COMPANY PLANS MOJAVE ROCKET BASE; PROJECT CENTERS ON REUSABLE CRAFT WITH ROTORS.

Byline: Jim Skeen Daily News Staff Writer

Envisioning a reusable spaceship, a Bay Area company is spending $5.5 million to build a manufacturing and office complex at the Mojave Airport, a step in accomplishing the goal.

Rotary Rocket Co., based in Redwood Shores, is building a 45,000-square-foot complex composed of a hangar, a high-bay 75-foot-tall building, a three-story office building and a visitor center. The complex, expected to be completed by early 1999, will accommodate 100 workers.

``This is the next level of aerospace,'' said Mojave Town Council President Bill Deaver. ``We've always had airplanes, now we're going into space.''

Rotary Rocket is planning to assemble and flight test a reusable rocket called Roton at the Mojave Airport. If successful, Roton would be a relatively cheap way for companies to put communication satellites into orbit.

The company estimates there will be more than 2,000 communication satellite launches in the next decade - a potential market of $10 billion.

Roton would take off vertically like a conventional rocket, fly into low Earth orbit, release its payload and then return. On its descent, helicopter-like rotors would deploy from the nose, slowing the craft for its landing.

Rotary Rocket plans to power Roton with an aerospike engine, a propulsion concept that was tested in the 1960s but never used for a spacecraft. The aerospike is similar to traditional rocket engines except it lacks the usual bell-shaped nozzle. Instead, the aerospike uses the atmosphere as part of its nozzle, with the surrounding airflow containing the rocket's exhaust plume.

This allows the engine to adjust during its ascent to orbit to stay at optimum performance, whereas traditional engines cannot compensate for atmospheric changes.

To test its helicopter rotary landing concept, the company is building what it calls an atmospheric test vehicle.

``We'll take it to 8,000 to 10,000 feet to see if we can bring it down the way we say we can,'' said Rotary Rocket spokesman Geoffrey Hughes.

The company also plans to build a structural test vehicle, to check the loads and stress the Roton will be able to handle, and a propulsion test vehicle.

Drawings of Roton show a rocket that resembles an inverted snow cone. The 50-foot-tall rocket will weigh about 400,000 pounds when fueled and will be capable of handling a 7,000-pound payload.

Flights are targeted to cost $7 million each, meaning the cost of putting a payload into orbit will be about $1,000 per pound, compared to $10,000 per pound for space shuttle operations.

Rotary Rocket is one of several companies trying to break open the frontier of space to commercial operations. The most high-profile effort is being undertaken by Lockheed Martin ``Skunk Works'' and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

With more than $900 million in NASA funding and $200 million of their own cash, the Skunk Works is building the X-33, an aircraft intended to demonstrate technologies the company plans to use in a spaceship called VentureStar. The Skunk Works plans to fly the X-33 in 1999, sending it on flights that will exceed 13 times the speed of sound, allowing the aircraft to travel from Edwards Air Force Base to Montana in less than 30 minutes.

Another effort with an Antelope Valley connection is one by Kelly Space and Technology, a San Bernardino company. Kelly is trying to develop a series of spacecraft that would be towed by an aircraft to high altitude and then released. The spacecraft would then power its way into space.

Kelly has done some flight tests at Edwards Air Force Base to check out its towing concept.