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

, Google Ventures, 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 ...

, 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 northwestern Santa Clara County, California, United States. Sunnyvale lies along the historic El Camino Real (California), El Camino Real and U.S. Route 101 in California, Highway 1 ...

. The company's headquarters are in

Long Beach Long Beach is a coastal city in southeastern Los Angeles County, California, United States. It is the list of United States cities by population, 44th-most populous city in the United States, with a population of 451,307 as of 2022. A charter ci ...

. 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 in

New Mexico New Mexico is a state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States. It is one of the Mountain States of the southern Rocky Mountains, sharing the Four Corners region with Utah, Colorado, and Arizona. It also ...

. 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 Space industry refers to economic activities related to manufacturing components that go into outer space (Earth's orbit or beyond), delivering them to those regions, and related services. Owing to the prominence of satellite-related activiti ...

. 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 as ''TIME'') is an American news magazine based in New York City. It was published weekly for nearly a century. Starting in March 2020, it transitioned to every other week. It was first published in New York Cit ...

. In April, SpinLaunch received a launch contract from

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

to test a payload. In May 2024, SpinLaunch named Chief Operating Officer David Wrenn as Chief Executive Officer, replacing Jonathan Yaney. No specific rationale for Yaney's "completed" departure from SpinLaunch was provided.

Technology

SpinLaunch is developing a

kinetic energy In physics, the kinetic energy of an object is the form of energy that it possesses due to its motion. In classical mechanics, the kinetic energy of a non-rotating object of mass ''m'' traveling at a speed ''v'' is \fracmv^2.Resnick, Rober ...

space launch Space launch is the earliest part of a flight that reaches space. Space launch involves liftoff, when a rocket or other space launch vehicle leaves the ground, floating ship or midair aircraft at the start of a flight. Liftoff is of two main ...

system that aims to reduce dependency on traditional chemical rockets, with the goal of significantly lowering the cost of access to space while increasing launch frequency. The system utilizes centrifugal force with slingshot action to accelerate rockets to eventually reach

low Earth orbit A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an geocentric orbit, orbit around Earth with a orbital period, period of 128 minutes or less (making at least 11.25 orbits per day) and an orbital eccentricity, eccentricity less than 0.25. Most of the artificial object ...

. The vacuum-sealed

centrifuge A centrifuge is a device that uses centrifugal force to subject a specimen to a specified constant force - for example, to separate various components of a fluid. This is achieved by spinning the fluid at high speed within a container, thereby ...

is able to spin a rocket at speeds of up to before releasing it on a trajectory path headed towards low Earth orbit. Once the rocket reaches an altitude of roughly , the rocket would then ignite its engines in order to reach an

orbital speed In gravitationally bound systems, the orbital speed of an astronomical body or object (e.g. planet, moon, artificial satellite, spacecraft, or star) is the speed at which it orbits around either the barycenter (the combined center of mass) or ...

of . Such rockets would be able to carry payloads of up to , with a peak centrifugal acceleration of approximately 10,000 g. Historical predecessors of this system include centrifugal guns. If successful, the centrifuge sling launch concept is projected to lower the cost of launches and use less power, with the price of a single space launch potentially reduced by a factor of 20 to under .

Considerations

Limitations

Any equipment or goods delivered by SpinLaunch must be capable of withstanding up to 10,000 G's of force for 30 minutes during the centrifugal acceleration process. Additionally, no more than of payload can be sent per launch.

Advantages

SpinLaunch's projected cost per kg of payload is approximately $1,250 – $2,500. This projection is significantly less expensive than SpaceX's current price per kg of payload on the Falcon 9 of $6,000. SpaceX's projected cost per kg on Starship, however, is less than $1,000 per kg. Real costs and prices for both SpinLaunch and Starship remain to be seen.

Flight testing

* On October 22, 2021 at its Spaceport America facility in New Mexico, SpinLaunch conducted its first vertical test of their accelerator situated at 20% of its full power capacity, hurling a passive projectile to an altitude of "tens of thousands of feet." This test accelerator, which is situated at 32°53'6"N 106°56'18"W, 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 successfully carried payloads from NASA, Airbus US, Cornell Engineering’s Space Systems Design Studio (SSDS), and Outpost. The flight followed the trajectory that had been laid in for it. After the flight all contents of the payload were inspected and found to be in good order.

References

External links

* * * * * {{cite AV media , url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGxmCvLb9bs , title=Is SpinLaunch Still Trying To Make An Orbital Accelerator? , publisher=TheSpaceBucket , via=YouTube , date=November 7, 2024 , access-date=November 11, 2024 Aerospace companies of the United States Private spaceflight companies Technology companies established in 2014 American companies established in 2014 2014 establishments in California