Longshot Space Technology raises $20M to fire cargo into space from giant guns
Longshot Space Technology raised about $20M to fire cargo toward space with large guns and test hypersonics for the U.S. military.
The company's cofounders, CEO Mike Grace and CTO Nato Saichek, argue that rockets remain costly and limited by physics. Rockets must be built with almost no room for error, and only a small fraction of their weight reaches orbit. Longshot is revisiting an idea that dates to Jules Verne: using a big gun to shoot a projectile into space. The startup is not inventing a new physics concept, but applying multi-injection gun designs built for World War II and studied in 1960s research programs.
The system is intended to replace the work of a launch vehicle's first stage with a reusable accelerator on the ground. The design consists of a steel pipe mounted horizontally over the ground, with tanks of high-pressure gas attached at ports along its length. When a projectile moves down the barrel, the tanks fire at precise times to accelerate it. So far, the company has reached speeds as high as Mach 4.
Longshot is currently firing a 70-foot gun with a 6-inch diameter at its test site near Barstow, California, and says it can accelerate projectiles to near-hypersonic speeds. It expects soon to begin firing a 140-foot-long gun with a 30-inch diameter at its Alameda test site. After that, it is preparing a 30-inch diameter gun that is 328 feet long, with plans to extend it to about 3,000 feet, which the team says would make it the largest gun on the planet. That version is intended to launch 220-pound payloads at speeds up to Mach 8.
While pursuing space launch, Longshot plans to generate revenue by performing hypersonic testing for the U.S. military, which has awarded the company several contracts. Grace envisions building one of its guns on a U.S. military installation such as Fort Bliss, where it could form part of the infrastructure for testing the next generation of U.S. interceptors. The guns would not need to point upward at an angle. Longshot's projectile is a lifting body, meaning its shape generates lift, so it will gain altitude aerodynamically once it exits the barrel.
"If you want to practice shooting down a Chinese or Russian hypersonic missile, wouldn't it be nice not to pay $30 million for that?" Grace said. "This is a way for half a million, a quarter of a million bucks, of doing hypersonic clay pigeons, throw them and shoot them down, and do it really fast and really cheap."
The ultimate goal is putting large payloads into space. The team is confident it can scale its current design to accelerate payloads to as much as 5 kilometers per second, more than 11,000 mph. That is fast enough to reach space if the payload, which effectively serves as a rocket's second stage, has its own propulsion system. Doing so would require a gun 10 kilometers, or about 6 miles, long and nearly 10 feet in diameter. One problem, Saichek said, is simply finding suitable worksites.
"The hard part is not building the thing, it's finding a place where they will let you build the thing," Saichek said.
If Longshot can realize its vision, it says the system would be cheap to construct and fuel and highly reusable. Grace expects that, if everything works out, the company could send payloads to space for $50 per kilogram, about $22 per pound. The orbital data center industry needs prices to fall to around $300 per kilogram to get off the ground, according to the report, leaving Longshot room to offer a competitive price. Launching spacecraft in this form factor and under these conditions would require some modification, but at that price point, satellite operators will be willing to try, TechCrunch reported.
Longshot is among dozens of startups scheduled to present at Disrupt, which runs Tuesday to Thursday in San Francisco.
Editor's Summary
Longshot Space Technology has raised about $20 million to develop horizontal guns that use multi-injection gas acceleration to fire payloads toward space, with near-term revenue from hypersonic testing contracts for the U.S. military. The company is testing smaller guns now and plans a 3,000-foot launcher, while its long-term goal is a 10-kilometer gun that could cut launch costs to $50 per kilogram. It plans to present at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 in San Francisco.