Access to Space is still in its early stages of commercialization. Private enterprises have been making big progresses hoping to create a Space tourism business. Most of the attention is currently focused on suborbital Space Tourism, while orbital flights still appear limited and expensive. In the present work a preliminary study in the frame of the Space Renaissance (SR) Italia Space Tourism Program, regarding a small hypersonic airplane for a long duration space tourism mission named HyPlane, is presented. It is also consistent with a point-to-point medium range (5000 km) hypersonic trip, in the frame of the "urgent business travel" market segment. Main idea is to transfer technological solutions developed for aeronautical and space atmospheric re-entry systems to the design of such a hypersonic airplane. A winged vehicle characterized by high aerodynamic efficiency and able to manoeuvre along the flight path, in all aerodynamic regimes encountered, is taken into consideration. Rocket-Based Combined Cycle and Turbine-Based Combined Cycle engines are investigated to ensure higher performances in terms of flight duration and range. Different flight-paths are also considered, including sub-orbital parabolic trajectories and steady state hypersonic cruise. The former, in particular, takes advance of the high aerodynamic efficiency during the unpowered phase, in combination with a periodic engine actuation, to guarantee a long duration oscillating flight path. These trajectories offer Space tourists the opportunity of extended missions, characterized by repeated periods of low-gravity at altitudes high enough to ensure a wide view of the Earth from Space.
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