RpK files for chapter 7: it's all over but the cryin'

[PistolPete037]

After 17 years, George French finally decides to put this lame horse down.

Here's the story:

Rocketplane, which received $18 million in Oklahoma tax credits, filed for bankruptcy last month

Wednesday, July 07, 2010
By Scott Cooper and Ben Fenwick

What started out as a dream of rockets in the Oklahoma sky and money flowing from space enthusiasts has finally ended.

George French Jr., owner of Rocketplane Global, decided a mountain of debt and expectations of the same altitude were too much to burden and filed for bankruptcy. He filed the Chapter 7 bankruptcy papers in his home state of Wisconsin, but Oklahomans are suffering the loss...

LINK: http://www.okgazette.com/p/12776/a/6691/Default.aspx

The OKGazette article has links to the actual chapter 7 paperwork at the bottom of the article. All of Rocketplane's various permutations, as well as George French himself, are filing simultaneously.

At once I am both sad and glad that this is happening (I believe the word is bittersweet). I'm sad because I remember the hype surrounding the recently re-formed Rocketplane Global and it's re-designed Rocketplane XP at the 2007 X-Prize cup (I still have one of the free copies of Launch Magazine with the new design on the cover). Of all of the NewSpace companies, I liked Rocketplane the most, because it held the intellectual property of Pioneer Rocketplane and Mitchell Burnside-Clapp. Of all of the NewSpace concepts, Burnside-Clapp's idea could be the most easily scaled both up and down to meet multiple requirements. On the good side, now that the intellectual property is for sale, maybe someone will end up with it that actually knows how to run a business. (I wonder how much it will go for anyway. It wasn't given a value on the paperwork. I've been saving up some money for an airplane, but I wonder if I...



Just kidding, but seriously. Hmm...)

The chapter 7 paperwork also finally explained something which had been confusing me for quite some time. For the past few years several names starting with Rocketplane have been thrown around and it's been confusing the hell out of me. Finally, it is explained: Rocketplane Limited, Inc., the company that owned the intellectual property from Pioneer Rocketplane, and who was developing the Rocketplane XP, changed its name to Rocketplane Global, Inc. Kistler Aerospace changed it's name to Rocketplane Kistler, moved from Washington state to Oklahoma and subcontracted out the work to ATK. Rocketplane, Inc. was the holding company that owned the other two.

At any rate, RpK and RpG represented the last vestiges of what I like to call NewSpace v1.0. Companies like Virgin Galactic, Armadillo, XCOR, SpaceX, and Masten (i.e. companies that actually build stuff) represent NewSpace v2.0 (notice that several of these companies are headed by people who already have a track record of successful companies). Several years ago, at the 2007 X-Prize cup, I posted my reasoning for why I think v1.0 failed. So as to not waste time re-writing the same thing over again, I'll merely quote myself:

This is how the future will begin!
This is how the future will begin!
This is how the future will begin!

Not with a billion dollar government contract, but in someone's garage!



I remember about 10 years ago when Newspace was just beginning, there was a made for TV move called Pirates of Silicon Valley. What fascinated me about the film was the fact that Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak built the first Apple I computers in Wozniak's parent's garage with part from Radio Shack. Bill Gates started out writing an operating system for one of world's first personal computers: the Altair 8800, and later went on to sell DOS to IBM for buku bucks.

The point is that theses giants of the computer industry started out from humble beginnings, working with what they had and built what they could. At the time this movie came out there were many hopefuls, such as Kistler, Pioneer Rocketplane, Kelly Space & Technology, and Rotary Rocket, trying to break down the door to space for everyone. "Give us just $100 million and we can do it." they would ask as I banged my head against the wall in frustration. Of course they would never be given $100 million by the likes of Gates or Jobs. Those two guys started with nothing but these guys were trying to do something like build an iPod or write Widows Vista when all they could afford were parts from Radio Shack. Gates and Jobs are shrewd businessmen and they know a bad business plan when they see one.

A decade has passed since the inevitable demise of the first generation of Newspace companies. They left in their wake millions of dollars in development money wasted, some flashy Powerpoint presentations, and some nice looking websites. Yet hope for what these companies originally promised is here and I witnessed it at the X-Prize Cup...

 

[EarthlingX]

www.thespacereview.com : The gap in NewSpace business plans

by Jeff Foust

Monday, July 12, 2010

Rocketplane, in the end, went out not with a bang but with a whimper, one so faint it literally took weeks for the rest of the space industry to notice that the launch company was finally, officially, out of business.

In mid-June Rocketplane filed bankruptcy papers with the state of Wisconsin, where the company and its suborbital and orbital subsidiaries, Rocketplane Global and Rocketplane Kistler, had been based since leaving Oklahoma last year. The filings went unannounced and unnoticed until the Oklahoma Gazette, an alternative weekly publication in Oklahoma City, reported on the filings last week.

 

[ZiraldoAerospace]

I don't understand what they thought they were going to achieve, I always believed that they would eventually fail. I was actually surprised that they got so far when it comes to building actual hardware.

 

[PistolPete037]

http://www.thespacereview.com : The gap in NewSpace business plans

by Jeff Foust

Monday, July 12, 2010

Rocketplane, in the end, went out not with a bang but with a whimper, one so faint it literally took weeks for the rest of the space industry to notice that the launch company was finally, officially, out of business.

In mid-June Rocketplane filed bankruptcy papers with the state of Wisconsin, where the company and its suborbital and orbital subsidiaries, Rocketplane Global and Rocketplane Kistler, had been based since leaving Oklahoma last year. The filings went unannounced and unnoticed until the Oklahoma Gazette, an alternative weekly publication in Oklahoma City, reported on the filings last week.

The Rocketplane bankruptcy situation is the nail. Jeff Foust is the hammer. Jeff hit the nail square on the head with that article.

I highly recommend that everyone read Jeff's take on the RpK situation because his analysis of NewSpace v1.0 is the most succinct that I have ever read.