SpinLaunch Secures First Contract
Illustration depicting SpinLaunch orbital vehicle inside the electric kinetic launcher (Credit: SpinLaunch)
LONG BEACH, Calif. (SpinLaunch PR)–Jonathan Yaney, founder and CEO of SpinLaunch, has announced that the company has been awarded a responsive launch prototype contract from the Department of Defense (DOD), facilitated by the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU).
SpinLaunch is developing a kinetic energy-based launch system that will provide the world’s lowest-cost orbital launch services for the rapidly growing small satellite industry. In 2018, the company received $40 million in a Series A financing round from Airbus Ventures, Google Ventures and Kleiner Perkins.
The recently published State of the Space Industrial Base states that the future and growth of the U.S. space economy is “critically dependent on continuing reductions in the costs and risks associated with launch. There is a bifurcation of launch providers between lower-cost, ‘bulk’ carriers…and higher-cost, ‘niche’ providers offering lower lift-mass, but launch to a specific orbit.”
“SpinLaunch fills this gap by providing dedicated orbital launch with high frequency at a magnitude lower cost than any current ‘niche’ launch system,” stated Yaney. “This will truly be a disruptive enabler for the emerging commercial space industry. There is a promising market surge in the demand for LEO constellations of inexpensive small satellites for disaster monitoring, weather, reconnaissance, communications and other services.”
In January 2019, SpinLaunch moved from Silicon Valley to its new 140,000 square foot headquarters in Long Beach, California and last month broke ground on a new $7 million test facility on 10 acres at New Mexico’s Spaceport America. First kinetic energy flight tests are expected to occur early 2020 and the company has announced its plans for first launch by 2022.
About DIU
The Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) was established in 2015 to reinvigorate and lead DoD outreach to commercial innovation hubs across the United States, beginning with Silicon Valley to Washington, DC, Boston and Austin. Its mission is to execute transformative projects with scalable impact across the joint force; accelerate the adoption of commercial technology, from AI, autonomy, cyber, human systems and space, to strengthen the National Security Innovation base (NSIB).
About SpinLaunch
SpinLaunch is reimagining space launch by revisiting fundamental physics and leveraging proven industrial technologies to create a system that accelerates the launch vehicle to hypersonic speeds using ground-based energy. Applying the initial performance boost from a terrestrial-based launch platform will enable the company to provide a substantially lower cost launch to orbit, multiple times per day, with no negative impact on our environment. SpinLaunch was founded in 2014, by Jonathan Yaney, a 1,000+ hour pilot and serial entrepreneur with 15 years’ experience founding companies in aerospace, Fortune 500 consulting, IT, and construction industries.
8 responses to “SpinLaunch Secures First Contract”
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Their approach to this engineering problem remains to be seen. Recall that Samuel Langley’s solution to the problem of heavier-than-air flight didn’t work as well as the Wright’s.
I don’t know whether it will work, but I’m a big fan of anyone trying to make rail guns or other non-rocket launch systems work. Anything that can shave a useful amount of delta-v off the launch at a cost that doesn’t eliminate any reason to do it.
I’m not sure quite what one is supposed to gather from the released photo. It looks as though it might be a rocket on the end of a centrifuge arm. How that is supposed to get anything from the ground to space, I have no idea. Given that VC’s do not enjoy anything remotely resembling a reputation for infallibility, I wonder if this whole thing is a giant put-on designed mainly to separate the gullible from their money. Maybe SpinLaunch is going to turn out to be the Theranos of NewSpace.
I get what you’re trying to say here. But “fundamental physics” gets pretty fundamentalist when anyone tries to violate it. That isn’t to say that efforts to try don’t occasionally result in loud noises and shrapnel.
If they ever get to hardware testing, there will be very loud noises and shrapnel to spare. Is it violating fundamental physics where engineering reality is ignored?
No. Fundamental physics is an unscrewable pooch – it can’t be violated.
Which isn’t to say futile attempts to do so can’t be entertaining – especially if observed from a safe distance.
That’s why Spaceport America is a good place for them to work, there is nothing for them to harm while they work their way up the experience curve with their system.
The article below was written by Maximus Yaney, brother of SpinLaunch CEO Jonathan Yaney. By the way Maximus Yaney was convicted of mortgage fraud in 2015. Will this be ARCA Space Corporation II?
http://cqrcengage.com/acu/a…
https://www.fbi.gov/contact…
CREATING SPINLAUNCH
http://maximusyaney.com/cre…
Creating SpinLaunch
By Maximus Yaney on Monday, May 7, 2018
After selling Titan, I was super excited to kick off the next big thing in aerospace. My brother Jonathan and I had been dreaming about space for over a decade. The timing sucked, but we decided to go ahead anyway and spool up the next company together. After endless brainstorming in my Chinatown apartment, we became particularly excited about kinetic launch to disrupt the rocket equation. I got a hold of Alexander Bolonkin’s book: Non-Rocket Space Launch and Flight, a 488-page behemoth which we consumed cover to cover. Bolonkin had numerous fascinating centripetal schemes and out of those was born our idea of a ground-based launcher. I came up with the name SpinLaunch and we were off to the races.
Jonathan brought tremendous enthusiasm and self-taught rocket propulsion knowledge and I brought finance, strategy, aero, materials science, and confidence that we could execute something like this. Together, it was truly a unique combination that allowed us to create SpinLaunch. Jonathan ran the experiments we developed while I built out our structure, seeded the company, raised the first two rounds of funding and pulled together all the various consultants and resources I’d used at Titan. I knew we needed to be in Silicon Valley for something this ambitious and so we set out looking for an office/warehouse near Google where we could set up shop. Back then, the facilities were still pretty bare and I used to shower in a laundry sink. Since then, the company has come a breathtaking distance, thanks to Jonathan and an incredible team.