Roton The Rotary Rocket - Half Rocket - Half Helicopter
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- Опубліковано 2 сер 2024
- On vacation I had a chance to visit the Rotary Rockets Roton test vehicle at Mojave Air and Space Port, so, for everyone that's never heard of this, here's the story of how some engineers planned to revolutionize space launched by combining a helicopter and a rocket. And the helicopter part might have been the most realistic part of their plan.
The rocket is on public display at the Mojave Air and Space Port
goo.gl/maps/uUP48Lyzfyx - Наука та технологія
I helped (in some small part) build the Roton. Good times and a fun little company. Not great with money management. But the test take-offs were amazing to watch and really inspiring.
P.S. I think Scott did a great job representing it here. No real out-of-context facts or misleading comments. Thanks Scott!
He really did a fine job. Glad he focused on what it was meant to be. And yes, Watching it buzz down the runway on rotor was cool indeed.
Mount this on top of a Falcon 9 1st stage for a fully recoverable rocket.
I was thinking the same thing, I wonder if you could replace the falcon 9/falcon Heavy’s second stage and fairing with this vehicle instead, and if it could both make orbit, re-enter, and land while still carrying a useful payload
Wondering if you might be TB from the old HZ...cheers to you regardless, and to this amazing concept.
@@tascodelrey Sry, not TB. But cheers to you too!
Back in 1999, I made a 3D online model and sent it to them, which they published on their website. This earned an invitation to the rollout of the ATV, which was brilliant. Everyone was very friendly and accessible, and I ended up having lunch with Mrs. Binnie (completely at random) and had a sit in the cockpit. Marvellous concept, pity it didn't quite get to orbit.
It’s not a helicopter, but it’s a hell-of-a-rocket, at least in concept
HOAR 1
helirockpter
Its both dummy
hell-of-a-rocket-copter :D
I was there for the rollout of the Roton ATV in 1999. I had been visiting the offices of RR (which were in Redwood City up in the Bay Area) to interview the designers and marketing people for "Spaceship Handbook" so I got an invitation. The Roton was one of several completely reusable launch systems being developed at the time that I was including in the last chapter. The Roton was, in fact, the last entry of the last chapter, closing out the whole century that had opened with Tsiolkovsky.
BTW, Scott, the propellant tanks surrounded the payload/cockpit section. The fuel (kerosene) was a flat ovide tank between the engines and the payload while the LOX tank was a narrow conical frustum starting above the cockpit, all the way up to the rotors.
I also love this concept, of course 1 stage to orbit was the biggest drawback, but as a second stage would have been amazing.
Autorotation is something very safe that any helicopter can do and you dont need extra power to land soft at all, only if you are still very far from the landing pad or the weather is too bad an external power source could increase safety.
Hello Scott! I think you should see a movie from Soviet Union called "Kin dza dza". Aliens from another planet have vehicles looking almost the same as Roton. You may find a version with English subtitles in the net.
Promise me to not fall asleep while watching this move ;-)
Is it really that boring?
@@an2qzavok I don't find it boring.
It's not a modern blockbuster movie and from today's point of view it's looks like like Art house. So some people can't watch and appreciate movies like this one masterpiece.
Oooooohhhhh.... So this is where pepelats' design came from in Kin-dza-dza!
Nah, glorious Chatlan technologies have long surpassed need for aerodynamic considerations for launching and landing, it's just a coincidence
@@evennot Oh. And I thought I am onto something, since our water reserves are also being diminished thanks to electrolysing fuel for hybrid vehicles. I thought that our civilizations histories had something in common. Oh well!
If you can make this concept work, I'll see that you get yellow trousers.
@@jbbuzzable Ku! :)
I'm 45 minutes from Mojave and have to pass it every time we go to Lancaster or LA. I had no idea they had the Rotary Rocket there. Now we're gonna stop next time!
Sir Where is Mojave?
@@spacerace8598 California desert
@@spacerace8598 I worked in Mojave 1998-2017 at RotRock and XCOR. I used to say it was the fashionable place for rocket companies.
Actually, Classic Rotors (Ramona, CA) was supposed to have taken the Roton to its museum. As I heard the story, they raised money and paid expenses for a US Army helicopter to transport it from Mojave to Ramona. Unfortunately, the Army crew miscalculated the required length of the lift cable (Classic Rotors' guys said they told them they'd need something like 200', but the Army guys decided to use less than half that). When they tried to do the transport, things did not go well soon after lifting off. Payload and helicopter fought each other for control. As Classic Rotors tells the story, the Army pilot sweated bullets just getting the thing back on the ground in one piece at Mojave. They then told Classic Rotors that they were done trying to transport the Roton. If you visit the CR museum in Ramona (and I strongly recommend it), you will however find the actual rotor mechanism from the Roton, and I think they also have the blades stored away.
Will add that to my list.
@@scottmanley If you let me know when you go, I'll be happy to go through the museum with you. And I might be able to figure out how to make sure that one of the more knowledgeable docents will be there. They have several very interesting aircraft there.
@@scottmanley Mike Massee has a lot of photos of that attempted lift. I was hiding behind a shipping container when the swinging got too exciting, but he got some really exciting photos, including the moment when the Chinook pilot punched a hole in his floor with the rotorhead of the Roton.
You should've uploaded this yesterday on April first.
Dig this seemly forgotten guy en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Bono
lol
No
Half copter half rocket
Full kerbal!
I actually stumbled on this yesterday at Mojave and was curious about it as I’d never heard about it. Thanks Scott for the video.
Whoa Scott! I actually went out to Mojave Airport a few years back and saw the Roton Rotary Rocket prototype featured in your video as well as the SpaceShip One in its little display building. Also on the grounds of the airport is Scaled Composites where Rutan built his various designs including SpaceShip Two that is supposed to start conducting commercial operations for tourist astronauts. Thanks for the great video of this cocamamy rocket with the rotor blades.
I worked on the kerosene engines for the Roton, figured out how to control the wheel speed, and showed the ground crew how to move it around in the hangar. Those were some good times.
I've really been hoping that you would make a video on this subject. You rock!
This is one I actually did not know about already so thanks Scott for this video, I found it interesting and unique.
That's a real gem, thanks for showing it to us :) You're the best!
So awesome that you got to see that. While in college, I wrote a paper on single-stage-to-orbit technology and the Roton was one of the vehicles I covered.
Right down the road from where I grew up....
I used to work out there at Mojave. Always cool to see the Roton getting some love. I knew an engineer or two who worked on it!
They probably thought it could lift off, on their hopes, and dreams. No fuel required.
Honestly, I thought this was an April's fool prank on your part, Scott.
Well I'm no rocket scientist, even in the 90s I thought it was unrealistic as there was no space for fuel or much of a payload.
Have forgotten all about this rocket thing. Thanks for the memories.
Thanks for the video. Would've been cool, had the Roton's development been able to continue. Very cool.
That think looks kind of terrifying while flying. Very ominous.
Kind of like a propeller beanie meets traffic cone. Meets Dunce Cap?
Yes, it looks sort of like a one-eyed Minion but moves like the Giant Floating Baby Head.
Earth is doomed.
My memory (which could well be faulty) was of watching a live streamed broadcast of the final test flight. The original engine had the rocket motors mounted on a rotating disk, the fuel and oxidizer would come down in the center of the disk and then out to the individual motors, the rotation of the disk would act as a pressurizing pump, instead of using a turbopump. The rotation would be powered by having the motors canted slightly along the circumference of the disk, not inwards. Essentially, the rotating disk was a centrifugal pump.
That sounds really ingenious if it worked!
I love that when people ask why don't they just build some ridiculous rocket like that, and then there are these real companies that already went ahead and tried the idea decades ago.
When the header read “Rotary Rocket” I was thinking that the blades popped out on decent and spun themselves up, and then the crew did the old helicopter emergency move, an autorotation to land it.
Brian is a cool cat.. He also worked on the development of the F-18 Super Hornet. BTW, Great video, Thanks for showing the RR.
Went and checked it out when I was on a temporary duty assignment near there. Such a cool place!
I use to work for Piasecki Aircraft (helicopters) and this looks like something he would have tried. 🤣
Ooo, Piasecki, good guy btw
Scott,
There’s more to the story. Gary Hudson’s original concept was to have rotor blades attached to an annular slip-ring around the base of the vehicle. The idea was to use centrifugal force as a means to pump fuel/oxidizer out to rocket engines at the rotor tips.
The Roton is one of my favourite concepts too! Audacious and daring, with no shortage of detractors. Much like SpaceX's sea landing concept until it became routine because they had enough time and funding to prove it...
I LOVE THAT CONCEPT !!!
Seems like this could work as the upper stage/return vehicle. Not lift off on it's own to orbit. That should be obvious.
Back in the end of the last century I was doing aeronautical engineering in college in the Netherlands, and had a friend in Redwood City. They had their head office there on the bay. I did contemplate if I could do my graduation project there. But life turned onto a different road then for me. And soon there after also for the company I guess.
That's a good point. This could be used in a system much like Starship, where a reusable first stage gives this a kick, and then it goes on to orbit on its own power, bit needing to reserve any fuel.
Even better as a first stage recovery system. (Without the pilots, obviously.) How many good ideas have been killed by the SSTO obsession?
Damn it Scott, that music at the end is way to catchy. I feel like I gotta dance a little every time I hear it. And by dance I mean I move my arms a little.
Fun fact: In the late 1990s I was a young engineer working as a contractor on a flight test project for the US Navy and Brian Binnie was the head of the flight test team. My most vivid memory of Brian was a flight test report I wrote where I said "the pitch response to the step input was well-damped." He wrote on the report that "terms like 'well-damped' were not appropriate for a flight test report". When I asked him how I should phrase it, he said that I should have calculated the damping ratio. I was just a contractor, so I replied "yes sir" and did as I was asked. Of course, I had no idea what the damping ratio was designed to be for this aircraft, so to me, sticking the number in there was the same as simply saying "well-damped" and showing the graph, but whatever - he was the boss!
Professor Sarigul-Klijn! He was my orbital mechanics prof and he'd tell us stories about piloting this crazy contraption.
As I remember, the original Roton had the engines only on the tip of the rotors, not under the vehicle. There were no turbo pumps but the fuel was flung out to the engines on the tips of the blades by centrifugal force.
As the rocket corkscrewed its way up through the atmosphere, and as the atmosphere became thinner, the pitch of the blades would increase until the engines were pointed almost straight down.
"Patrolling the Mojave almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter."
Sorry, wrong game I know, but I just couldn't resist.
It's equal parts ridiculous and wonderful, like some of the best things in life. Maybe someone someday will make this concept work. I hope so.
this thing looks absolutely ridiculous in the air...I love it!
My next Kerbal Pilot is going to be called Marti because of this!
Somehow I'd missed that one completely. Thought that it was only a comic book concept. Thanks Scott.
It’s raining here in SF Scott. Thanks for sharing this! I cannot believe how small SpaceShip One is. It looks more terrifying now that I see how tiny it is.
The rotor rocket certainly took vision to devise, but it certainly wasn’t a pretty craft.
Withering Liberal The model of SS1 in Mojave is a scaled down version.
crazymuthaphukr OMG. Thank you for telling me. I must’ve missed that. Lol!
"Two astronauts and a ham sandwich" the ham sandwich is very important
Although I am confused as to why they wouldn't to bring two ham sandwiches. The ultimate tension which would result from sharing a sandwich might not be ideal for crew cohesion.
The sandwich isn't lunch, it's a defense system in case Mama Cass attacks the rocket.
I remember watching a National Geographic with this crazy contraption in it!! It had so many crazy ideas in it, it really sparked my interest in space travel and how insane ideas just might be possible.
Great Spacecraft Love The concept.
Thanks, Mr. Manley. One day I will go there!
Crikey! I remember when this was announced back in the 1990. I had no idea that they actually built and few a prototype.
I like how you say "pitch" so much in this helicopter rocket video. :)
Last week I had a phone call from a helocopter museum in San Diego. They had been trying to get the Rotary Rocket to San Diego for display.
But after tries to get a ling load to work. it was too unstable to transport it. So it sits right you found it.
I used to live in N. Edwards when I worked on various DOD projects. I used to (1980s) visit Mojave Airport often.
Love the "Babylon 5" era CGI. Go Video Toasters! Yours, G'Kar & Londo
I can remember it like it was yesterday when I got the Popular science issue featuring this back in the 90s. Sad it never.......took off
This feels so much like something they would come up with in the 50s when they were just throwing stuff at the wall. Great to see that our pioneers haven't lost that weird streak.
What a fantastically Kerbalesque concept!
Pretty good video! I had quite a lot to do with this project; my first job in the rocket business. Much of the ridicule I see in the comments appears to be from a lack of vision. Yes, SSTO is hard, but has been possible from since the early model of Atlas; the delivered non-structure payload is indeed small. Reusable SSTO is harder still, but with attention to very lightweight structure and efficient engines, is also possible; the "Holy Grail" of reusable space launch operations. The spinning rocket engine base would have generated high propellant pressures for high-chamber-pressure rocket motors, which are key for good lift-off performance. Much of the charm of the spinning was to eliminate the need for turbopumps. Counter-rotating rings of the base motors probably would have eventually been needed to deal with the gyroscopic forces. We certainly showed that the "centrifugal pumping" worked with the rotor tip rockets. The structure was large, but able to be very light due to the axisymmetric cone shape and carbon fiber construction. The rotor blade landing system was analyzed to weigh what a parachute system would have weighed for a sea landing, but would have allowed landing with style at the airport. Lastly, $30 million was a comparatively lightweight investment as a start to do this sort of thing..
Gotta love the off the wall ideas that might've worked. My favorite is the Chrysler SERV, a wildly different alternate design for the Space Shuttle that ditched the side-stacked orbiter idea for an SSTO VTOL vehicle with an aerospike style engine system that would take off and land back on the same pad. For manned missions it would have a small winged glider as an upper stage, which would have abort rockets to escape the launch vehicle in an emergency: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_SERV
I love that concept also. Chrysler was a real pioneer in the rocket business, and this idea might just have worked then and probably could work even better today.
It's been there for a while without the nose falling off. That's a promising design right there.
Other than that, it looks purpose-built for bilking "investors".
Interesting concept.
I remember first seeing this in the news all of those years ago. It was so daring and different I recall trying to rationalise the concept with the idea that the rotors had rocket tips, with the centrifugal force acting as a pump and the rocket tips and blades turning downwards as the craft entered the thinner atmosphere. Yes the fuel supply looked like a problem, but if SpaceX concept was released in 1999, I'm sure it would have looked like science fiction!
LOL, figured you were either going to visit this crazy thing ... or stop in at Edwards (pre-9/11, my wife & I were able to talk our way past the gate on the base and drive in to see the Dryden, now Armstrong, Flight Research Center - think you were supposed to have made plans in advance ... or at least have more documents with you than just a CA driver's license).
I thought only the English were capable of such eccentric engineering. Well done Roton.
I love the fact that there is an aircraft registration clearly printed on the side of a ROTARY ROCKET.
Makes me wonder if the rotor blades could be stowed along the sides of the capsule and roll up towards the rotorhead shortly after reentry, angling outwards (just slightly) to start that funky autorotation business we all know and love.
I remember seeing a presentation by the Roton guys at the LA Science Fiction Convention in November 1998. Always wondered what became of them.
The venue should have given you a tip.
The 21st century Don Quixote goes to space
Jet engine style turbone at the top instead of helicopter propellers would be freakin aweaome.
I wish I could find fault with you Scott, but this is another superb video
that is one of the most bizarre things ever to fly.
I was so hopeful at the time that this was going to be a thing, and I had wondered where it had gone.
Agreed. Gyroplane flight is a criminally underused and underappreciated system but that thing looks like a single stage to 10km up vehicle, not a single stage to orbit. Also, I wonder if they planned on using the rotors for all the descent? It seems like they would still have to use some sort of ablator to make it through the faster parts of reentry.
Another interesting fact is that Mike Melvill, the first commercial astronaut in SpaceShipOne, helped build the Voyager.
Swear to God, I thought about this idea when I first saw the SpaceX busters landing. I never knew about this craft.
That is the good old Pepelats design.
I was out there a couple of years ago for an interview to work for these guys. Still waiting to see the Stratolauncher actually perform it's first flight.
It was taxiing again today
Half rocket, half helicopter.
The real reason behind this combination was to launch the vehicle using the rocket engine and land it using the blades.
JLS so a rockopter?
@@micaiaskauss A helirocker
Originally, it was planned (according to the advertising), that the rotor would be placed more ”Midships” and the rocket would lift off from ordinarie airfields, using the rotor. Firing the rocket engines at altitude.
So, they never thought to use a rocket to land? I guess, why would you, no one believes rockets can land.
It was meant to be able to land on normal airfields. And, you should know, that SpaceX lands rockets.
2:14 Американцы никогда не узнают тайну гравицапы и не смогут построить настоящий ПЕПЕЛАЦ
In 1986, the Soviet Union was the sci-fi film Kin-dza-dza! And Roton is very similar to the main vehicle of the main characters: Pepelats in this film.
After the film was released, the American colleague called to the director (Georgiy Daneliya) with a proposal to make special effects for his film. The American said that he was impressed with how Pepelats was flying. Danelia joked to him: “There are no special effects there. The military gave us "gravitsapa". We put it on the scenery, and spaceship had flown. You should call to the Russian military. This is their design. What if I suddenly will tell you a secret information. I will be considered as a spy!". And American director for real did it! Then the author of the film was called from the Ministry of Defense of the USSR and was shouted: “Are you fooling around?”
Amazing, all I can say is that test pilot Brian Binney had big balls.
*Double rotary Chinook Rocketcopter*
Inb4 quadcopter rockets become the main way to travel to Mars and the moon
Was down there when it was tested. Just miles away. Amazing that it did fly,,,AND they lived to tell about it. lol. So sketchy it's off the charts.
Holy Dalek! All of GB must have been terrified.
very interesting ..great vid peace out
I know this is kind of out of left field but i'm hoping that you'll play Surviving Mars again when you get back home since it was over a year ago when you played it last and there have been a few major changes since then
I was thinking the same thing two days ago
Im just loughing and watching haha this thing made my day !
awesome!
this looks like an alternative to SpaceX Falcon 9
I lost it when I saw the clips of this monstrosity flying under roter power, look at this absolute unit
This looks like a shadow zone creation, and as we have learned: he does not fly safe
That engine sounds exactly like what Stoke Space is doing.
Confirmed: Stoke Space is just Roton but with a booster instead of helicopter propellers.
On the model of the Voyager aircraft... there is a full size model of it hanging in the southern exit (along with some other full size models) at SeaTac airport in Seattle. Most people don't know what it is.
The 96 combustion chambers around the aerospike/heat shield were fed with a centrifugal pump the width of the base. The entire engine was rotary!
On the yes that's clever end of the spectrum, at least the heavy end always pointed down (as opposed to the Venture Star).
One of their engineers told me they could make orbit with the same amount of fuel that a 737 carries. I'm not sure that math would have ever checked out. What kind of chamber pressures and engine efficiency would be required?
Just watched an old episode of BBC's tomorrow's world where they looked at this rocket. In that episode they claimed the rocket would have 72 combustion chambers which weren't using fuels pumps but rather centrifugal force with a spinning fuel tank that would feed kerosene and LOX into the chambers.
Первое, на чём в Кербал, удалость изящно взлетать с Eve, был аппрарат подобного типа. Браво!
I remember this rocket? I could not believe at the time that they got any money at all. The single stage to orbit was a non starter and still is.
It is quite clever actually. I mean helicopters only fly because they are so ugly the ground reppels them, now just turn it into a rocket.
The whole idea sounds like a solution in search of a problem.
LEL, that's practically the same idea I once tried making work in KSP to get a functioning Eve lander.
great !!
Those blades would have burned away on reentry unless kept in their casings during that phase. The disk loading appears to be very high, the radius for a soft landing would likely have the blades twice their length. Piloting a full autorotation to landing without any perceivable yaw control would likely end up with the vehicle tipping over once on the ground.
Maybe if we make a wild looking helicopter landing system, nobody will notice our plan to build a never before achieved tech of an aerospike SSTO rocket! Kappa
Great show ! I have seen similar vehicles in an old russian sci-fi movie :
Kin-dza-dza. The movie is never synchronized in english, but it is on youtube in original russian. But worth to watch it. It is a low budget recycling cult movie - a MUST ! cheers 😘