Starfighters Space moves to Critical Design Review for STARLAUNCH I rocket

Starfighters Space, Inc., the operator of the world’s largest fleet of commercial supersonic aircraft, announced Friday that it will proceed to a Critical Design Review (CDR) for its STARLAUNCH I rocket. The milestone follows a series of subsonic and supersonic wind‑tunnel tests that validated the vehicle’s separation dynamics and aligns the program with engineering support from GE Aerospace.

STARLAUNCH I is being developed as a suborbital vehicle capable of carrying payloads to altitudes of roughly 45,000 feet for air‑launch into space. The rocket is intended to enable short-duration microgravity missions and to serve as a pathfinder for future air-launched concepts. The vehicle will be released from one of Starfighters’ modified supersonic aircraft, which can be configured in-flight as a first-stage lifting platform for a variety of payloads.

The upcoming CDR, a structured program milestone, will provide an integrated review of the vehicle’s design baseline, system interfaces, verification plans, and key risks before full-scale fabrication and testing begin. Starfighters expects the review to focus on configuration control, manufacturability, and test readiness, as well as a verification sequence that moves from ground validation through drop‑testing to flight evaluation.

The wind‑tunnel campaign demonstrated that the rocket maintains aerodynamic stability during separation from the carrier aircraft under both subsonic and supersonic conditions. Based on those results, Starfighters has begun procurement of an instrumented demonstrator to be flown underwing, allowing real-world assessment of separation dynamics.

GE Aerospace, a long-time partner, will participate in the CDR to lend its expertise in propulsion integration and program discipline. The aerospace firm previously contributed engineering analysis and flight‑test support for STARLAUNCH’s early development phases and will continue to aid risk reduction as the project advances.