Most weeklong tech events have opportunities for entrepreneurs to make contacts and trade tips, serious sessions where CEOs and public officials share their visions, and happy hours where future deals are made. But how many “tech weeks” include a show-and-tell featuring a military-grade Jet Gun?
That was one of the bonus attractions during Seattle Space Week, a smorgasbord of events served up by Space Northwest and its partners.
Just as attendees were sitting down for Monday’s opening session at the Pioneer Building in the heart of Pioneer Square, team members from Wave Motion Launch Corp. parked a box truck just outside the building and opened up the back to reveal the prototype jet blaster they’re testing for the U.S. Army.
Two of the Everett, Wash.-based startup’s co-founders, CEO Finn van Donkelaar and chief operating officer James Penna, stood in the truck and explained their project to a crowd that gathered around on the sidewalk.
Wave Motion’s Jet Gun uses a concentrated blast of gas and small particles to propel a projectile at hypersonic speeds. Unlike a rocket ship, which has to carry its own propellant, the Jet Gun would blast the projectile (or, say, a satellite) up into the air (or, say, into space) from the ground. Wave Motion says the barrel-less blaster has the potential to be up to 100 times more compact than a rocket or conventional cannon of equivalent power.
The prototype gun is a steampunk-style contraption that’s about 10 feet long.
“This is a demonstrator in the same way as SpaceX’s Hopper, right?” Penna told the crowd. “It’s a proof of concept [to show] that we can use this propulsion concept to at least make a vehicle go up and down, or wherever it wants to go. … Then, as we build larger ones that are more powerful, and we build multiples of them, we’ll be able to project the jet.”
The prototype in the back of the truck was designed to blast out a jet at velocities ranging from five to 10 times the speed of sound, Penna said. “In the orbital prototype, it’ll be a greater than Mach 20 stream of hellish steel and fire, extending for tens of kilometers through the atmosphere,” he said. “It’ll look extremely cool.”
Wave Motion Launch was founded in 2020 and won a $1.35 million award from the U.S. Navy in 2022 to work on the Jet Gun. Last year, the company received a $1.6 million contract from the Army to support continued development. “Our business strategy is that we’re doing first demos of the principle, because this is the first propulsion system of its kind that’s been built in the world,” Penna said.
It seems reasonable to think that a blaster capable of unleashing a hypersonic stream of hellish steel and fire could be used as a weapon as well as a propulsion system. Van Donkelaar acknowledged that might well be something to consider. “Hopefully we’ll pick up some military contracts with this as well,” he said.
Here are a few other highlights from Seattle Space Week:
- Space Northwest co-founder Sean McClinton said his industry group’s goal was to increase Washington state’s annual economic activity in the space sector from $4.6 billion to $40 billion by 2040, with 90 new space startups created in the next decade (compared with 40 in the past decade).
- Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson marked Seattle Space Week with a proclamation — and Joe Nguyen, director of the Washington State Department of Commerce, said he wanted to clear a path for the space industry. “This is really how we can make government an ally rather than an obstacle for the work that is being done, because this work is very urgent,” Nguyen said. “Other states and other countries are competing for this very industry.”
- Nguyen said his priorities included streamlining the permitting process for manufacturing facilities and test sites. “Can we invest in infrastructure and energy so that you have the tools that you need to be successful? Can we help foster research partnerships between universities and our companies as well?” he said.
- It’s not likely that the state will give space companies the same sorts of tax incentives that Boeing has received for airplane manufacturing, Nguyen said. But he said support could come in the form of infrastructure development: “One of the other priorities that we have at Department of Commerce is to build clean energy. … We’ve identified 21 key projects that we believe can make it in time for the IRA [Inflation Reduction Act funding] and be able to develop seven gigawatts of energy for our communities here, and that has had a tremendous benefit already. We can do that exact same thing for the space economy.”
- Several business representatives laid out a to-do list for supporting Washington state’s space industry, ranging from giving more of a boost to education and workforce development to providing more access to testing facilities for space startups. “What we’re going to do is start to develop a database of who’s got what testing resources, and figure out how we can help each other out,” said Marcy Mabry, CEO of Seattle-based SpaceLaunch. “Then, Joe, we can come talk to you.”
- Nicole Brown, senior mission manager at Tukwila, Wash.-based Starfish Space, said affordability and competition from other tech sectors posed big challenges for employee recruitment. “It’s very expensive here, and when you’re trying to recruit talent to come, even people who would really love to live here have to think twice,” Brown said. “I think we have a mission people are super-excited about, and we’re moving fast, and people are happy to come and be makers, but we cannot compete on pay with some of the other technology companies here in the region.”
Seattle Space Week concludes today with “Startup Pitches and Networking: Seattle Space Week Edition” at the Pioneer Building, followed by Space Week Karaoke at Golden Roosters in Pioneer Square. Registration is required for the pitch session (but probably not for the karaoke).
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