2020年3月16日

小发射启动狮子座航空3月16日,暂停操作2020小Leo航天运载火箭,这是在一个气球携带发射系统工作,进入“冬眠”,因为筹集资金的问题。信贷:狮子座航空华盛顿——创业发展中一个气球携带小运载火箭进入“冬眠”努力筹集资金,命运可能面临许多行业其他公司。在3月13日写给公司的投资者和其他同事,狮子座航空说挑战筹集资金和市场时机的担忧导致启动决定暂停操作,理解它可能永远不会恢复工作。“是的,我们决定暂时关闭的事情,”丹麦人鲁迪,狮子座的联合创始人和首席执行官航空、确认在3月16日的邮件。“资金是一个主要组件。“在信中,加州公司表示,它从外部投资者难以筹集资金。“筹款证明越来越困难,因投资者更重视收入来源较短时间范围,”该公司表示。此外,该公司尚未收到决定美国空军小企业创新研究(SBIR)赋予其去年申请。“延迟了4个月之后,我们的财务能力。“第二个因素,公司在信中表示,是很小的计划提供专用发射卫星可能太远远领先于市场需求。 “Although growing at an incredible rate, our customers are early-on in a nascent market that continues to mature. Looking objectively at our timing, we believe that our focus on servicing such a specific niche is early.” Leo Aerospace was developing a small launch system designed to place up to 25 kilograms into a sun-synchronous orbit. The company’s launch vehicle would use solid-propellant motors for its first two stages and a storable liquid propellant upper stage. The company planned to commercially source those propulsion systems. What set the company apart is that the rocket would launch from a balloon flying at an altitude of about 18,000 meters. That concept, called a “rockoon,” dates back to the early Space Age, but struggled because of the challenges of controlling the launch platform. Leo Aerospace said it had developed proprietary technology that provided a stable platform for the rocket, which after launch could descend back to Earth for reuse. The company also said the platform, known as Regulus, could also be used for supporting suborbital launches as well as high-altitude payloads. In an October 2019 presentation at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco, Leo Aerospace said it would perform its first orbital launch in 2022. The company estimated that it would need to raise “low tens of millions” of dollars to get to that point. It hasn’t disclosed how much money it had raised, although records filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission state that, as of early 2019, the company had raised less than half a million dollars. Leo Aerospace was one of many dozens of companies pursuing small launch vehicles. The number of companies far exceeded any projections of demand for their vehicles, leading to belief among both industry executives and investors that a shakeout was inevitable. “If you invest in one of the 40 ventures that are trying to build a rocket, why would your one of the 40 be the one that’s going to win?” said Mark Rigolle, chief executive of satellite constellation startup KLEO Connect, during a panel discussion at the Satellite 2020 conference March 9. Others on the panel said that venture capital firms may decide to stop supporting space startups in general that have limited prospects but still require significant additional funding. “I’ve been saying for the past year that we’re at a breakpoint for a lot of the startup companies,” said Chris Quilty, president of Quilty Analytics. “For those companies that have not been performing or hitting their expectations, I think there will be an opportunity where a lot of these VCs will just pull the plug.” Leo Aerospace did not cite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic as a reason it was suspending operations. However, Sequoia Capital, a leading VC firm, called the outbreak the “black swan” of 2020, with unpredictable effects on the market. In a memo to its portfolio companies March 5 , it warned that financing could be difficult if the pandemic causes a financial crisis. “Private financings could soften significantly, as happened in 2001 and 2009. What would you do if fundraising on attractive terms proves difficult in 2020 and 2021?” the company stated in its memo. Since the publication of that memo, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, a leading barometer of the overall stock market, has dropped by more than 20%.