Creating SpinLaunch

After selling Titan, I was super excited to kick off the next big thing in aerospace. My brother Jonathan and I had been dreaming about space for over a decade. The timing sucked, but we decided to go ahead anyway and spool up the next company together. After endless brainstorming in my Chinatown apartment, we became particularly excited about kinetic launch to disrupt the rocket equation. I got a hold of Alexander Bolonkin’s book: Non-Rocket Space Launch and Flight, a 488-page behemoth which we consumed cover to cover. Bolonkin had numerous fascinating centripetal schemes and out of those was born our idea of a ground-based launcher. I came up with the name SpinLaunch and we were off to the races.

Jonathan brought tremendous enthusiasm and self-taught rocket propulsion knowledge and I brought finance, strategy, aero, materials science, and confidence that we could execute something like this. Together, it was truly a unique combination that allowed us to create SpinLaunch. Jonathan ran the experiments we developed while I built out our structure, seeded the company, raised the first two rounds of funding and pulled together all the various consultants and resources I’d used at Titan. I knew we needed to be in Silicon Valley for something this ambitious and so we set out looking for an office/warehouse near Google where we could set up shop. Back then, the facilities were still pretty bare and I used to shower in a laundry sink. Since then, the company has come a breathtaking distance, thanks to Jonathan and an incredible team.

Originally published at maximusyaney.com on May 7, 2018.