Rocketplane Bites the Dust

Rocketplane, in the end, went out not with a bang but with a whimper, one so faint it literally took weeks for the rest of the space industry to notice that the launch company was finally, officially, out of business.

In mid-June Rocketplane filed bankruptcy papers with the state of Wisconsin, where the company and its suborbital and orbital subsidiaries, Rocketplane Global and Rocketplane Kistler, had been based since leaving Oklahoma last year. The filings went unannounced and unnoticed until the Oklahoma Gazette, an alternative weekly publication in Oklahoma City, reported on the filings last week.

While many companies in the space industry over the years (including Kistler Aerospace, whose assets were later acquired by Rocketplane) have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, allowing the company to continue operations while it restructures, the Rocketplane filings—one each for Rocketplane Inc., Rocketplane Global, and Rocketplane Kistler—were for Chapter 7, or liquidation, bankruptcy. (Also filing for bankruptcy was Rocketplane's principal owner, George French.) That means the companies' remaining assets will be sold, leaving nothing left of the companies.

There's not much of Rocketplane now in any event.…

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