Responsive Access Small Cargo Affordable Launch (RASCAL ...

have a manned fighter aircraft as opposed to unmanned air vehicles. A three-view of the
baseline first stage is included as Figure 2.
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Figure 2: Three-view of Baseline RASCAL 1st Stage.
The RASCAL program requires the flight profile of the first stage aircraft to have
a circular range of 250 nautical miles with a loiter capability of one half and hour. The
flight profile (Figure 3) involves a high speed acceleration and vertical rise segment
which the RASCAL designers refer to as the “zoom maneuver”. This maneuver is
accomplished by throttling up the MIPCC F-100s to full throttle and accelerating a high
flight path angle to the operating limits of the MIPCC engines. The first stage engines
shut down when this operating limit is reached and the entire vehicle coasts on
momentum to over 200,000 ft. At 200,000 ft the first stage and second stage separate.
This high altitude of separation allows the second stage to be released without high
aerodynamic forces experiences at lower separation altitudes. This low dynamic pressure
of separation allows the upper stages to operate without any added structure for
aerodynamic fairings. This removal of structure increases the mass fraction of these
upper stages and therefore the performance. The first stage then releases the upper
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