Rotary Rocket

Rotary Rocket

Rotary Rocket, Inc of Mojave, California, was a rocketry company headquartered in a 45,000-square-foot (4,200 m2) facility at Mojave Airport that developed the Roton concept in the late 1990s as a fully reusable single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) manned spacecraft.

The Roton was intended to reduce costs of launching payloads into low earth orbit by a factor of ten. Gary Hudson championed the design and formed the company. A full-scale test vehicle made three hover flights in 1999, but the company exhausted its funds and closed its doors in early 2001.