American Rocket Company

The American Rocket Company, widely known as AMROC, was a California company founded in 1985 by George A. Koopman, Bevin McKinney and Jim Bennett, all veterans of the earlier venture Starstruck Inc, to develop hybrid rocket motors. Over its lifetime the company carried out more than 300 hybrid rocket motor test firings ranging from 4.5 kilonewtons to 1.1 meganewtons of thrust, including a test at NASA Stennis Space Center of what was reported as the world only successful 250,000 pound force liquid oxygen and polybutadiene hybrid rocket motor. AMROC also attempted private orbital and suborbital launches with vehicles such as the Dolphin rocket and the SET-1 sounding rocket. The company became insolvent and shut down in May 1996, and its intellectual property was acquired in 1999 by SpaceDev, whose later work contributed to the development of SpaceShipOne. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/