Rotary Rocket News

S.J. Van Sickle (sjvan@csd.uwm.edu)
Wed, 23 Jun 1999 09:10:00 -0500 (CDT)

News at Rotary Rocket:

http://www.rotaryrocket.com/hot/hot.html

Seems they are switching to conventional engines (derived from NASA's Fastrak) for at least the initial vehicles. My bet is that they are going to use the Fastracks turbine's, but their own thrust chambers (or something similar). But it seems to be making their potential investors and customers happy (lower perceived risk). They claim to have $900 million dollars in orders over the next 10 years, so they may yet be able to dig up the money to build the bird.

Too bad. It won't be quite the complete "screw you" to NASA and the conventional space industry it would have been with the rotary engine. But it will still be a damn site better than anything else out there, and Rotary is after all a business, not a political statement. That's NASA's job.

steve