NewSpace Journal » Rocketplane Kistler

The rise and fall of Rocketplane

Jeff Foust — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 18:32:00 +0000

Sunday’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has an extended account of George French and his involvement with Rocketplane, the company that, for a time, was developing both suborbital and orbital vehicles (the latter under a NASA COTS agreement) before running into financial problems and eventually going bankrupt. French had long been interested in space, but it was a trip to Space Camp in 1990 that provided an “epiphany”, leading him to get more involved—in time and, later, money—with spaceflight, eventually with Rocketplane.

French, as the article describes, effectively went “all in” with Rocketplane, selling in 2006 the billboard division of the Wisconsin advertising company where he had made his money, and ultimately investing about $25 million into the company. As company officials previously noted, French said the company had lined up more than $300 million in outside investment, including a teachers’ pension fund in Canada, only to lose that in the opening waves of the subprime mortgage crisis. That, in effect, was the beginning of the end of Rocketplane, although the company didn’t file for Chapter 7 (liquidation) bankruptcy until this summer.

The article is based primarily on interviews with French and some friends, although John Herrington, the former NASA astronaut who worked for Rocketplane for a few years, offers a little different viewpoint on the company. Herrington recalls that “within a month” of joining Rocketplane in 2005 company executives were concerned the company (at the time focused solely on suborbital spaceflight) had enough cash to get through the year. Herrington added that he had to sue French to get the final $10,000 of his $200,000 signing bonus; French didn’t recall such a suit but the article found that, in fact, a judgment had been entered against French, who then paid.

Farewell, Rocketplane

Jeff Foust — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 01:56:47 +0000

Rocketplane Global has been barely hanging on the last couple of years since its orbital counterpart, Rocketplane Global, lost its NASA COTS award and the financial crisis dried up the investment market. The company, in particular vice president Chuck Lauer, has been out there trying to drum up support for a variety of opportunities, from flights in Hawaii to, at the Space Access ’10 conference three months ago, a venture to use Florida’s Cecil Field for suborbital flights as part of a broader tourist attraction. However, time has run out for the company.

The Oklahoma Gazette reported today that Rocketplane, including its Rocketplane Global and Kistler subsidiaries, filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection last month in Wisconsin, where the company was operating from after giving up its Oklahoma facilities. Unlike Chapter 11 bankruptcy, where the company can reorganize, Chapter 7 involves the liquidation of assets. Whatever is left of Rocketplane will be sold off to cover those debts.

According to the bankruptcy filings, linked to at the end of the Gazette article, Rocketplane Kistler has $108,250 in assets, primarily tooling and some components for the K-1 vehicle, and over $7.36 million in liabilities. (The filing notes a number of “aerospace patents” dating back to the original Kistler Aerospace, but puts no value on them.) Rocketplane Kistler claims $275,000 in assets, in the form of four used GE F-85 jet engines, as well as unvalued patents versus over $2.56 million in liabilities. The parent company, Rocketplane, declared no assets in its filing but nearly $3.7 million in liabilities. (Also included in the documents is a bankruptcy filing by Rocketplane owner George French, although he is also listed as a creditor in some of the company filings.)

“We did what we said we could do. Unfortunately, we did not complete the program as originally conceived,” French told the Gazette, in something of an understatement. The long saga of Rocketplane, which stretches back to the mid-1990s with the founding of Pioneer Rocketplane by Lauer, Mitchell Burnside Clapp, and Robert Zubrin, has come to an end.

Rocketplane Kistler: we’re not dead yet

Jeff Foust — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 10:20:54 +0000

After Rocketplane Kistler (RpK) lost its funded COTS Space Act agreement with NASA to help develop the K-1, the conventional wisdom was that the company was effectively dead. After all, RpK had difficulty raising the hundreds of millions in private financing needed to develop the vehicle even with the NASA imprimatur; it would seeming be that much harder to do it without the COTS agreement. And, indeed, given RpK’s low profile in the 18 months since the award’s termination, that would seem to be the case.

However, Rocketplane’s Chuck Lauer, speaking Saturday at the Space Access ’09 conference in Phoenix, said RpK was still alive, if only barely. Company president George French “has essentially stabilized everything to try to get to a new financial structure,” Lauer said. What has buoyed their hopes has been the NASA commercial resupply contracts issued late last year to SpaceX and Orbital Sciences, with costs up to four times what RpK had proposed with the K-1. “We were kind of the first canary in the coal mine looking for private banking/hedge fund types of deals” when the economy turned south in 2007, he said. “If the market is 4x and we had even a small number of launches, we could have financed.”

“The only way to get to low-cost orbital transportation is to get away from expendable systems and go to reusable, and K-1 is the only 100% fully reusable orbital system anywhere close to flying,” Lauer said. “Within three years of funding we could be in flight… It’s tough, it’s certainly tough now, but it’s not impossible.”

The suborbital side of the company, Rocketplane Global, has also been focused in the last year on funding rather than technology. “We’re well north of $100 million of additional capital needed,” he said, with $24 million invested to date that has gone into design and development of the XP spaceplane.

Rocketplane developments

Jeff Foust — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 07:34:13 +0000

Rocketplane Global, the suborbital vehicle developer, issued a pair of press releases last week (curiously not available on their web site) announcing some personnel changes. David Faulkner, who has been the program manager for the Rocketplane XP vehicle project, is now the company’s CTO. Paul Metz, a veteran test pilot who had been the chief test pilot for the F-22, among other fighter aircraft, is now a company vice president and chief test pilot. He fills a position formerly held by John Herrington, who left the company at the end of last year.

An article in this week’s print edition of Space News (and not available online) reports that Rocketplane Global “has completed an overhaul of its effort” to develop the XP, and is also now independent of its former corporate parent, Rocketplane Inc. “There is no affiliation between Rocketplane Global and the remnants of the Rocketplane organization,” Rocketplane Global chairman Craig Dickman told Space News. (This separation is not yet reflected on the Rocketplane Inc. site, which still lists Rocketplane Global as one of two operating subsidiaries, along with Rocketplane Kistler.)

As for the company’s financial status, there are few new details in the article, and no specifics about how much has been spent on the XP development and how much more is needed. Faulkner said only that spending has been “within industry norms for a prototype program”.

Herrington leaves Rocketplane

Jeff Foust — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 01:08:31 +0000

Rocketplane Global vice president and chief test pilot John Herrington has left the company, according to an Associated Press report, which refers to a press release issued by the Chickasaw Nation, of which Herrington is a member. Herrington left the company on December 21, although his departure was announced only this week. Herrington gave no reason for leaving the company, saying only that his decision “was a difficult one”. The company also didn’t respond to a request for comments from the AP, although Herrington is no longer listed on the Rocketplane Global web site.

Herrington didn’t go into specifics about future plans, but he did say that he wants to remain involved in the commercial space industry because “commercial space is the next great adventure in aerospace.”

Update 1/4: Herrington tells the Oklahoma newspaper The Journal Record that while he was impressed with Rocketplane’s technology, the difficulty the company has had raising money was “most frustrating point for me.” Leaving the company, he said, allows him to pursue “some really great opportunities that have come up for me in the near future,” although he didn’t specify what those are.

X Prize Cup press conference recap

Jeff Foust — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 19:51:57 +0000

I’m in the media building at Holloman AFB, having gotten out of a press conference a little while ago about the X Prize Cup and related announcements. A few highlights:

Rocketplane Global, as expected, unveiled its new design for the XP suborbital spaceplane. The company is no longer using Learjet hardware for the vehicle, deciding instead to use a new design that is superficially similar in shape to the old one (with the exception that the V-tail has been replaced with a T-tail, and with more windows in the fuselage), but able to accommodate five passengers plus a pilot. They’re using a different jet engine, the J-85, but the same AR-36 rocket engine under development by Polaris Propulsion. The vehicle also features new landing gear similar to that used by the F-5 fighter. The interior will be designed by Frank Nuovo, a designer who has worked with clients ranging from Nokia to BMW.

While the new XP cabin is bigger, Rocketplane vice president and test pilot John Herrington said that the passengers, at least initially, won’t be allowed to float around the cabin once in weightlessness. His concern is that people will become disoriented trying to move around and could injure themselves and others. Down the road, it may be possible to remove a couple seats and allow the rear two passengers to float, he said.

Rocketplane officials, including Herrington and program maanger Dave Faulker, said that they believe they will be able to raise the money needed to develop the vehicle by the end of the year. They did not, though, disclose how much money they’re looking for. Current schedules call for flight tests to begin in 2010; AR-36 engine tests are scheduled to begin in the near future.

Rocket Racing League officials did announce three new teams, bringing the total number of teams to six. CEO Granger Whitelaw also confirmed rumors that their prototype X-Racer flew three times yesterday in Mojave, although he declined to offer many technical details regarding the flights, including their length and the turnaround time between flights. Whitelaw said that “exhibition” flights would begin at air shows in spring 2008, with actual competitive flights slated to begin in 2008-2009, depending on when they secure a TV contract and other sponsorships.

Teachers in Space announced that it wll soon start collecting applications by teachers for suborbital spaceflights. There will be two competitions: one for STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) teachers, and one for K-12 teachers in general; both will have to submit either lesson plans or proposed experiments they would perform during their flights. (In an interesting twist, all the lesson plans submitted by will be posted online in an wiki.) The project has no application deadlines right now. The effort has commitments from five companies (Armadillo, Masten Space Systems, PlanetSpace, Rocketplane Global, and XCOR) to carry flights; Ed Wright’s company, the US Rocket Academy, has purchased a number of flights from XCOR Aerospace that is in the “double digits”.

Gearing up for the X Prize Cup

Jeff Foust — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 14:48:21 +0000

The X Prize Cup gets started today with an education/media day at Holloman AFB that’s not open to the general public; the full event (open to the public and with free admission) is Saturday and Sunday. There’s a press conference scheduled for late this morning with several announcements planned:

An unspecified announcement by the Teachers in Space project;
An announcement by Rocketplane Global (the suborbital arm of Rocketplane Inc.) and Launch Magazine; this is expected to be the unveiling of the new Rocketplane XP design that is a move away from the modified-Learjet design the company had been pursuing in favor of something that is bigger and/or more affordable;
An announcement by the Rocket Racing League. The league did announce this morning that three new teams had joined the league (one of which is led by former da Vinci Project founder Brian Feeney), but the expectation is that the announcement will be something bigger. RRL CEO Granger Whitelaw was a no-show during a panel session he was supposed to be a part of Thursday afternoon at ISPS; his replacement, another RRL official, said that Whitelaw was “off seeing his rocket fly”. There have been rumors that the cup might feature a video feed of an X-Racer test flight in Mojave; we’ll see…

Like with the ISPS, as time and technology permit I’ll post updates here and on Twitter during the day.

ISPS Day 2: Spaceports, business models, and astronauts

Jeff Foust — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 14:10:06 +0000

Above: a panel of space travelers discuss the spaceflight experience on Thursday afternoon. From left: Jeff Hoffman, Jay Buckey, Michael Lopez-Alegria, Anousheh Ansari, Dan Barry, Janice Voss, and John Herrington.

The second and final day of the International Symposium for Personal Spaceflight started off with a focus on spaceports (actually, it started off with a flamenco dancing demonstration, but that’s another story), and later turned its attention to the financial issues associated with NewSpace and closed out with a panel of government and commercial space travelers. Some highlights:

Olle Norberg of Spaceport Sweden, in what was billed as the first public appearance (at least in the US) from an official of that planned spaceport, said that they are currently in the midst of a feasibility study for the facility, located at the Esrange sounding rocket launch site in northern Sweden, that is scheduled to conclude at the end of next year. If all goes well the spaceport could be open to Virgin or other operators in 2011-2012. One challenge: working through a tangled regulatory landscape that is not as well-defined as in the US.
Turning to local spaceport issues, work is underway on the environmental assessment for Spaceport America in New Mexico. Officials here hope that the assessment is completed by September, which would allow a groundbreaking perhaps at next year’s conference. (The assessment is also required for the spaceport to get an FAA license.) The current schedule calls for Spaceport America to open in April 2010.
Many communities in southern New Mexico, from Las Cruces to small towns like Hatch, are looking to the spaceport as a big driver of economic development for the area. One speaker said the spaceport was going to be the biggest economic benefit for southern New Mexico in 20 years.
One issue in the area has been a sales tax (officials, “gross receipts tax”) that will help fund the spaceport. (Those taxes will contribute $60 million to the spaceport, with the state paying the rest of the $200-million cost of the facility.) Doña Ana County, which includes Las Cruces, passed the tax earlier this year, but two other counties, Sierra and Otero, have yet to hold their own referenda on the tax. Lori Montgomery, mayor of Truth or Consequences, NM, said Sierra County will likely hold a referendum on the tax in March or April of next year, after “educating” the citizens about the tax.
A search for a new executive director of the New Mexico Spaceport Authority is winding down, and the office plans to make an announcement by early November. Kelly O’Donnell, the current acting executive director, said the office plans to ask the state for a four-fold budget increase in 2008 to help staff up the office.
Alex Tai, at the end of a general presentation about Virgin Galactic, said that the company had booked $31 million in sales so far, the largest figure announced by the company to date.
Lov Levin of t/Space said he wanted to challenge the “myth” that this was a new market: instead, he argued, we are in the midst of a transition from a government-dominated market to a commercial one, which may make it easier for potential investors to better grasp the opportunities.
Janice Voss, who left the astronaut corps a few years ago to work on NASA’s Kepler mission (she plans to return at the end of this year, but not in a flight capacity), said when she left she looked at the opportunities in the commercial market when she left but couldn’t see where the market was going. If she was leaving now, she said, it would be a different situation, with many more opportunities.
John Herrington, a former NASA astronaut now working for Rocketplane, said that he expects a wave of retirements from the astronaut corps when the shuttle program ends, particularly among those who don’t expect much of a chance to get the limited flight opportunities once Orion comes online. These people, he said, will certainly look at opportunities in the commercial sector.
Understatement of the day: Chuck Lauer, filling in for George French on a panel about how NewSpace companies have adapted to the changing market, about the K-1 saga: “Obviously there are challenges we are working through.”

ISPS Day 1 wrap-up

Jeff Foust — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 11:59:25 +0000

(The picture above doesn’t have anything to do directly with the conference, it’s just a nice view of the Moon rising around sunset Wednesday as seen from the conference site in Las Cruces.)

Yesterday’s sessions of the International Symposium for Personal Spaceflight didn’t have any groundbreaking revelations, but there were still some interesting developments and news from the various conference sessions, which I’ll summarize below:

One of the most informative presentations during the day was the first, by Valin Thorn, deputy program manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew & Cargo Program. He addressed head-on the recent decision to terminate the funded COTS agreement with Rocketplane Kistler, saying that they had missed milestones not only for their financing, but also a cargo module critical design review. He called the K-1 concept “outstanding” and said he wouldn’t be surprised to see them resubmit a revised proposal in the new round of COTS bidding.
John Herrington, filling in for George French in the same morning session (French was at the conference but called away to a board meeting), confirmed earlier reports that the company had lined up commitments from investors for $300 million of the sought-for $450 million (not $500 million as reported elsewhere), but those plans fell through because of a variety of reasons, including NASA’s agreement to buy Progress and Soyuz flights from Russia as well as comments by unnamed NASA officials that appeared to be disparaging towards COTS.
Herrington did say that work was proceeding with the XP suborbital spaceplane, and the company plans to announce a revised design of the vehicle on Friday. From what I understand, this will be more than a minor tweak to the existing modified-Learjet approach. Herrington said that some of the investors who has expressed an interest in the K-1 may also be interested in investing in the XP (which is done by a separate subsidiary company, Rocketplane Global), but didn’t have anything specific to say about XP financing.
Thorn’s talk also revealed some new developments by other companies that have unfunded COTS agreements. SPACEHAB is working on a concept called ARCTUS to develop a cargo spacecraft based on the Centaur upper stage. PlanetSpace, in addition to their work on their Nova booster and spaceplane, is also working on a less-ambitious concept that would use a launch vehicle called the Athena 3 (a Lockheed Martin Athena 2 augmented with two shuttle SRB segments) for carrying cargo to the station.
SpaceDev CEO Mark Sirangelo said his company is continuing work on its Dream Chaser design for both orbital and suborbital applications, including working with NASA on an unfunded COTS agreement. The company’s operations have been disrupted because of the San Diego wildfires that forced them to evacuate their Poway, California headquarters; he said their team is working on their new COTS proposal from a trailer on a beach near San Diego.
Sirangelo added that SpaceDev may work with Benson Space Company on engine technology for BSC’s suborbital vehicle, but plans no additional involvement on that project.
Hugues Laporte-Weywada, senior vice president of EADS Astrium, didn’t offer a lot of new details about his company’s suborbital space tourism vehicle. That effort started in early 2006 with market and design studies; the Rocketplane-like spaceplane won out over rocket-and-capsule and air-launched spaceplane approaches. The company is continuing work on both technology and financing, and hopes to have all the money lined up to develop the vehicle as soon as possible in early 2008.
The government-commercial synergy panel was a crowded mix of familiar topics (operationally responsive space, the Marine Corps’ SUSTAIN concept, and other RLV technology development work), without a lot of new developments announced.
Two afternoon panels featuring past and expectant space travelers were combined into one, with Anousheh Ansari and two NASA astronauts (Michael Lopez-Alegria and Dan Barry) discussing what their orbital flights were like, as well as expectant or would-be space tourists Reda Anderson (Rocketplane), Craig Willan (Virgin Galactic), and Lori Garver (who tried to arrange a trip to the ISS in 2002) discussing their expectations. One theme that emerged: when you’re in space, take time to simply soak in the experience rather than get caught up in tasks or taking pictures.

Thursday’s sessions appear focused on spaceport development, financing, and more discussions with astronauts. I will continue, as schedule and technology permits, to microblog some insights from the conference on Twitter during the day.

Rocketplane’s uncertain future

Jeff Foust — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 04:57:36 +0000

One of the big topics that will likely come up during the ISPS and X Prize Cup will be the future of Rocketplane Inc. given its loss of its funded COTS award earlier this month. (Rocketplane president George French and VP of business development Chuck Lauer are both scheduled to be on the first panel of the day Wednesday at the ISPS). An article that appeared this past weekend in The Oklahoman suggested that the company would turn its attention back to suborbital space tourism, which had received far less attention over the last 18 months or so as the company focused on the K-1 orbital vehicle. Rocketplane Global, the subsidiary focused on suborbital flight, will unveil a new design of the XP suborbital vehicle this week; the reports haven’t indicated if this is a design tweak or a substantial redesign, or the reasons behind the change.

At the same time, though, there’s signs that Rocketplane Kistler is not going to give up that funded COTS award without a fight. Space News reported this week that the company is already starting its appeal process within the agency, a three-step process that works its way up to NASA associate administrator Rich Gilbrech, who previously agreed to the decision to terminate the award. (That seems to suggest that RpK’s odds of success are low.) The company does have the option after that to file suit in federal court; that, though, would cost the company more time and money, and probably not create a lot of goodwill with NASA. One consolation: RpK is free to submit a proposal in the new competition by NASA to award the $175 million that was freed up when NASA terminated the original RpK contract.