Rockets are among the greatest feats in human engineering, but to Longshot Space CEO Mike Grace, they’re an “overly exquisite solution” to the problem of sending megatons of inert mass to space.
“You need something that is dumber and much cheaper, both to build and to operate,” he said in a recent interview.
Longshot’s answer is a kinetic launch system that will be capable of reaching hypersonic speeds, and shooting projectiles to orbital velocities, for less than the cost of a Netflix subscription. It’s noticeably different than its competitors – specifically SpinLaunch, which is developing a spinning accelerator to shoot mass to orbit, and Stratolaunch, which uses a giant, specialized plane to release a hypersonic vehicle mid-air – in appearance and approach.
The biggest difference is that Longshot’s system is very, very horizontal. It is not technically a gun, as it doesn’t use an ignitor; instead, compressed ga...
