Founded in 1985 by George A. Koopman, Bevin McKinney and Jim Bennett, veterans of Starstruck Inc., the American Rocket Company, or AMROC, was a California-based company that developed hybrid rocket motors. It had over 300 hybrid rocket motor test firings in its lifetime, ranging from 4.5 kN to 1.1 MN at the Air Force Astronautics Laboratory at Edwards Air Force Base (merged into the

Phillips Laboratory Phillips Laboratory was a research and development organization operated by the United States Air Force Materiel Command. In 1997, the Laboratory was merged into the Air Force Research Laboratory as the Space Vehicles and Directed Energy Director ...

) and

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...

'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. The company attempted a sea launch of its Dolphin rocket in 1984. After two early aborts the third attempt ended with a shutdown command after Dolphin reached 700 meters altitude with a 45° deviation from vertical due to a failure of a valve in the thrust vector control. The rocket was entirely privately funded. Its 5 October 1989 launch of the SET-1

sounding rocket A sounding rocket or rocketsonde, sometimes called a research rocket or a suborbital rocket, is an instrument-carrying rocket designed to take measurements and perform scientific experiments during its sub-orbital flight. The rockets are used to ...

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 (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, cop ...

was acquired in 1999 by

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 components for the hybrid rocket motors for Paul Allen's Tier One suborbital SpaceS ...

, and its lineage is part of

SpaceShipOne SpaceShipOne is an experimental air-launched rocket-powered aircraft with sub-orbital spaceflight capability at speeds of up to 3,000 ft/s (900 m/s, 3240 km/h), using a hybrid rocket motor. The design features a unique "feathering" a ...

(AMROC worked on an N2O-HTPB engine for its SLIMSET sounding rocket effort).

References

Manufacturing companies based in California Defunct spaceflight companies {{Space-stub