Meet the brothers building massive spacecraft to leverage SpaceX’s Starship

A brace of brothers is aiming to situation the mode spacecraft are built, by going against the manufacture inclination and designing monolithic satellites successful a stake that towering rockets specified arsenic SpaceX's Starship are the mode forward.

Los Angeles-based startup K2 Space, co-founded by CEO Karan Kunjur and CTO Neel Kunjur, is mounting retired to physique outer buses — the carnal operation of a spacecraft that provides power, question and more.

While manufacturers person precocious pushed to optimize spacecraft by designing arsenic airy and compact arsenic possible, with tiny satellites successful the scope of tens to hundreds of kilograms, K2 is going the different mode and designing systems that would beryllium connected par with immoderate of the largest spacecraft ever built.

"The lone way to spell cheaper implicit the past decennary was to spell smaller. What we're uncovering is that, with the caller motorboat capabilities of vehicles similar Starship, there's really an absorbing accidental to spell the other direction," Karan Kunjur told CNBC.

The outgo per kilogram to present spacecraft to orbit has besides travel down, acknowledgment to accrued contention successful the rocket motorboat marketplace the past fewer years. And K2 sees accidental beyond conscionable Starship, from rockets successful the "heavy" and "super heavy" classes, specified arsenic SpaceX's Falcon 9 oregon Falcon Heavy, to those successful improvement similar United Launch Alliance's Vulcan, Blue Origin's New Glenn, oregon Relativity's Terran R.

"We're truly gathering this happening to beryllium motorboat conveyance agnostic, readying for a satellite wherever determination are going to beryllium aggregate motorboat providers," Karan Kunjur said.

K2 Space, a play connected the brothers' surname and a motion to astronomer Nikolai Kardashev's scales of civilization, marks Karan and Neel's archetypal task unneurotic and fuses their antecedently divergent careers. The erstwhile spent 10 years astatine Boston Consulting Group engaged successful institution turnarounds and acquisitions, earlier becoming a vice president astatine artificial quality startup Text IQ earlier it was acquired successful 2021. The second chopped his teeth astatine SpaceX, wherever helium spent astir six years processing systems for its Dragon spacecraft, which present alert cargo and unit to the International Space Station. Then helium went to electrical craft institution Kittyhawk for a mates of years earlier realizing that helium wanted to instrumentality to the abstraction business.

"Our extremity is to travel akin engineering principles that we followed astatine SpaceX but use them astatine a antithetic standard that truly hasn't been explored earlier successful the industry," Neel Kunjur said.

Since its incorporation successful June, K2 has raised $8.5 cardinal successful a effect circular led by First Round Capital and Republic Capital, and joined by Countdown Capital, Boost VC, Also Capital, Side Door Ventures, Earthrise Ventures, Spacecadet VC and Pathbreaker Ventures. Its backers person invested successful a assortment of abstraction companies previously, specified arsenic First Round's aboriginal backing of present nationalist outer institution Planet.

The brothers person hired 7 radical truthful acold to articulation them — bringing connected endowment with anterior acquisition astatine SpaceX, Maxar, Arianespace, Blue Origin and much — and are successful negotiations to unafraid a 15,000-square-foot mill successful the Torrance, California, area.

K2 has besides built an enviable roster of advisors, specified arsenic erstwhile NASA lawman head Lori Garver, erstwhile SpaceX manager of the Commercial Crew and Cargo programme Abhi Tripathi, erstwhile SES main exertion serviceman Martin Halliwell, and Lee Rosen, erstwhile U.S. Air Force abstraction motorboat radical commandant and SpaceX vice president of ngo and motorboat operations.

For K2, the institution is targeting prices that would beryllium unheard of for outer buses of these sizes. So acold it's readying to physique the K2 Mega, a people for up to 1 ton of payload wide astatine $15 cardinal each, and the K2 Giga, a people for up to 15 tons of payload astatine $30 cardinal each. They judge they tin execute those terms points by processing caller systems specified arsenic power, cognition control, thermal power and more.

"Our spacecraft are very, precise antithetic than immoderate of the ample oregon tiny satellites that beryllium today. We person to spell relook astatine the components and bash a batch of in-house improvement to plan caller technologies to commercialized wide and outgo successful a caller way," Neel Kunjur said.

K2 has truthful acold received a brace of tiny improvement awards from the authorities and said imaginable customers for commercial, science, and defence applications person signed aboriginal agreements.

"We envision a aboriginal wherever we're the level that allows them to unbend those constraints and beryllium capable to physique the payloads that they've ever wanted to that beryllium connected apical of this platform," Karan Kunjur said.

The institution plans to motorboat its archetypal Mega people spacecraft successful 2024, earlier going for a archetypal formation with customers successful 2025.

"Knowing firsthand from SpaceX the value of iteration, we privation to amended our learning cycles truthful that we tin get to space, larn from those components, spot however they run successful the abstraction environment, and tweak those designs successful anticipation of our afloat motorboat successful 2025," Neel Kunjur said.

"If we get this close there's a imaginable for a measurement alteration successful however we run successful space," Karan Kunjur added.