Longshot Space: a giant hydrogen cannon to orbit at $50/kg
Key points
Key takeaways from TechCrunch Startup Battlefield 2026 pitch by Longshot Space co-founder and CEO Mike Grace (October 2026):
The pitch. Longshot Space wants to launch cargo to orbit for around $50/kg using a hydrogen-powered multi-injection kinetic launcher rather than a traditional rocket, effectively collapsing the first stage into a reusable ground-based gun.
How it works. The system is a multi-injection gun — "no magnets, no big centrifuges" — that accelerates a payload with a series of gentle bumps; doubling the length halves the pressure, temperature and acceleration applied to the payload.
Launch architecture. A hypersonic stainless lifting body (boost-glide technology repurposed to go up rather than down) skips on the atmosphere, then a second-stage solid rocket motor pushes it into orbit; the protective shell re-enters and is recovered from the ocean.
Scale. A demonstrator is already operational at the Barstow test facility, with a 30-inch interior-diameter gun due in December 2026 and a roughly half-kilometre system planned; Grace describes the MVP as the machine that can go toe-to-toe with Starship on unit economics.
G-force tolerance. At around 600 Gs launch acceleration, dense semiconductors, solar panels and GPUs — designed to tolerate hundreds of Gs — are the natural early payloads; large optical instruments and 20-ton geostationary satellites belong on rockets.
Funding and bookings. Longshot has raised about $20 million, has LOIs from potential launch customers, and holds roughly $15 million in hypersonic technology development bookings with the US Department of Defense.
Why different. Grace argues no rocket builder comes within an order of magnitude of Musk's unit economics for the next 15 years, so a fundamentally different, hardware-cheap approach ("sewer pipe from Korea", no Inconel, no rhenium) is the only path to opening the solar system.
Vision. Below roughly $50/kg, heavy industry migrates off-planet — "the Earth should be a garden" — with space-based compute and orbital data centres among the first markets.
Read more: YouTube — TechCrunch
