SpinLaunch was founded in 2014 by Jonathan Yaney, who previously started Titan Aerospace, a solar-powered drone company and subsequently sold it to Google. They raised $1 million in equity in 2014, the year SpinLaunch was founded, $2.9 million in equity in 2015, $2.2 million in debt in mid-2017 and another $2 million in debt in late 2017. SpinLaunch has raised a total of $10 million to date.
Last month, a bill was proposed in the Hawaii state senate to issue $25 million in bonds to assist SpinLaunch with “constructing a portion of its electrical small satellite launch system.”
SpinLaunch employs a rotational acceleration method, harnessing angular momentum to gradually accelerate the vehicle to hypersonic speeds. This approach employs a dramatically lower cost architecture with much lower power.” SpinLaunch is targeting a per-launch price of less than $500,000.
The Slingatron would not replace rockets. It would complements rockets, freeing them to launch what they launch best. Slingatron is best suited to launch bulk materials such as water, fuel, building materials, radiation shielding, g-load-hardened satellites, etc. into orbit. It cannot launch people or very delicate equipment due to high acceleration (g) loads experienced during the launch cycle. However, bulk materials will account for the majority of mass launched into orbit if we are ever going to establish a major presence in space, whether those materials are launched from the Earth or from the Moon.
Thank you for the link. That answers a lot of questions.