Takeoff and landing
Takeoff is the phase of flight in which an aircraft goes through a transition from moving along the ground (taxiing) to flying in the air, usually starting on a runway.
Under this technique, aircraft are launched using a catapult and land on the ship (the recovery phase) using arrestor wires.
Although this system is more costly than alternative methods, it provides greater flexibility in carrier operations, since it allows the vessel to support conventional aircraft.
The failed proposals for NASA Space Shuttle replacements, Rockwell X-30 NASP used this mode of operation but were conceived as single stage to orbit.
The Lynx rocketplane was a suborbital HTHL spaceplane developed by XCOR Aerospace that was slated to begin atmospheric flight testing in late 2011.
[6] An early example was the 1960s Northrop HL-10 atmospheric test aircraft where the HL stands for "Horizontal Lander".
Others, such as some helicopters, can only operate by VTOL, due to the aircraft lacking landing gear that can handle horizontal motion.
In the civilian sector currently only helicopters are in general use (some other types of commercial VTOL aircraft have been proposed and are under development as of 2017).
VTVL technologies were developed substantially with small rockets after 2000, in part due to incentive prize competitions like the Lunar Lander Challenge.
Successful small VTVL rockets were developed by Masten Space Systems, Armadillo Aerospace, and others.
[15] The U.S. government-funded, US$250,000,000, Reusable Booster System program, initiated by the USAF in 2010,[16] had specified a high-level requirement that the design be VTHL,[17] but the funding was discontinued after 2012.
V/STOL was developed to allow fast jets to be operated from clearings in forests, from very short runways, and from small aircraft carriers that would previously only have been able to carry helicopters.
The main advantage of V/STOL aircraft is closer basing to the enemy, which reduces response time and tanker support requirements.
In the case of the Falklands War, it also permitted high performance fighter air cover and ground attack without a large aircraft carrier equipped with a catapult.
