Press
A German start-up has developed a twelve-meter-long rocket that essentially flies on candle wax. It has now been tested in Australia.
Koonibba – For the first time in decades, a commercial launch vehicle from a German company has launched. The twelve-meter-long rocket took off from Koonibba in Australia on Friday around 7:10 a.m. German time, a company spokesman said. The SR75 launch vehicle from the start-up HyImpulse is powered by paraffin (candle wax) and liquid oxygen. It can transport a payload of 250 kilograms and, according to co-CEO and co-founder Christian Stricher, is also capable of flying into space. This time, however, only a height of 60 kilometers was planned, so the limit to space was not exceeded.
According to the company, the rocket engine based on paraffin – a non-explosive fuel – makes handling and transport of the rocket much easier and increases safety during launch.
According to Streicher, HyImpulse, which is based near Heilbronn, wants to make a better offer for small satellites with the launch vehicle. Until now, rockets have been more like buses that only drop off satellites at certain locations in orbit. “Our rocket is more like a taxi.” It can fly to an altitude of 300 kilometers.
The rocket is the first from HyImpulse. The company is also working on a second, larger rocket called SL1, which will carry a load of up to 600 kilograms into Earth orbit and also has a hybrid paraffin and liquid oxygen propulsion system. The rockets are expected to transport satellites into space in about a year and a half.
Ex-astronaut sees many opportunities for private manufacturers
A launch of the larger commercial rocket costs around six million euros, said Stricher. The company wants to charge around 6,500 euros per kilogram of payload. According to Streicher, customers include the automotive industry, which needs satellites for navigation and autonomous driving.
Former astronaut Ulrich Walter also sees many opportunities for private manufacturers of smaller rockets. According to him, satellites are becoming smaller and smaller. The new small rocket providers are more flexible than the larger ones, where you have to book a place two years in advance. The market will grow significantly in the future, said the professor of space technology at the Technical University of Munich.
Back in the late 1970s, the German company Otrag had developed a private rocket that was intended to be a cheaper alternative. There have been some missile tests in Africa. “In today’s language, Otrag would be described as a start-up,” said Walter. The company Otrag (Orbital Transport and Rocket Corporation) said it had stopped production and research at the end of 1984.
HyImpulse is not the only start-up in Germany that is working on the development of so-called microlaunchers. There are two competitors in Bavaria: Rocket Factory in Augsburg and Isar Aerospace near Munich. All three were founded in recent years. There is also the scientifically oriented “Moraba” project at the German Aerospace Center (DLR), in which Texus launchers regularly launch from Kiruna (Sweden). dpa
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