American Rocket Company
Encyclopedia
Founded in 1985 by George Koopman, Bevin McKinney and Jim Bennett
, veterans of Starstruck (company), the American Rocket Company, or AMROC, was a company that developed hybrid rocket motors.
It had over 300 hybrid rocket motor
test firings ranging from 4.5 kN to 1.1 MN at the Air Force Astronautics Laboratory at Edwards Air Force Base (now part of the Phillips Labs) and NASA
's Stennis Space Center
's E1 test stand where it test fired the world's only successful 250,000 pound force (1.1 MN) thrust liquid oxygen/polybutadiene hybrid rocket motor.
Its 5 October 1989 launch of the SET-1 sounding rocket
was unsuccessful due to frozen moisture from the air forming an ice plug under the main Liquid Oxygen Valve allowing only 30% of the flow needed for launch.
The company became insolvent and was shut down in May 1996. Its intellectual property
was acquired in 1999 by SpaceDev
, and its lineage is part of SpaceShipOne (AMROC worked on an N2O-HTPB engine for its SLIMSET sounding rocket effort).
James C. Bennett
James Charles Bennett is an American businessman, with a background in technology companies and consultancy, and a writer on technology and international affairs from a conservative point of view....
, veterans of Starstruck (company), the American Rocket Company, or AMROC, was a company that developed hybrid rocket motors.
It had over 300 hybrid rocket motor
Hybrid rocket
A hybrid rocket is a rocket with a rocket motor which uses propellants in two different states of matter - one solid and the other either gas or liquid. The Hybrid rocket concept can be traced back at least 75 years....
test firings ranging from 4.5 kN to 1.1 MN at the Air Force Astronautics Laboratory at Edwards Air Force Base (now part of the Phillips Labs) and NASA
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
's Stennis Space Center
John C. Stennis Space Center
The John C. Stennis Space Center , located in Hancock County, Mississippi, at the Mississippi-Louisiana border, is NASA's largest rocket engine test facility.- History :...
's E1 test stand where it test fired the world's only successful 250,000 pound force (1.1 MN) thrust liquid oxygen/polybutadiene hybrid rocket motor.
Its 5 October 1989 launch of the SET-1 sounding rocket
Sounding rocket
A sounding rocket, sometimes called a research rocket, is an instrument-carrying rocket designed to take measurements and perform scientific experiments during its sub-orbital flight. The origin of the term comes from nautical vocabulary, where to sound is to throw a weighted line from a ship into...
was unsuccessful due to frozen moisture from the air forming an ice plug under the main Liquid Oxygen Valve allowing only 30% of the flow needed for launch.
The company became insolvent and was shut down in May 1996. Its intellectual property
Intellectual property
Intellectual property is a term referring to a number of distinct types of creations of the mind for which a set of exclusive rights are recognized—and the corresponding fields of law...
was acquired in 1999 by SpaceDev
SpaceDev
SpaceDev, a part of the "Space Systems Business" of Sierra Nevada Corporation, is prominent for its spaceflight and microsatellite work. It designed and built the hybrid rocket motors for Paul Allen's Tier One suborbital SpaceShipOne space program operated by Scaled Composites...
, and its lineage is part of SpaceShipOne (AMROC worked on an N2O-HTPB engine for its SLIMSET sounding rocket effort).