Laughing gas and rubber: A recipe for suborbital flight?

Loud ATLAS

If there's not enough garden shed in all that for you, BURPG boasts its own mighty ATLAS launch platform, "to allow us to transport, test and fly Starscraper without moving it from transport vehicle to test stand/launch pad".

ATLAS

All being well, ATLAS will meet Skyscraper in Nevada in July for the big event. Before that, BURPG has a cold-flow Mk V test scheduled for the end of this month, followed by two hot-fire tests in March and April.

A MK IV hot-fire test in 2014

Such operations are not without risks, and nitrous oxide's reputation as relatively benign took a serious knock back in 2007 when a cold-flow test of the motor for Scaled Composites' SpaceShipTwo ended in an explosion and three fatalities.

Pedro assured us: "We understand the risks of N₂0 and have a very safe system for handling and operating. All fill operations are done remotely and we keep it pretty chilled." ®

Bootnote

*HTPB is also used to make the solid rocket fuel ammonium perchlorate composite propellant (APCP), in a mixture with ammonium perchlorate and powdered aluminium. Our Vulture 2 spaceplane's motor packs a Cesaroni P54-3G J140-P White Longburn APCP reload.