XCOR Aerospace
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
XCOR Aerospace is a private rocket engine and spaceflight development company based in Mojave, California at the Mojave Spaceport. It was formed by former members of the Rotary Rocket rocket engine development team in September, 1999.
XCOR is headed by Jeff Greason.
Projects have included:
- EZ-Rocket, a Rutan Long-EZ homebuilt aircraft fitted with two 400 lbf (1.8 kN) thrust rocket engines replacing the normal propellor engine. EZ-Rocket has been flown at numerous airshows including the Oshkosh Airshow.
- The EZ-Rocket program led to the rocketplane design for the Rocket Racing League. This will consist of an airframe built by Velocity, with a 1500lbf LOX-Kerosene engine. The engine will use pressure-fed LOX and pump-fed kerosene, a combination that allows the fuel to be stored in the airplane's wing tanks while avoiding potential complications with pumping liquid oxygen.
- Sphinx, the second rocketplane design to receive an FAA suborbital rocket license (the aircraft has not been built to date).
- Tea cart engine, a 15 lbf (67 N) thrust rocket motor burning nitrous oxide and ethane, mounted on a small industrial cart. The tea cart engine has repeatedly been fired indoors at conferences and demonstrations and had accumulated over 1,100 firings and 6,000 seconds of run time by the end of 2003.
- LOX-methane rocket engines in testing in 2005.
- Early LOX-methane work led to a NASA contract, jointly with ATK, to develop a 7500 lbf engine for potential use as the CEV lunar return engine.
- XCOR has plans to develop Xerus, a reusable suborbital spaceplane for tourist and scientific payload applications. The vehicle will be the minimum feasible size -- one pilot plus one passenger -- in order to keep development and capital costs down.
- XCOR has developed Nonburnite (tm), a cryo-compatible, inherently non-combustible composite material based on a thermoplastic fluoropolymer resin. Low coefficient of thermal expansion and inherent resistance to microcracking make it well suited to cryogenic tankage and also part of vehicle structure.
