Chimera Program

Program Overview

The goal of the Chimera program is the design and construction of a family of safe and reliable hybrid rocket vehicles of increasing capability, ranging from suborbital flight to orbital insertion.  It is anticipated that the later stages of Chimera will use hardware from earlier stages, through staging and/or clustering, allowing a wide range of flight capabilities with a minimum range of hardware.

Program StageStructure

• Stage 1 (current): Suborbital rocket which can carry 5 kg payloads past the 100 km Karman Line (OHKLA)
• Stage 2: Suborbital rocket which can carry on the order of 100 kg of payload past the 100 km Karman Line.
• Stage 3: Suborbital rocket which can carry on the order of 1000 kg of payload past the 100 km Karman Line.
• Stage 4: Orbital rocket which can deliver CubeSats or similarly sized payloads into LEO, enabling orbital insertion of satellites from the CloudLab program.
• Phase 5: Orbital rocket which can deliver on the order of 100 kg of payload into LEO.
• Phase 6: Orbital rocket which can deliver on the order of 1000 kg of payload into LEO.

Program Links

• Wiki page