Heavy lift · reusable cores
Falcon Heavy
Three Falcon 9-derived cores and 27 Merlin engines at liftoff — a study in clustered-core scaling and booster recovery.
Vehicle studies
Launch vehicle studies
Public engineering studies of reference launch vehicles and spacecraft — from reusable heavy-lift cores to cryogenic launchers and crew vehicles.
Seven studies
AeroVectrix maintains public studies of reference vehicles across lift classes and mission types. Each page tracks assumptions, flight phases, and open questions rather than overclaiming proprietary data.
Study the fleet, stage by stage.
Super heavy · methalox
Super Heavy
Methalox booster with Raptor clustering and full-reuse ambitions; a study in large-scale staging and recovery systems.
Small–medium lift
PSLV
ISRO's dependable four-stage workhorse with mixed solid and liquid stages — a reference in mission versatility.
GTO missions
GSLV
Cryogenic upper-stage launcher study focused on geostationary transfer orbit performance and mission profiles.
Heavy lift · India
LVM3
ISRO's heaviest operational launcher: solid boosters, liquid core, and a cryogenic C25 upper stage.
Crew spacecraft
Orion
Deep-space crew vehicle study covering re-entry energy management, life support margins, and abort logic.
Recovery systems
Booster Systems
Cross-cutting study of booster staging, separation events, and the economics of recovery and refurbishment.
What each study covers
From liftoff loads to staging and mission assurance.
Every vehicle study works through the same flight phases — ascent thrust-to-weight, max-Q loads, staging events, and mission assurance — using public architecture data rather than proprietary detail.
Ascent
Thrust-to-weight margin, guidance through the dense atmosphere, and max-Q load management set the early trajectory.
Staging
Separation events must protect attitude, avoid recontact, confirm engine start, and preserve the payload environment.
Recovery
Reusable stages trade recovery hardware and propellant reserve against refurbishment cost and turnaround time.
Design study
Take any architecture into the interactive rocket design study or Rocket Flight 3D.
Related
The engines that power them.
Vehicle performance follows directly from propulsion. Cross-reference the engine studies to see how each stage is driven.