Tucked away in one corner of the Space Symposium’s extensive exhibition halls is a small rocket engine that the makers claim is the only one at the show to have actually fired, and the first that will soon return to testing.

AW&ST

The 22,000-lb-thrust C&Space Chase 10 methane/liquid oxygen (LOX)-fueled rocket engine last fired up into action as recently as March 7 at the company’s Yongin City test site near Seoul, Korea. Click here.

The event marked the end of an initial test phase of the flight-weight prototype engine, which C&Space says is the world’s first methane/LOX fueled, regeneratively cooled motor to use a turbo-pump fed design. Methane is seen as an attractive propellant because it offers higher performance relative to other storable fuels, is easier and cheaper to handle because of its lower toxicity, and is easier to store long-term than liquid hydrogen

Unlike other methane/LOX developers, notably XCOR Aerospace, which last year successfully demonstrated the pressure-fed XR-5M15 engine with ATK and NASA, the engine developed by C&Space has not gone that route.

“We are the only company that has methane technology that’s not pressure-fed,” says Robert Schultz, president of CH4 Aerospace, a Colorado-based company teamed with C&Space to help market the Chase 10. Following its display at the symposium, the engine is being shipped back to Korea for more tests but could soon return – this time for longer, say the developers.

“We’d like to Americanize the engine, and run it through tests with more U.S. content to eventually make it a U.S.-certified engine,” says C&Space research engineer David Riseborough.

The process is being led by Oklahoma-based TGV Rockets which “will lead the marketing and is looking for government contracts for  us over here,” Riseborough adds. The Chase 10 already appears to be off to a good start, and has been selected as baseline for the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory’s $70 million Fully Reusable Access to Space Technology (FAST) program. This effort, however, is not yet aimed at anything other than ground tests for the moment, so C&Space’s ambitions are still firmly pointed skywards.

One glimmer of hope is the AirBoss Aerospace Proteus, a sub-orbital space tourist vehicle project which selected the Chase 10 for its power source. But the U.S..State Department objected to the close association with an off-shore rocket-maker, hence the drive to ‘Americanize’ the Chase 10.

 In the meantime, C&Space hints that further announcements are in the wings. Watch this space – literally!