[anymouse]

Actually SpaceDev bought the patents on this hybrid engine from Ameroc, who developed and tested full up engines back in the 1980s before the untimely death of it's founder in a auto wreck driving back from an engine test at their central California test facility. I interviewed with Ameroc at their Camarillo, CA facility back in 1987 when they were going strong. Some smart people working there.

NASA, Stanford and LockMart weren't interested in hybrid technology back then, until Ameroc showed how cheap, powerful and safe it was in comparison to solid or liquid rocket engines. I'm glad that SpaceDev is resurecting this technology, especially in Scaled Composites effort to win the X-Prize and reroute manned spaceflight development around NASA and its bloated contractors like LockMart.

[r9etb]

Actually SpaceDev bought the patents on this hybrid engine from Ameroc, who developed and tested full up engines back in the 1980s

In which case they might be using rubber, as opposed to paraffin.

I was merely chuckling at the "proprietary" part of the claim -- their choices are pretty limited. BTW, performance is somewhat better than existing solid rockets.

Solids generate an Isp of ~290-300 sec. Hybrids are somewhere over 320 sec, probably because you've got pure oxygen in contact with the fuel, instead of an oxygenating compound.

AvWeek did an interesting article on hybrids last year. Paraffin has tremendous advantages over rubber, having mostly to do with burn rates (and therefore thrust-generating ability).