The website for my new company just went live, and we’re hiring! Go to impulsespace.com and check it out. We are developing in-space propulsion and ready to hire great people.
ECONOMICAL AND AGILE LAST-MILE SPACE PAYLOAD DELIVERYSpace is more accessible than ever, but efficiently moving payloads into higher energy orbits remains a challenge. At Impulse Space Propulsion we're changing that by providing agile, economical capabilities to access any orbit.
Each is a single piece?
Yes, still on the build plate post print. These are development units designed to operate at sea-level. Flight engines will have glorious high area ratio nozzle skirts for optimal performance in the vacuum of space
Nitrous oxide and Ethane stored as liquids
Yes, we want to provide up to 2 km/sec of Delta V, enough to move anywhere in LEO
A seven(?) month old company showing a row of Mach diamonds on the test stand. Holy cow.
Given their background at SpaceX, the leaders of Impulse Space fully believe the launch company will ultimately realize its goal of a large, fully reusable rocket in Starship. And they recognize that the launch industry is changing in response to this. Matsumori was an advisory board member at Relativity Space for three years, a company that is also seeking to build the fully reusable rocket with its Terran R vehicle. Future versions of Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket will also likely have a reusable first and second stage."This is fundamental for us," Matsumori said. "The cost per kilogram, across the board, is going down, especially with the vehicles that are coming. And Starship is certainly coming. The balance between what you launch from Earth versus what you do in orbit is starting to shift. That really means that you're going to do more in space."<snip>"One of the things I've always thought about, even going back to my SpaceX days, is what happens to space if the cost of access to space is essentially free?" Matsumori said. "What can one imagine happening to the space economy? And the answer is that there are some capabilities before that were challenging, such as pharmaceuticals, or materials, or semiconductors. If the cost of access gets that low, then these industries are possible."
In-space transportation company Impulse Space, which raised $20 million in a seed round earlier this year, announced June 17 it raised another $10 million to help accelerate work on orbital transfer vehicles.Impulse Space said it raised $10 million from venture fund Lux Capital, which invests in “frontier technologies” like space. The company announced a $20 million seed round March 30 led by Founders Fund.<snip>“With funding from Lux Capital, Impulse continues to build on a solid financial foundation and an equally strong foundation of the amazing people supporting us,” Mueller said in a statement about the new funding.
Impulse Space is partnering with Relativity to perform the first ever commercial landing on the red planet.The integrated Cruise Vehicle, Entry Capsule, and Mars Lander developed by Impulse Space will launch in 2024 on the Relativity Terran R launch vehicle. After traveling through interplanetary space for over half a year, the Cruise Vehicle will inject the Entry Capsule into the correct landing trajectory and detach. The Entry Capsule will use the proven combination of heatshield and parachute to slow down enough to safely deploy the Mars Lander into freefall. The lander will then perform a propulsive landing using purpose-built engines developed in-house at Impulse Space, completing the first commercial payload delivery to the surface of another planet.
Hard to see the business case here, the only thing I can think of is that they think NASA will start a CLPS equivalent program for Mars cargo delivery.
