Our magnificent Vulture 2 spaceplane: Intimate snaps

Inside the world's first 3D-printed, rocket-powered aircraft

The Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) team is gearing up to get our magnificent Vulture 2 spaceplane airborne, and while we fiddle with servos and autopilots, we thought you might enjoy a few intimate snaps of the world's first 3D-printed, rocket-powered aircraft.

Before we get down to to it, it's hats off once again to designers David Cooper, Chris Dodd and Amrith Surendra, and 3T RPD Ltd, without whose sterling efforts you would not today be eyeballing this beautiful bird.

So, let's kick off with a rather uninspiring snap of the Vulture 2 straight out of the box (click on the images to get a bigger version):

Things soon got more interesting, though, as we spread the bits out on the bench: