The Roton was intended to reduce costs of launching payloads into low Earth orbit by a factor of ten.

The fuselage for their vehicles was made by Scaled Composites, at the same airport, while the company developed the novel engine design and helicopter-like landing system.

A full-scale test vehicle made three hover flights in 1999, but the company exhausted its funds and closed in early 2001.

Bevin McKinney had been thinking about the idea of a launch vehicle using helicopter blades for several years, when Wired magazine asked Gary Hudson to write an article on the concept.

Once the air density thinned to the point that helicopter flight was impractical, the vehicle would continue its ascent on pure rocket power, with the rotor acting as a giant turbopump.

[citation needed] One problem found during research at Rotary was that once the vehicle left the atmosphere additional thrust would be necessary.

[citation needed] This initial version of the Roton had been designed with the small communications satellite market in mind.

[citation needed] The revised and redesigned Roton concept was a cone-shaped launch vehicle, with a helicopter rotor on top for use only during landing.

However, at the high G levels at the outer edge of the rotating engine block, clarity on how LOX would work as a coolant was both unknown and difficult to validate.

That application had a much smaller base area, and did not create the suction effect a larger peripheral engine induces.

Further, the water metering system would have to be extremely reliable, giving one drop per second per square inch, and was achieved via a trial/error design approach on real hardware.

When the Soyuz trim system failed and it went full ballistic, the G levels did rise significantly but without incident to the passengers.

The implication of that was that the blades went from a lightly heated piece of hardware to one that either had to be actively cooled or made of SiC or other refractory material.

In 1955, one of five Soviet designs for planned suborbital piloted missions was to include rocket-tipped rotors as its landing system.

[citation needed] Rotary Rocket designed and pressure-tested an exceptionally lightweight but strong composite LOX tank.

Reportedly, the company had been unable to convince investors that its engine design was viable; the composite structure and gyrocopter reentry was an easier sell.

This flight consisted of three vertical hops totaling 4 min 40 sec in duration and reaching a maximum altitude of 8 ft (2.4 m).

[citation needed] Other aspects of the flight plan remained unproven and it is unknown whether Roton could have developed sufficient performance to reach orbit with a single stage, and return – although on paper this might have been possible.

Ultimately, the company did not attract sufficient funding – even though numerous individuals provided a total of $33 million of support, including writer Tom Clancy.

Instead, the vehicle was kept at Mojave, and on November 10, 2006, the Roton was moved to its permanent display location at the intersection of Airport Blvd and Sabovich Road.