Transforming the future of hypersonics and space access.

We are! We’ve been backed by the Air Force since 2021 through a series of SBIR/STTR awards. The awards allow us to push payloads to Mach 5 or 7. Our goal with that contract is a hypersonic testbed capable of one launch per week, allowing us to broaden hypersonic research interests. 

This has been tried before, but it absolutely worked. Check out more here. The first iteration of the multi-injection cannon was the V-3, a Nazi supergun built to rain missiles down on London across the English Channel and originally invented the concept of multiple injections, something that Longshot uses today. While the multi-injection idea worked in principle, it proved too expensive and static for war use and was discontinued and bombed out.

The next iteration of a multi-injection pneumatic gun was Gerald Bull’s High Altitude Research Project (Project HARP) in the 1960s. Bull, with support from the US Army and the Canadian government, worked on a 16-inch HARP gun at Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona to fire a projectile to an altitude of 180 km. They succeeded in proving you could send something into space with a gun, but political changes in the Canadian government had Bull out of favor with the new administration. The US Air Force remained supportive but was hesitant to foot the entire bill. Bull had much larger plans to keep payloads in orbit, but never had the opportunity to try them (go read his story).

All three historical examples succeeded in the objectives they were set to achieve. Bad timing, a lack of market, or incorrect applications are ultimately why they didn’t go any further. Today, an enormous market exists thanks to SpaceX and the new Space economy, and we think this technology can be a workhorse for heavy lift.

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Longshot is cheaper than SpaceX because our main piece of infrastructure is stationary, whereas SpaceX’s is in constant movement. When you have a stationary object as the main force behind space launch, there are so many more choices. Longshot can use steel and concrete, while SpaceX has to pick expensive materials that can withstand atmospheric flight. Think of it as the difference between developing a building that can hold 500 people for eight hours versus developing an airplane that can hold 500 people for 8 hours. One is much more expensive than the other. 

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Light gas guns such as the AEDC G range have frequently gone at these speeds since the 1950s

The Mach 23 benchmark refers to roughly 8 km/s. While our end goal is to keep payloads in space, we don’t actually need to reach 8 km/s to launch them into orbit. Speeds of 4-5 km/s (Mach 14) are the traditional threshold for leaving Earth’s atmosphere. From there, additional boosters on the payload itself give the final push to reach space, reaching Mach 23 at the end state once the payload is settled into stable orbit. 

So when we say we want our MVP launcher (potentially 3.5-meter-diameter cannon) to reach Mach 23, we don’t actually mean we are targeting an exit speed of 8 km/s. Instead, our projectiles will eventually reach that speed once they are safely launched into orbit with boosters. Our MVP muzzle velocity is Mach 14, which we’re much more confident we can reach. 

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G-force is a measure of acceleration, and acceleration depends on how much runway there is to build up speed. A quick acceleration over a short runway results in a violent jolt, while the same acceleration over a much longer distance creates a gentler push. Every time we double the length of the runway, the acceleration halves. 

Longshot’s cannon is very long: nearly ~10 kilometer long. At that length, the pressure exerted on the payload is ~250G’s. For context, your phone can survive ~700G’s. 

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We’re not SpinLaunch. SpinLaunch was also an attempt to launch objects into space using a completely different technology that employed a vacuum centrifuge to fling them at extremely high G-forces. They transitioned away from space launch in 2025 to focus on satellite development. We think a giant potato gun is the way to go simply because it’s a much smoother ride.

Longshot’s rise is coinciding with a significant parallel rise in satellite manufacturing. In 2024, a record 259 launches deployed 2,695 satellites into Earth orbit. 11,539 satellites were operating in orbit by the end of 2024, up from just 3,371 in 2020. Global satellite operators have submitted or announced plans to launch as many as 70,000 LEO satellites between 2025 and 2031. The commercial satellite launch services market is projected to grow from $8.1 billion in 2025 to $11.2 billion by 2030. 

In addition, there’s a growing need for hypersonic research, which Longshot can do frequently in the desert! 

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A multi-injection pneumatic cannon is a long tube that launches payloads using many small injections of compressed gas. Picture a potato gun, but instead of a single blast of air, you have a bunch of separate air tanks spaced along the barrel. As the payload speeds past each one, each tank fires, giving it another push. Instead of one big push at the beginning of the cannon, it's a series of pushes, allowing the payload to gain increasing speed with each push.

The core issue is something called the tyranny of the rocket equation. In essence, a rocket is a tool for lifting its own fuel that happens to do a little bit of useful transportation work. 

Current rockets spend a remarkable (~90%) proportion of their total mass on fuel because every additional kilogram of payload requires additional fuel to lift it, which in turn requires more fuel to lift that fuel. There’s a breaking point: a rocket cannot economically carry the industrial quantities of raw materials needed to build space infrastructure without entering a feedback loop in which fuel must carry its own fuel.

Even when a rocket is reusable, such as the Falcon 9, a full engine and vehicle must be built, fueled, and flown each time. Rockets incur enormous costs and downtime because carrying a fuel supply and burning it continuously during flight are fundamental to their design.

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We would be pumped if we could put stuff into space by 2030. We would be pretty sad if we put stuff into space by 2035.

Having multiple injections means each individual push is gentler on the payload, but also allows the payload to reach a very high final speed by the time it exits the barrel without harming the barrel

There are three reasons why a cannon can’t built on the side of a mountain: it’s incredibly expensive to build on the side of the mountain, there is no mountain on planet Earth with a 10km slope (the length we need), and if a vehicle is as fast as we are targeting, its impossible to curve its trajectory, which you would need given the slope of the mountain. 

We aren’t launching humans. Longshot serves as a cargo system for satellites and hardware that can be engineered to survive high-speed launch. Human bodies have physiological limits on sustained acceleration that are far more restrictive than what electronics or structural payloads can tolerate. Instead, Longshot is tailored to the growing satellite industry and its need for materials in space. 

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At Mach >14, we are confident that the same heat shields used on ICBM warheads in the 1970s can work for Longshot, and we will prove it out over the next few years.

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