Longshot Explores Gun-Based Cargo Launches Beyond Hypersonic Tests

Longshot Space Technology is developing a reusable, ground-based pneumatic accelerator for hypersonic testing while exploring a longer-term system to send cargo toward low Earth orbit.

The Alameda, California, startup’s accelerator uses repeated injections of compressed gas along a barrel to propel payloads at high speed. Longshot says it has reached Mach 4.2 and completed more than 100 shots.

Its near-term business is focused on hypersonic research for defense and aerospace customers. Space launch remains a future objective that would move much of the propulsion hardware from a flying vehicle to reusable infrastructure on the ground.

“For decades, access to space has been constrained by the economics of rockets,” founder and CEO Mike Grace said. “We’re pursuing a fundamentally different approach.”

Longshot has raised $20 million, including a $5 million investment from South Park Commons announced June 23, 2026. Longshot Space Technologies Corporation also received a $1,899,188 Phase II award through the U.S. Small Business Innovation Research program.

The government-backed project targets the release of 100-kilogram payloads at Mach 5, with a target cost of about $250,000 per launch. The proposed payload would travel roughly one kilometer parallel to the ground before striking a berm, so the proposed test was suborbital, not an orbital launch.

Longshot’s published testing schedule lists a 29-inch-diameter, 2,000-foot system for testing in spring and summer 2027. The company’s stated space-launch objective is to carry nonhuman cargo toward low Earth orbit.

That concept would face major engineering requirements. Payloads would need to withstand extreme acceleration and atmospheric heating, and they would still require an onboard propulsion stage to support an orbital mission.

The company has not demonstrated an orbital launch. Its current results and planned testing center on hypersonic acceleration, while gun-based cargo delivery remains a longer-term concept.