Rotary Rocket Company revealed that Barclays Capital has agreed to serve as financial advisor and placement agent for a $30 million to $35 million private equity placement. The proceeds will fund the company through engine development and the atmospheric flight testing of its vehicle, the Roton.

Barclays Capital is the investment banking division of Barclays Bank PLC, London, which has assets of approximately $350 billion.

``In addition to being one of the largest banks in the world, Barclays' is one of the few that has a dedicated space division,'' said Frederick Giarrusso, Ph.D., the Chief Financial Officer for Rotary Rocket Company.

The Barclays team working for Rotary Rocket Company is the same one that recently completed financings totaling $1.75 billion in debt for Iridium LLC, the satellite communications venture spearheaded by Motorola Inc.

A Revolutionary Cost Breakthrough

Roton will be the first fully reusable space vehicle. Its single-stage design will be capable of daily flights to low Earth orbit. All existing commercial launch services now rely on one-use multi-stage expendable rockets and charge enormous prices to put satellites into orbit, averaging $5,000 per pound. Rotary Rocket Company has set an initial price of $1,000 per pound when the Roton goes into service in the first quarter of 2000. The company has the ability to reduce the price rapidly as the market builds.

``The breakthrough technology and expert management of Rotary Rocket Company are an exceptional combination,'' said Afsaneh Naimollah, managing director, global head of the technologies group of Barclays Capital. ``It will quickly become the world leader in cost-effective space transportation.''

More than 100 people are working on the Roton program at Rotary Rocket Company and its contractors. The design team is led by President Gary Hudson and Chief Technical Officer Bevin McKinney. Integrating contractor for the Roton is Scaled Composites of Mojave, Calif., led by legendary aviation pioneer Burt Rutan, designer of the Voyager aircraft which flew around the world on one tank of fuel in 1986. Construction of the first Roton commences when the new funding closes in April. The initial Roton will make atmospheric flights only, demonstrating the company's unique free-spinning rotor technique for bringing the vehicle down to a feather-light landing.

Simultaneously, Rotary Rocket Company engineers will step up development of the rotary aerospike engine, components of which already have undergone successful static testing at the company's rocket engine test facilities in Mojave, Calif. By the time of the first atmospheric Roton flight in early 1999, a full-sized rotary aerospike engine will have completed ground tests - demonstrating that the company has developed all the parts needed to build follow-on Rotons able to get into space. Rotons equipped with rotary aerospike engines will begin flight tests to orbit in the final half of 1999 and will enter commercial service in early 2000.

The Roton will be the safest space vehicle ever developed, according to Gary Hudson, chief executive officer of Rotary Rocket Company. ``Unlike unmanned expendable rockets, it will carry a two-person crew who will be able to return the vehicle safely to the ground in the event of any malfunctions. Current expendable rockets must be blown up if they veer from their intended course,'' Hudson said.

Unlike multi-stage expendable rockets and even the NASA Space Shuttle, the single-stage Roton will not discard pieces of itself on the way to space. This will give it much greater flexibility in securing launch sites, compared to expendable rockets that must launch from coastal locations in order to dump their debris into the ocean.

Safety in Operation

On take off, a Roton will carry only 77,000 pounds of kerosene fuel, about the same amount as a Boeing 737, to be burned in combination with liquid oxygen. Once the vertically launched vehicle has traveled a few miles downrange, most of the fuel will be gone and it will be carrying less kerosene than the average business jet.

When it reenters the atmosphere for landing, a Roton will be a 52-foot high composite shell essentially empty of any fuel. Even if its rotors fail to deploy, the Roton cannot plummet to the ground at high speed. The Roton's large surface area compared to its low mass would make it fall more like a feather than a rock. Company calculations show that a Boeing 737 diving directly toward the ground would hit with 50 times more force than a Roton returning from orbit if its rotors had failed.

Company officials stress the safety issue because the public rightly perceives expendable rockets as potentially hazardous, and might think that piloted reusable spaceships like the Roton present the same problems.

``The February 1998 issue of Popular Science is an example of this confusion,'' said Hudson. ``While we appreciate being featured on the cover, it erroneously speculates that a Roton could plunge from orbit at hypersonic speeds and threaten people on the ground. Empty composite shells can't fall at hypersonic speeds no matter what's happened to them.''

Rotary Rocket Company funding to date totals more than $7 million from corporate investors and wealthy individuals such as author Tom Clancy.