New startup of space entrepreneur Mikhail Kokorich raised $29 million

Swiss startup Destinus, founded by ex-owner of Technosila and space entrepreneur Mikhail Kokorich, has raised 26.8 million Swiss francs ($29 million) from venture capital investors. His new company is developing a hydrogen-powered hypersonic aircraft.

The participants of the investment round are several funds, including the Swiss business angel Conny & Co Cornelius Bersch and the American Quiet Capital, Liquid2 Ventures, One Way Ventures and Cathexis Ventures. Some of these funds were supported by Kokorich's former startups, and Bersh is now on the company's board of directors.

Destinus is Kokorich's first project since he was forced out of his flagship space startup, Momentus, which builds space tugs to deliver payloads to orbit accurately and cheaply. Last year, Momentus entered the Nasdaq through SPAC, but before that, former employees of the American intelligence services appeared in the company's management, and Kokorich himself was recognized as a threat to US national security. About why the regulators disliked him so much, the Russian Norms! said the businessman himself.

The essence of the Destinus project is the creation of an unmanned aircraft with a combined turbo-ramjet (ATR) hydrogen engine, capable of taking off from a conventional airfield, and then reaching hypersonic speed - Mach 15 at an altitude of 60 km - already on a hydrogen rocket engine. It is assumed that initially the aircraft will be cargo and will be engaged in the delivery of expensive extra-urgent cargo weighing up to a ton, such as organs for transplantation or short-lived isotopes.

Technically, this is an extremely difficult task, which has not yet been implemented anywhere: even a Boeing X-37 rocket plane similar to Destinus takes off on a launch vehicle. Nevertheless, in a release for the investment round, Kokorich promises supersonic testing of the prototype on turboramjet and rocket engines in 12-18 months. In September 2021, the startup tested a smaller Jungfrau model in subsonic flight.

“The project has a lot of ifs and big statements, but the fact that it has a flying prototype sets Destinus apart from startups trying to expand the range of private aerospace,” writes Techcrunch .