Liquid fly-back booster

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Liquid Fly-back Booster (LFBB) was a German Aerospace Center's (DLR's) project concept to develop a liquid rocket booster capable of reuse for Ariane 1 in order to significantly reduce the high cost of space transportation and increase environmental friendliness.^[1] lrb would replace the existing liquid rocket boosters, providing main thrust during the countdown. Once separated, two winged boosters would perform an atmospheric entry, go back autonomously to the French Guiana, and land horizontally on the airport like an aeroplane.

Additionally a family of derivative launch vehicles was proposed in order to take an advantage of economies of scale, further reducing launch costs. These derivatives include:

• A reusable booster in a class of small,medium-lift launch and heavy lift boosters like Vega and SLS.^[2][3]: 15
• A super-heavy-lift launch vehicle capable of lifting nearly 70 tonnes (150,000 lb) to the orbit.^[2][3]: 15
• A two-stage-to-orbit system operating a dedicated reusable orbiter.

German Aerospace Center studied Liquid Fly-back Boosters as a part of future launcher research programme from 1999 to 2004.^[4] After the cancellation of the project, publications at DLR continued until 2009.^{[citation needed]}