Hermes (spacecraft)

Hermes was a planned European crewed spaceplane meant to give Europe independent access to space. It began as a purely French project, and as development costs rose France obtained funding from other European countries, mainly Germany, with Dassault and the European Space Agency named among the agencies for it. The glider was designed to carry three astronauts to orbits of up to 800 kilometres for missions of 30 to 90 days, launched on an Ariane 5 by 1998, with a small payload bay and an expendable pressurised supply module with a docking port mounted at its base. After the Challenger disaster, added safety measures led to further weight and cost growth, and the idea of a separable crew escape capsule was replaced by three ejection seats to save weight. By 1992 the estimated development cost had reached DM 12 billion and the project was cancelled before any vehicle flew.