{"id":76149,"date":"2018-02-22T12:22:52","date_gmt":"2018-02-22T20:22:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/02\/stealth-space-catapult-startup-spinlaunch-is-raising-30m"},"modified":"2018-02-25T11:07:29","modified_gmt":"2018-02-25T19:07:29","slug":"stealth-space-catapult-startup-spinlaunch-is-raising-30m","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/02\/stealth-space-catapult-startup-spinlaunch-is-raising-30m","title":{"rendered":"Stealth space catapult startup SpinLaunch is raising $30M"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/stealth-space-catapult-startup-spinlaunch-is-raising-30m.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>What if instead of blasting cargo into space on a rocket, we could fling it into space using a catapult? That\u2019s the big, possibly crazy, possibly genius idea behind SpinLaunch. It was secretly founded in 2014 by Jonathan Yaney, who built solar-powered drone startup Titan Aerospace and sold it to Google. Now TechCrunch has learned from three sources that SpinLaunch is raising a massive $30 million Series A to develop its catapult technology. And we\u2019ve scored an interview with the founder after four years in stealth.<\/p>\n<p>Sources who\u2019ve spoken to the SpinLaunch team tell me the idea is to create a much cheaper and sustainable way to get things like satellites from earth into space without chemical propellant. Using a catapult would sidestep the heavy fuel and expensive booster rockets used by companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin.<\/p>\n<p>SpinLaunch plans to use a centrifuge spinning at an incredible rate inside a vacuum that reduces friction. All that momentum is then harnessed to catapult a payload into space at speeds one source said could be around 3,000 miles per hour. With enough momentum, objects could be flung into space on their own. Alternatively, the catapult could provide some of the power needed with cargo being equipped with supplemental rockets necessary to leave earth\u2019s atmosphere.<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2018\/02\/22\/spinlaunch\/\">https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2018\/02\/22\/spinlaunch\/<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What if instead of blasting cargo into space on a rocket, we could fling it into space using a catapult? That\u2019s the big, possibly crazy, possibly genius idea behind SpinLaunch. It was secretly founded in 2014 by Jonathan Yaney, who built solar-powered drone startup Titan Aerospace and sold it to Google. Now TechCrunch has learned [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":354,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1488,2028,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drones","category-satellites","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/354"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76149"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76159,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76149\/revisions\/76159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}