Getting a New Idea Off the Launching Pad

MOJAVE —  The rocket’s unveiling inevitably summoned memories of the space program’s heyday: the dramatic theme music from “2001--A Space Odyssey,” billowing smoke from fog machines, the chiseled good looks of test pilots strolling alongside, and the backdrop of a giant American flag.

“Welcome to the revolution,” intoned the announcer.

But this wasn’t a NASA event. There was no Saturn V. It was a slick production staged by the Rotary Rocket Co., one of a handful of private firms hoping to corner the multibillion-dollar commercial space launch market.

The gala event, held last month in the middle of the Mojave Desert, was meant to introduce the world (and investors) to Rotary’s unorthodox spacecraft, which resembles a giant traffic cone with folding helicopter blades on top.

Rotary’s believers say that the vehicle, christened the Roton, will usher in a new era of manned space travel in which cargo--and eventually private citizens--will be transported to and from space cheaply and frequently.

Critics, however, contend Rotary’s is another pie in the sky venture that will demonstrate once again that the space business really is rocket science--too expensive and risk-laden for small start-ups.

Regardless of who wins out, Rotary’s journey over the next few years will highlight the difficulties for anybody, private or public, seeking to reach the stars.

The launch vehicle market has so far been the near-exclusive domain of NASA or mega-corporations like Lockheed-Martin and Boeing.

That’s because space launches are fraught with perils. Last summer, Boeing’s rocket program suffered a setback after its Delta 3, the first privately developed, large booster in decades, exploded shortly after liftoff over Cape Canaveral. Lockheed-Martin’s Titan 2A exploded over the Cape two weeks earlier. Europe’s Arianespace lost its Ariane 5 to a guidance failure in 1996.

The failures haven’t stopped a slew of space entrepreneurs from trying.

The Race for Profits

The goal is to produce a fully reusable spacecraft that will significantly lower the $10,000-per-pound cost of launching payloads such as communications satellites into space. The current practice of using expendable rocket boosters often stretches launch prices to the stratospheric $140-million range. Even the space shuttle, once touted as a means to make space flights routine, has failed to significantly reduce costs.

Despite the expense, the commercial satellite market has flourished. Over the next 10 years, about 1,700 satellites will be launched, making the commercial launch market a potential $10-billion per year industry, according to projections from analysts at the Teal Group, an aerospace consulting firm in Virginia.

That has businessmen salivating, and among the prominent entrants in the race for space profit are:

* Kistler Aerospace in Kirkland, Wash. Under the leadership of George Mueller, former head of NASA’s Apollo program, Kistler plans a two-stage vehicle that uses a powerful Russian engine to loft payloads of up to 10,000 pounds into space. The two stages will descend by parachute back to Earth for reuse.

* Kelly Space and Technology in San Bernardino. Kelly offers a space plane that will be towed to 25,000 feet by a 747 before its rocket engines kick in and shoot the craft into space, where it will release an expendable rocket from its nose that will deploy the payload.

* Pioneer Rocketplane in Vandenburg Village. Its vehicle will take off horizontally using traditional jet engines. A fueling plane will then transfer--in mid-air--a tankful of liquid oxygen, which will allow rocket engines to reach an altitude where a second stage expendable rocket booster will launch and eject the payload into space.

Rotary, however, offers perhaps the most intriguing of possibilities. Unlike any of the others, the Roton is designed as a single stage to orbit vehicle. The simplicity of its flight plan will allow Rotary to offer rocket launches at a fraction of the current cost, or $7 million, and turn around flights in just one or two days, said Rotary’s CEO Gary Hudson.

Rotary hopes its vehicle will be a workmanlike, utility craft that makes space travel a humdrum experience.

“We liken it to the pickup truck of space,” said Geoffrey Hughes, Rotary’s director of business development.

Over the next few weeks, Rotary will begin atmospheric tests of its rocket. The first launch of a Roton into low Earth orbit, about 200 miles up, is set for late next year.

The Roton utilizes a novel rotary propulsion system that slingshots kerosene and liquid oxygen fuel out to 72 combustion chambers, producing 500,000 pounds of thrust and avoiding the necessity of bulky and potentially volatile conventional turbo pumps.

Another design feature sure to raise eyebrows is its landing system--four 28-foot-long rotor blades, equipped with rocket thrusters to slow the vehicle’s drop to Earth.

Rotary engineers say the blades will enable them to glide to the ground at a leisurely 42 knots and set down nearly anywhere. The thrusters are designed to provide pilots with a burst of power for the rotor blades just prior to landing so they can gently set down their 400,000-pound vehicle.

Over the next few weeks, 10 to 20 test flights are planned in which a Roton test model will be taken up to 8,000 feet and put through various hovering, climbing, and descending tests.

The Human Touch

Most astounding of all is Rotary’s plan to put two human beings at the controls of its 63-foot contraption, suddenly making Rotary the most serious threat to end NASA’s monopoly on the romance of human space exploration.

Rotary faithful invoke an oft-repeated rallying cry, “Get to low Earth orbit and you’re halfway to anywhere in the universe.” The saying, first penned by sci-fi writer Robert Heinlein, is representative of the blend of strictly business practicality and Space Age dreaminess in their philosophy.

The goal is profit, but a strong awareness of the significance of their venture in terms of man’s age-old human yearning for exploration pervades the attitude of Roton officials.

“We just believe people should be flying into space cheaply and frequently,” Hughes said.

But many industry analysts say they have seen this sort of dreaming before from companies that are simply too small to turn those dreams into reality.

“Theoretically, it’s undoubtedly possible,” said Paul Nisbit, an aerospace analyst with JSA Research in Newport, R.I.. “The likelihood of success has been so far about zero.”

John Pike, director of the space policy project at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, agrees.

“The entire weight of all experience points against them,” he said.

The only start-up company that has managed to break into the launch business since the advent of space travel in the 1950s, he said, is Orbital Sciences, a firm based in Dulles, Va., that uses the delta-winged Pegasus rocket as its workhorse.

According to Pike, all technical expertise aside, it ultimately comes down to money.

“These little companies that are developing these little rockets, I just don’t think they have enough money,” he said. “All these companies have just enough to blow up one rocket.”

Still, Rotary Rocket’s supporters say they believe. And they hope others will believe along with them. So far they have raised $30 million out of the $100 million they need to launch.

Rotary has so far elected not to try to line up satellite contracts, as some of its competitors have done. Instead, Rotary officials boldly predict their success will bring the clients.

“If you build it, they will come,” Hudson said. “If you fly it, they’ll be here.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Rocket Plan

Officials from Rotary Rocket Co. are touting their unorthodox new craft as a revolutionary means of frequent and relatively inexpensive cargo delivery to space. The Roton rocket’s simple flight, they contend, will enable them to reduce the cost of ending satellites to a fraction of the current price tag, which can stretch into the $140-million range. Critics, however, give Rotary little chance of succeeding in the venture, arguing that space travel is too pricey and risky for start-up companies.