Ran out of money before real construction and testing could begin. The original "Mark 1" Roton was smaller, intended for one-off launches of Iridium satellites as a major market. Iridium collapsed - not permanently, but enough to squash our target market pretty good. We had to inflate the Roton's size and power for larger payloads, and convert the original blade-end thruster concept to the huge spinning base engine. At this point a complete change of direction might have been a good idea, but the prime investor was kind of wedded to the rotor concept and anyone who has worked with "angels" knows that a complete change of technical direction never goes over well.

Even so, when the company folded I was still working on a number of new and different designs that would have been a bit easier to build and had more of a heritage.

In later years we have learned that the best way to get a millionaire to invest in your company is to be one.