Roton

Rotary Rocket Roton ATV

Mission Profile

The Roton (Rotary Rocket Roton ATV) was a proposed single-stage American reusable launch vehicle concept, featuring the radical design of helicopter-like rotor blades for powered descent and landing after orbital reentry. Standing 6.7 m tall with a 6.7 m diameter, the Roton Atmospheric Test Vehicle was a squat, conical craft. Conceived around 2001, Rotary Rocket built and flew a low-altitude test vehicle but ran out of funding before the orbital version could be developed, making it one of the more unusual launch vehicle concepts of the late 1990s dot-com space era.