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The Road Not Taken: CNES Decides Against Maia (1987)

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Spaceplane HERMES

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Abstract

Being ‘merely’ a scale model of Hermes, measuring a modest 5 m in length, the proposed Maia demonstrator still represented a substantial spacecraft in its own right, and an important first for ESA. It would have been the first European spacecraft to return to Earth, flying hypersonically, withstanding the heat of re-entry and being guided to a ‘splashdown landing’. This would constitute something of a sub-programme to Hermes and that was exactly where some of the risk of doing Maia was hiding, in the view of a number of managers.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Hilversum, The Netherlands

    Luc van den Abeelen

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  1. Luc van den Abeelen
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van den Abeelen, L. (2017). The Road Not Taken: CNES Decides Against Maia (1987). In: Spaceplane HERMES. Springer Praxis Books(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44472-7_5

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