Rocketplane Kistler
former aerospace company
Rocketplane Kistler (RpK) was a reusable launch system firm originally based in Oklahoma. It was formed in 2006 after Rocketplane Limited, Inc. acquired Kistler Aerospace. NASA announced that Rocketplane Kistler had been chosen to develop crew and cargo launch services. However, having missed financial milestones NASA terminated funding for the project. It filed for chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2010.
K-1 launch vehicle
Rocketplane Kistler's primary project was the K-1, a reusable launch vehicle which was intended to get as high as geosynchronous orbit, and was hoped to compete with relatively expensive, one-shot rockets for servicing of the International Space Station.
Corporate history
Kistler Aerospace was founded in Kirkland, Washington by Walter Kistler and Bob Citron in 1993 as a private company attempting to develop fully reusable vehicles capable of earth orbit at a minimal price. Rob Meyerson, who later went on to become President of Blue Origin, was a Senior Manager at Kistler Aerospace from 1997 to 2003. The CEO was George Mueller, who previously had been a leader of NASA's Apollo Program.
“Rocketplane Kistler” enters the record as former aerospace company. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Rocketplane, Kistler and former can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1548477. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2006, 2010, 1993 and 1997.
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This entry incorporates text from “Rocketplane Kistler” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.