Rocket Propulsion Systems (RPS)

Rocket Propulsion Systems (RPS) was founded in 2019 by CEO Dr. Max Ismailov (PhD Aerospace Engineering, Purdue University), who spent 2010-2019 at Blue Origin, SpaceX, Stratolaunch, and Firefly Aerospace before starting the company in Kent, Washington. RPS designs, builds, tests, and commercializes reusable propulsion systems and orbital transfer vehicles (OTVs) for space and hypersonic applications.

The company's core product is Centurion, a reusable LOX/methane staged-combustion engine priced around $150K per unit and rated for up to 50 reuses. Centurion is designed as a modular building block that can be clustered or stacked across a small satellite launch vehicle, a suborbital test vehicle, a hypersonic booster, and orbital transfer vehicles, letting RPS address multiple markets from a single engine architecture.

RPS has been funded through NASA, NSF, US Air Force, and Space Force SBIR awards, most recently a $3M Space Force contract for orbital transfer vehicle development (awarded July 2025). The company is also developing a longer-term In-Space Assembly and Manufacturing (ISAM) platform concept and is an alumnus of the NYU Stern Endless Frontier Labs and NSIN Vector programs.