And to make the craft truly reusable, the Roton is supposed to land gently beneath whirling rotor blades _ which is where the ATV comes in.
32.
With each rocket producing 350 pounds of thrust, the rotors will spin fast enough for the Roton to climb off the launch pad like a helicopter.
33.
The tip thrusters will be fired at this stage too, Hudson says, allowing the Roton to hover for a few seconds before touching down gently.
34.
In March an American company will be a step closer to finding out, when a prototype of the Roton craft starts putting these concepts to the test.
35.
In a strong show of support, NASA's chief engineer was the keynote speaker at the grand unveiling of the Roton ATV-1 test vehicle.
36.
Today, the site of Roton, of which only the tower and the cloakroom remain, has been developed to accommodate small and medium-sized businesses.
37.
In 1998 Rotary Rocket proposed the Roton, a Single Stage to Orbit ( SSTO ) piloted Vertical Take-off and Landing ( VTOL ) space transport.
38.
They filed patents and got an example running in 2006 but were backed by MG Rover who subsequently went bust, leaving Roton without enough funds to continue.
39.
Perhaps the most ambitious design was Rotary Rocket's Roton, a single-stage craft that looked like a giant traffic cone with helicopter blades on top.
40.
A former mechanic at Norton, Brian Crighton, started developing his own rotary engined motorcycles line named " Roton ", whose products won several local Australian races.
