In addition to various entries in the Rocket Report newsletter that goes back to 2018, Ars Technica has not paid too much attention to the treatment of a new space company in California called Spinlaunch.
That is because the starting point is so bizarre that it hardly feels really. The company wants to build a kinetic launch system that rotates a rocket at speeds of up to 4,700 mph (7,500 km/h) before it sends it to space. Then, at an altitude of 40 miles (60 km) or so, the rocket would ignite its engines to reach an orbital speed. In essence, Spinlaunch wants to see things in space.
But the company was not a joke. After it was founded in 2014, it raised more than $ 150 million in the next decade. It built a prototype accelerator in New Mexico and performed a series of flight tests. According to the company, the flights reached heights of “tens of thousands” feet, and were often accompanied by smooth -produced videos.
Spinlaunch goes still
After these series of tests, towards the end of 2022, the company usually became quiet. It was not clear whether it had no more financing, had affected a number of technical problems when trying to build a larger accelerator, or what. Somewhat ominous, the founder and chief executive of Spinlaunch, Jonathan Yaney, was replaced last May without an explanation. The new leader would be David Wrenn and then serve as Chief Operating Officer.
“I have faith in our ability to implement the mission of the company and to market our integrated tech stack of cheap space solutions,” Wrenn said at the time. “I look forward to sharing more details about our strategy in the short and long term in the coming months.”
Words like “tech stack” and “low-cost space solutions” sounded like vague companies, and it was not clear what they meant. Neither Wrenn, almost a year ago, also immediately observed that promise to share more details about the strategy in the short and long term of the company.
