In this on‑site interview, journalist Ashlee Vance tours LongShot Space Technologies' Oakland prototype "space gun," a 65‑foot (eventually planned 10‑km) hypersonic launch tube built inside a shipping container. CEO Mike Grace explains the kinetic launch concept: accelerating a half‑kilogram projectile to Mach 4.5 by investing ~99% of the required orbital velocity on the ground via a series of high‑pressure gas bursts and “boosters.” CTO Nathan Sycheck demonstrates the loading, burst‑disc firing, and sled‑spring recoil system, culminating in a successful test shot of a 4.5‑lb projectile. The discussion covers technical details (multi‑stage gas injection, Mylar burst discs, steel‑concrete sled, automotive springs), scaling plans (medium, large, and a 10‑km Nevada version), and the company’s funding strategy—seeking Air Force and DOD hypersonic contracts while emphasizing independence from government handouts. Grace also shares a broader philosophical vision: enabling cheap, frequent access to space could unlock limitless material wealth for humanity, averting a resource‑constrained future on Earth. The interview interweaves humor, skepticism about competing with SpaceX, and personal anecdotes about the team, including Sycheck’s “mascot” dog Reese.
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It's apparently entirely legal to build a giant gun in the middle of a city. Because here we are in Oakland, California, inside of a shipping container. And here is some plastic tubing that can fire off metal projectiles at more than 4 times the speed of sound.
I tell people there's a Chuck E. Cheese's, a homeless encampment, a water treatment facility, AAA, and a space gun. That's the cluster we're in.
Why would anyone need such a big gun? And why would anyone let this guy be in charge of it? Well, this is about sending stuff to space and betting on— wait for it— a long shot. Will I show you this gun firing? Oh yes, I will. But first, let's meet Mike. He is unconventional even among the unconventional when it comes to aerospace CEOs. You'll see.
My name's Mike Grace. I am the CEO and co-founder of LongShot Space Technologies Corporation. This delightfully overblown piece of sewer pipe you see behind you is a gun that can push about half a kilogram up to about Mach 4.5.
And like the idea of the super gun was— Sort of the same of the rocket in the sense that we're just going to launch a projectile super far.
Super, super fast. A rocket has to carry all the energy and infrastructure and fly. Right. A kinetic launch system is just make it go super fast and let it go. So all the speed is being invested on the ground versus being invested in flight. You know, really, really great rockets deliver like 1% of their total mass to orbit. That's bad. And if they only blow up catastrophically 1 out of 500 times, that's an amazingly good rocket. And if you were to apply that standard to, say, your automobile, right, you know, it would be the size of a house and it would kill you monthly, right? The core point that I make about superguns is like, it's not the technology, it's the lack of a good weapons application. We find ourselves in this place because after World War II, the Soviet Union and the United States collectively sank about $4 trillion into rockets. And that was because it was a weapon and they were showing off, "Hey, you better not mess with us. We can do this." The increasing accuracy and numbers of Soviet missiles is the most serious problem facing our strategic forces today.
So writ large, you're saying there was a universe where we were working on both these technologies, similar technologies to do a similar objective.
We attached to one and there's a huge sunk cost in this. And it really has to do with nuclear deterrence.
Being a space startup is great because you can say just about anything and people will often take you seriously. But also, this isn't a totally horrible idea. Rockets are complicated and expensive, and they're hard to launch very often. If there was a simpler, cheaper way to send things into orbit, satellite makers and others would rejoice.
Let's break this down for people who know like nothing about space. I mean, can you use rockets? It's tough. You have to get through the Earth's gravity, so you're spending all this fuel, all this energy.
You're constrained by the energy you can carry.
Right. And so fundamentally, I mean, this is one attempt to get rid of that where you build all this machinery on the ground, you put all this effort into making thing go fast from here.
Like 99% of the velocity is invested on the ground.
Yeah.
Our approach is you've got this super, super, super long tube. Instead of doing one super heavy injection of gas, this gun has four. And the way that this works is the vehicle has a very long wedge sticking off of the rear of it, and gas is blowing in from the sides, and right as this thing is passing, you're squeezing.
And this one is how long?
This is—
This is like 65 feet.
65 feet, and the final might be like 10—
10 kilometers. 10 kilometers.
This shipping container version of the space gun is just the start. LongShot has plans for medium, large, and totally nuts versions in the future. And it's in the process of raising money to fund all this right now.
Okay, possibly quite a dumb question, but obviously this—
How do you go to space?
Yeah.
No, it's great.
Even in the rendering I saw on the wall, I don't see like a—
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's no— Curves. So the thing is, if you do a curve, If you're going at orbital velocities and then you start doing this, show me how much force you're actually putting on that track. The sudden G-forces and the jerk from that maneuver is going to be horrific. And the more massive the vehicle is, like, you just might not be able to build a structure that can take the shock of that. Also, cool thing, despite what some people say, the Earth is curved. And so it's dropping away from you and you're going up.
Okay, so this thing is 10 kilometers long.
10 kilometers long, flat on the ground.
The projectile comes out the end. Yep. And then how far is it traveling?
Probably want to make sure everything is clear downrange for something on the order of 60 to 80 kilometers. And then you're going to be out of the atmosphere in something like 120.
I appreciate everything you said. I'm sure people have told you you're crazy many times. Yes. I mean, isn't this fucking nuts?
It is.
But you know, here's the thing. You know what I think is fucking more nuts?
Right?
Thinking that you're going to compete with SpaceX. By doing what SpaceX did 15 fucking years ago. That's crazy.
Now that you've met Mike, it's important that you meet someone else.
Well, I wanna talk more about the gun, and I believe you have a Nathan for me.
I do have a Nathan for you.
Yeah, so—
Nathan for you.
Our Nathan is Nathan Sycheck, LongShot's Chief Technology Officer, and the dude has a totally unnerving LinkedIn page. Electrically actuated nitinol hinge, check. Computer support technician, check. Network admin, check. Software for satellites, brain implants, a bunch of other stuff, rockets, and then finally Longshot. He also has an unnerving dog.
This is Reese. He's kind of our mascot. He's 13 years old. He's blind as a bat. He has disc disease and arthritis and separation anxiety. He takes 4 pills a night to manage all of his various conditions. But as far as we can tell, he's still capable of joy. So as long as he's still capable of joy, we'll keep him around.
Nathan is going to get us ready to fire this gun so that I can feel like a man.
First, we have a projectile that gets loaded into the barrel. We seal off both ends of the barrel with Mylar burst discs, and behind the projectile, we install a breech system that connects to a high-pressure tank. It'll pop a burst disc, release the gas from that high-pressure tank to rush down and push the projectile down the barrel. Today's projectile weighs almost exactly 4.5 pounds. It's a scaled-down version of the system we're going to build in Nevada. It's not optimized for speed. It's optimized for being the right ratio of mass to pressure that we would experience in Nevada as well. You ready?
Yeah. Like Rhys, I'm still capable of joy under the right conditions. We got the red light.
All right.
Now just 3, 2, 1.
Yep.
3, 2, 1. Oh, shit.
That was satisfying.
Yeah, I like that.
To understand how this all works a little better, let's go take a look at the wonderful mess we've made.
It's just all these layers of carpet going in that— just a huge thing of carpet.
Yeah, so this is like 500 pounds of steel in front of like a bit more than a ton of concrete in a several hundred-pound safe that's on a giant sled that's backed up by a bunch of automotive springs. When we do really high-speed shots, it makes it almost all the way to the back of the box. At this end of it, this is our feed line that comes in, and this is where we put our triggerable burst disc. And when we want the system to fire, we pop the burst disc, and then that high-pressure air blows through and hits the projectile. And starts the projectile on its journey.
But then there's one of those at each of these three different—
Exactly.
What do you call those again?
Boosters.
At the boosters.
In the near term, LongShot hopes to make money from the Air Force and other government bodies. The U.S. is currently funding tons of hypersonic tests in a bid to catch up to China. But the founders are pretty explicit that they have little desire to live off hypersonic handouts.
When I started LongShot, it was strictly a space launch thing, but we're playing We're planning on offering our kind of like hypersonic launch option. And I've told the hypersonics people at DOD, I do not care about you as a customer. Like, we are going to build something amazing and I am happy to have you along for the ride. I call it killing your baby.
Okay.
That's what I call it. It's chopping up your baby.
You're supposed to do that?
Part of this, of course, is just that space shit is fun and big guns can be fun too. Part of it though is also philosophical and tied to where humanity may be heading. At least, It's about all that for Mike.
If you're actually serious about, like, sending human beings to space, Hawaii requires 10 tons per person per year. That's what they import to keep Hawaiians at a Hawaiian standard of living. They have potable water that falls out of the sky for no good reason. Fish, they've got pineapples, they've got all kinds of stuff. So if you're actually talking about starting a colony on Mars or the moon or deep space, you're looking at hundreds of tons of stuff per person per year sustained for a long time. So I think that rockets are probably what we're stuck with for putting human beings into space because the low G-forces. But that 100 tons of stuff per 100 kilograms of human being, that's gonna be this guy right here. There is a future where basically all heavy industry goes off of Earth and it's better. There's a future of completely unconstrained material wealth because the solar system has enough stuff to support a human civilization of trillions. The civilization that exists 200 years from now for our descendants is going to be resource-constrained, trapped on Earth and at each other's throats on a dying planet, or it is going to be a future of infinite abundance. One of those two things. One of those is a future in which we got to space early enough that resource constraints stopped mattering and we were able to preserve the Earth as kind of a garden for humanity, and the other is a really, really dark future. I think it's important.
Now that is passion, people. There are all sorts of reasons why Longshot won't work. We're not really sure what happens when you blast electronics into a wall of atmosphere at such speeds. And the company will of course need tons of money and time to build its big gun in Nevada. Still, these two dudes are likable, and you just sort of want them to succeed.
