suborbital space by the end of 2013.
The founders of Architecture and Vision, Arturo Vittori and Andreas Vogler, already caught attention in the past by their designs of a Moon station, a Mars rover and first and business class cabins for the StarAlliance airline "Asiana".
The "Enterprise" is a spaceplane of the German-Swiss TALIS Enterprise group. By 2013, it will carry up to six passengers or scientific payload up to a height of 125 km. A suborbital flight implies acceleration forces and five minutes to weightlessness: these are extraordinary conditions, which indeed affect the construction and the design of the spaceplane. The interior design accommodates for example ergonomic seats, which lean downward in the weightless flight phase. The light blue colour with glare-free materials permits an unobstructed view onto the "Blue Planet". The large windows are surrounded by a backlit recessed handgrip, which allows passengers to restrain themselves during the micro-gravity phase and look out of the window. Special suits as well as light helmets with oxygen masks provide safety in case of a cabin decompression in high altitude. All these components were prepared in close co-operation with engineers of the TALIS Enterprise group.
The Talis Enterprise Group and Project Enterprise
The TALIS Enterprise group develops new space technologies. The lead project is the "Project Enterprise". Started in 2004, it is the first privately funded space project of Europe. The objective is to build rocket planes with a CO2 neutral propulsion for scientific uses as well as for space tourism. After a series of increasingly powerful prototypes the spaceplane "Enterprise" will be assembled and take off from Germany.
The first phase of the project will conclude in August 2009, with the production of the first prototype. The airplane is unmanned and will be remote controlled manually as well as by computers.
"Project Enterprise" can rely on well-known enterprises: The German aircraft manufacturer "XtremeAir" will build the airplanes, while the Swiss "Swiss Propulsion Laboratory" will supply the rocket propulsion.