SAN FRANCISCO — Helicity Space, a California startup developing fusion engines for spaceflight, has raised $5 million in a seed funding round announced Dec. 11.
Helicity attracted funding from Airbus Ventures, TRE Ventures, Voyager Space Holdings, E2MC Space, Urania Ventures and Gaingels.
“We’re happy to be backed by long-term strategic partners of substance,” Helicity co-founder Stephane Lintner told SpaceNews. “We almost look at them as future clients.”
Helicity, founded in Pasadena in 2018, avoided publicity in its early years.
“The company took a lot of time dotting the i’s, crossing the t’s and lining up the right science advisors to make sure that before we raised capital, we de-risked the project as much as possible,” said Lintner, a former Goldman Sachs managing director with a Ph.D. in applied mathematics from the California Institute of Technology.
With the latest funding, “we’ll deliver a proof-of-concept fusion drive that the company is building,” Lintner said. “Before we put things in space, we need to demonstrate the full device working on Earth at smaller scale. The funding allows us to demonstrate the novelty of this concept.”
Deep Space Missions
Fusion power has been a staple of science fiction because it promises clean, plentiful energy. For spaceflight in particular, fusion engines could slash the travel time to Mars and beyond.
“If we really want to create this expansion, where we actually get to the asteroid fields or to deeper space, even to map it out and figure out what resources are there, you need a different kind of propulsion,” Lintner said.
In contrast to nuclear thermal or nuclear electric power, fusion “frees up much more energy in an extremely efficient way that requires very little fuel,” Lintner said. “Until recently fusion has always been very elusive.”
Helicity’s technology is based on the work of Setthivoine You, Helicity co-founder and chief…
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