ARCA Plans 2018 Launch For Revolutionary Single-Stage Rocket (newatlas.com)

An aerospace company is building a cheap, simple, lightweight rocket that they hope will redefine the microsatellite industry. Eloking quotes New Atlas: New Mexico-based ARCA Space Corporation has announced that it is developing the world's first Single Stage to Orbit (SSTO) launch vehicle that can deliver both a small payload and itself into low Earth orbit, at a cost of about US$1 million per launch. Dubbed the Haas 2CA after the 16th century rocket pioneer Conrad Haas, the new booster uses a linear aerospike engine instead of conventional bell-shaped rocket engines to do away with multiple stages. [YouTube video]
They're working with six different NASA centers and have scheduled their first launch for 2018. The rocket will be 53 feet tall (16 meters) with a diameter of just 4.95 feet (1.5 meters), and will weigh 1,210 pounds when empty, but 35,887 pounds when fueled, "thanks to ACRA's proprietary composite materials for the propellant tanks and other components."

Comments

Revolutionary Rocket aka aerospike engine

[Eloking]

I remember back in the early 2000 when I first read about the aerospike engine and saw that stunning picture : https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...

Quite an impressing concept, the nozzle compensate depending on the altitude to kept it's efficiency on a wide range of altitude. One of the reason of multistage rocket is, of course, to lower the weight to raise efficiency as you climb, but another more subtle reason is also that conventional bell-shaped rocket are only efficient at a narrow range of altitude.

Aerospike engine doesn't have this problem, it stay efficient at all time. And on the plus side, as you can see in the picture above, they look freaking cool.