Forget rockets — Longshot wants to fire cargo into space from a gun. See it at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026
- ID
- 34960
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 14 Oct 2026, 2:05 AM
- Fetched
- 14 Oct 2026, 3:02 AM
- Provider
- TechCrunch
- Category
- technology
- Original URL
- https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/13/forget-rockets-longshot-wants-to-fire-cargo-into-space-from-a-gun-see-it-at-techcrunch-disrupt-2026/
- Source URL
- https://techcrunch.com/feed/
Summary
- Score
- 2.0
- Created
- 14 Oct 2026, 3:03 AM
- Tags
- Audience
- saas_founders
What happened
Longshot Space Technology, an Alameda, California startup co-founded by CEO Mike Grace and CTO Nato Saichek, is building a ground-based gun that fires cargo into space instead of using a first-stage rocket. It has raised about $20 million and is adapting 'multi-injection gun' designs — a horizontal steel pipe with high-pressure gas tanks attached at ports along its length that fire as the projectile travels down the barrel — originally built for World War II and 1960s research programs. The pitch, per Grace, is doing for that existing gun research what he says SpaceX did with NASA rocket research: scaling already de-risked technology rather than inventing something novel. The piece is a TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 session promo and the excerpt cuts off mid-explanation.
Why it matters
This is a conference-promotion writeup with no product, benchmark, pricing, or launch date — there is nothing here that changes what a developer, AI learner, or SaaS founder should build or buy this week. The only concrete decision-relevant facts are that a launch-hardware startup raised roughly $20M on a re-application of 1940s–1960s gun research, and that TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 runs with discounted passes; the text gives no Malaysian or Southeast Asian angle, no AI component, and no tooling anyone in this audience would adopt.
Discussion angle
Grace's framing — 'you can build something that has a lot of novelty, or you can do something really hard, you don't get to do both' — is the one transferable idea: is repackaging decades-old, already-proven research and scaling it a credible strategy for capital-heavy hardware founders, or does a $20M raise on a WWII-era gun design illustrate how expensive 'hard' gets?