SpinLaunch is a spaceflight technology development company working on mass accelerator technology to move payloads to

space Space is the boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events have relative position and direction. In classical physics, physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually consider ...

. As of September 2022, the company has raised US$150 million in funding, with investors including

Kleiner Perkins Kleiner Perkins, formerly Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), is an American venture capital firm which specializes in investing in incubation, early stage and growth companies. Since its founding in 1972, the firm has backed entrepreneurs ...

Google Ventures GV is a venture capital investment arm of Alphabet Inc., founded by Bill Maris, that provides Seed investment, seed, Venture capital financing, venture, and Growth investing, growth stage funding to technology companies. Founded as Google Venture ...

, Airbus Ventures, ATW Partners, Catapult Ventures, Lauder Partners,

John Doerr L. John Doerr (born June 29, 1951) is an American investor and venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins in Menlo Park, California. In February 2009, Doerr was appointed a member of the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board to provide the Pre ...

, and the Byers Family.

History

SpinLaunch was founded in 2014 by Jonathan Yaney in

Sunnyvale, California Sunnyvale () is a city located in the Santa Clara Valley in northwest Santa Clara County in the U.S. state of California. Sunnyvale lies along the historic El Camino Real and Highway 101 and is bordered by portions of San Jose to the nort ...

. The company's headquarters are in

Long Beach Long Beach is a city in Los Angeles County, California. It is the 42nd-most populous city in the United States, with a population of 466,742 as of 2020. A charter city, Long Beach is the seventh-most populous city in California. Incorporate ...

. In 2020 it opened a launch site. SpinLaunch continued development of its 140,000 square-foot (13,000 m²) corporate headquarters in Long Beach, and of its flight test facility at

Spaceport America Spaceport America, formerly the Southwest Regional Spaceport, is an FAA-licensed spaceport located on of State Trust Land in the Jornada del Muerto desert basin north of Las Cruces, New Mexico, and southeast of Truth or Consequences. With V ...

New Mexico ) , population_demonym = New Mexican ( es, Neomexicano, Neomejicano, Nuevo Mexicano) , seat = Santa Fe , LargestCity = Albuquerque , LargestMetro = Tiguex , OfficialLang = None , Languages = English, Spanish ( New Mexican), Navajo, Ker ...

. In late 2021, SpinLaunch was named one of the "World's Best Employers in the Space Industry" by Everything Space, a recruitment platform specializing in the space industry. In March 2022, SpinLaunch was listed as one of the Top 100 Most Influential Companies of 2022 by

Time Magazine ''Time'' (stylized in all caps) is an American news magazine based in New York City. For nearly a century, it was published weekly, but starting in March 2020 it transitioned to every other week. It was first published in New York City on Mar ...

. In April, SpinLaunch received a launch contract from

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...

to test a payload.

Technology

SpinLaunch is developing a kinetic energy space launch system that reduces dependency on traditional

chemical rocket A rocket engine uses stored rocket propellants as the reaction mass for forming a high-speed propulsive jet of fluid, usually high-temperature gas. Rocket engines are reaction engines, producing thrust by ejecting mass rearward, in accordance ...

s, with the goal of significantly lowering the cost of access to space while increasing the frequency of launch. The technology uses a vacuum-sealed

centrifuge A centrifuge is a device that uses centrifugal force to separate various components of a fluid. This is achieved by spinning the fluid at high speed within a container, thereby separating fluids of different densities (e.g. cream from milk) or ...

to spin a rocket and then hurl it to

at up to . The rocket then ignites its engines at an altitude of roughly to reach orbital speed of with a payload of up to 200kg. Peak acceleration would be approximately 10,000 g. If successful, the acceleration concept is projected to lower the cost of launches and to use much less power, with the price of a single space launch reduced by a factor of 20 to under US$500,000. The SpinLaunch system's historical predecessors include centrifugal guns.

Flight testing

in New Mexico on 22 October 2021, SpinLaunch conducted the first vertical test of their accelerator at 20% of its full power capacity, hurling a passive projectile to an altitude of "tens of thousands of feet." This test accelerator is in diameter, which makes it a one-third scale of the operational system that is being designed. The company's first 10 test flights reached as much as in altitude. A September 2022 test flight carried payloads for NASA, Airbus US, Cornell Engineering’s Space Systems Design Studio (SSDS) and Outpost.

Criticism

A number of reasons why this technology may not work have been put forward, including problems with massive spinning objects, potential for catastrophic damage to the payload, incompatibility with traditional liquid rocket fuels, increased atmospheric drag relative to existing technologies, and other potential problems with the idea.

References

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External links