A commercially driven design approach to UK future small payload launch systems

Miniaturisation of satellite componentry, increasingly capable small sensors and substantial increases in processing capacity and transmission bandwidth are driving rapid growth in small payload development and consequential launch demand. The advent of horizontal take-off spaceports opens the door for a new generation of small payload launch systems that will fulfil this demand. However, the key to a launch system's success is its ability to provide a return on the substantial costs of development while delivering pricing levels commensurate with the needs of launch customers. Therefore, commercially led design approaches are needed to refine and optimise the design of the new small payload launch systems required. This approach was embodied in an ongoing UKSA funded NSTP2 project titled Future UK Small Payload Launcher (FSPLUK). The approach is first founded upon a bespoke and specific market assessment. This characterises, segments and quantifies the commercial opportunity and establishes principal desired system performance requirements. An assessment of available technologies at differing TRLs permits initial vehicle configuration options to be developed and technically assessed. Technically viable options are then assessed in terms of commercial viability with the best advanced into more detailed technical assessment and system optimisation. The resultant vehicles are again tested for commercial viability and, if successful, emerge as recommended development avenues. Using these methods, it has been possible to iterate design concepts from apparently simple yet economically sub-optimised stacked launcher systems through several design iterations to a resultant highly flexible and economically efficient conceptual design. The key finding relates to the inter-relationship between payload flexibility, in permitting maximised flight rates from a reasonably complex but highly reusable first stage design, and low disposable upper stage unit cost. This has driven the resultant system to feature an air launched integrated re-usable first stage vehicle, configured with a flexible internal payload bay from which one or more upper stages are deployed. This configuration maximises commercial utility and reusability. The resultant high flight rate allows development costs to be efficiently amortised with minimised direct launch costs. The configuration therefore meets low cost per kg price targets while delivering a positive return on development expenditure over life. It also provides a flight proven vehicle platform with available internal real-estate for application as a hypersonic air test platform for new propulsion systems, such as SABRE. The commercially led approach has created the foundation for viable and economically justifiable development

How to launch small payloads? Evaluation of current and future small payload launch systems

This paper describes a preferable vehicle classification alongside a brief description of key technologies available on the shelf or under development to address the demand of the small payload market. This is followed by a discussion on the investigation of the current market and the future forecast; regarding the delivery of small payloads into orbit

Hidden Treasures in “Ancient” Microarrays: Gene-Expression Portrays Biology and Potential Resistance Pathways of Major Lung Cancer Subtypes and Normal Tissue

Objective: Novel statistical methods and increasingly more accurate gene annotations can transform “old” biological data into a renewed source of knowledge with potential clinical relevance. Here, we provide an in silico proof-of-concept by extracting novel information from a high-quality mRNA expression dataset, originally published in 2001, using state-of-the-art bioinformatics approaches. Methods: The dataset consists of histologically defined cases of lung adenocarcinoma (AD), squamous (SQ) cell carcinoma, small-cell lung cancer, carcinoid, metastasis (breast and colon AD), and normal lung specimens (203 samples in total). A battery of statistical tests was used for identifying differential gene expressions, diagnostic and prognostic genes, enriched gene ontologies, and signaling pathways. Results: Our results showed that gene expressions faithfully recapitulate immunohistochemical subtype markers, as chromogranin A in carcinoids, cytokeratin 5, p63 in SQ, and TTF1 in non-squamous types. Moreover, biological information with putative clinical relevance was revealed as potentially novel diagnostic genes for each subtype with specificity 93–100% (AUC = 0.93–1.00). Cancer subtypes were characterized by (a) differential expression of treatment target genes as TYMS, HER2, and HER3 and (b) overrepresentation of treatment-related pathways like cell cycle, DNA repair, and ERBB pathways. The vascular smooth muscle contraction, leukocyte trans-endothelial migration, and actin cytoskeleton pathways were overexpressed in normal tissue. Conclusion: Reanalysis of this public dataset displayed the known biological features of lung cancer subtypes and revealed novel pathways of potentially clinical importance. The findings also support our hypothesis that even old omics data of high quality can be a source of significant biological information when appropriate bioinformatics methods are used

Multiple novel prostate cancer susceptibility signals identified by fine-mapping of known risk loci among Europeans

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified numerous common prostate cancer (PrCa) susceptibility loci. We have fine-mapped 64 GWAS regions known at the conclusion of the iCOGS study using large-scale genotyping and imputation in 25 723 PrCa cases and 26 274 controls of European ancestry. We detected evidence for multiple independent signals at 16 regions, 12 of which contained additional newly identified significant associations. A single signal comprising a spectrum of correlated variation was observed at 39 regions; 35 of which are now described by a novel more significantly associated lead SNP, while the originally reported variant remained as the lead SNP only in 4 regions. We also confirmed two association signals in Europeans that had been previously reported only in East-Asian GWAS. Based on statistical evidence and linkage disequilibrium (LD) structure, we have curated and narrowed down the list of the most likely candidate causal variants for each region. Functional annotation using data from ENCODE filtered for PrCa cell lines and eQTL analysis demonstrated significant enrichment for overlap with bio-features within this set. By incorporating the novel risk variants identified here alongside the refined data for existing association signals, we estimate that these loci now explain ∼38.9% of the familial relative risk of PrCa, an 8.9% improvement over the previously reported GWAS tag SNPs. This suggests that a significant fraction of the heritability of PrCa may have been hidden during the discovery phase of GWAS, in particular due to the presence of multiple independent signals within the same regio

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

How to Launch Small Payloads Evaluation of Current and Future Small Payload Launch Systems

This paper is written to outline a preferable vehicle classification alongside a brief description of key technologies available on the shelf or under development to address the demand of the small payload market. This is followed by a discussion on the investigation of the current market and the future forecast; regarding the delivery of small payloads into orbit

How to Launch Small Payloads Evaluation of Current and Future Small Payload Launch Systems

This paper is written to outline a preferable vehicle classification alongside a brief description of key technologies available on the shelf or under development to address the demand of the small payload market. This is followed by a discussion on the investigation of the current market and the future forecast; regarding the delivery of small payloads into orbit