Catapulting satellites into space, putting data center heat to work, and making the case for a shake-up in memory technology — it’s all in this week’s Prototype. To receive it in your inbox, sign up here.
The space economy has a launch problem. As I noted earlier this month, demand for rocket launches is already running ahead of available capacity, and there’s a real possibility that 2026 could see fewer launches than 2025. Plenty of rocket startups and aerospace companies are working to expand access to orbit, but the old saying exists for a reason: Rocket science is hard, and delays are part of the business.
That’s the opening Winnie Lai is trying to address by taking rockets out of part of the process. Lai is the founder of Auriga Space, a company building a linear electromagnetic accelerator designed to launch rockets to high altitudes before their engines take over and carry them the rest of the way to orbit. In effect, the system is meant to replace a conventional rocket’s first stage.
The concept has been around for decades. Physicist Gerard O’Neill proposed a similar approach in the 1970s, and researchers have continued to revisit the idea over the years. Electromagnetic launch systems are already in use in other settings: The U.S. Navy’s aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford, for example, relies on an electromagnetic system to help fighter jets take off.
What has kept the technology from becoming practical for space launches, Lai told me, is that the components simply weren’t advanced enough. Recent progress in electronics and semiconductors, she says, has changed that. Auriga has already built prototype systems capable of firing small metal slugs at speeds up to Mach 2.4 — more than 1,800 miles per hour.
The company has raised more than $12 million from investors and Department of Defense grants. Earlier this month, Auriga said it is bringing its Prometheus accelerator to market, though not yet for orbital launches. Instead, the system will be used to test materials at hypersonic speeds, giving the company a way to generate revenue as it continues developing the technology. Axiom Materials has signed on as a pilot customer.
Auriga is also pursuing defense applications, including potential anti-drone systems. Longer term, however, its ambitions are much bigger: The company wants to build a multi-kilometer accelerator capable of sending small satellites into orbit.
“Our ultimate goal is to make space launch more efficient,” Lai said. “By increasing efficiency, we believe we can bring down the cost and enable more frequent launches.”
Quick housekeeping note: I will be on vacation next week, but will be back with a new edition on July 24th.
Discovery of the Week: This Tiny Tube Could Turn A Data Center’s Heat Into Electricity
One of the challenges of the AI era is managing the heat generated by the servers that run it, which must be cooled with air or water to avoid overheating. That uses around 20 to 40% of the power going into them. One tantalizing possibility in managing this heat are thermoelectric products that convert heat directly into electricity. Such devices are already used for some applications, but efforts to bring them to industrial scale have tended to fall short due to economics or mechanical inefficiency.
New research from Korean university Postech could change that. Scientists there have developed a method that uses silicon nanotubes for thermoelectric devices, which could make it possible to scale up the technology and enable data centers to recycle their waste heat into electricity.
The key, according to their research, is silicon nanotubes: As it turns out, these tiny, hollow tubes work much better than solid wires for thermoelectric devices. The hollow center traps heat-carrying vibrations, while still allowing electricity to flow. Nanotubes reduced heat flow by up to 70% compared to silicon wires, solving one of thermoelectrics’ biggest problems: blocking heat while still allowing electricity to flow. That’s been especially difficult with silicon, which has historically let heat pass through too easily, limiting the efficiency of thermoelectric devices.
Next up, it needs to be shown the technology can be scaled up to observe its performance in a larger commercial generator. If successful, silicon nanotubes could be used in thermoelectric devices attached to AI servers, EV batteries or even industrial machinery to turn their waste heat into useful energy.
– by Sydney Goitia-Doran
The Hot Take: Memory Tech Needs More Disruption
Each week, I ask investors for their take on tech trends within their industries. Today the answers come from Michael Stewart, managing partner at M12, Microsoft’s venture fund. His investments are focused on generative AI, hardware and gaming.
What tech is being overhyped right now?
Humanoid robotics. Why? Because as much as the use case makes total sense to me, robots are generally not universal. They’re almost always specialized, right? So it could happen with a huge behavioral mindset change in society to accept humanoids everywhere as some people think. But I believe the initial experiment with humanoids will be phase one: humanoids. Phase two? A bunch of super specialized non-humanoid looking things, but we’ll see.
What should more people be talking about today?
Innovation in memory technologies in semiconductors. Everybody can comment on the memory cycle, the prices, but disruptive innovation in memory has been absent for as long as I’ve been investing. And I’m one of the only people I know that actually has invested in memory startups. So that is to me the biggest area in this conversation that we could be deploying more in.
What are we all going to be talking about in five years?
I think we’re still maybe underestimating how attached and important personal AI will be in our lives. It will integrate at a level that’s very difficult to compare to something today. In fact, we’ll be maybe wistfully, not in a bad way, but wistfully looking back and thinking like, “Remember those days when the AI had to be prompted and told how to help out?” And it will get to a point where it’s quite essential for your everyday life in a way where you’ll be safeguarding it and being very careful about it.
What’s Entertaining Me This Week
I recently rewatched one of my all-time favorite movies, A Man For All Seasons. Based on Robert Bolt’s play of the same name, it stars Paul Scofield as Thomas More, who was persecuted by King Henry VIII for refusing to take an oath acknowledging him as the head of the Church in England. It’s a cliché to say “they don’t make movies like this anymore”–they do, but there are simply too few of them. This is a whip-smart film that explores issues of corruption and moral integrity, showing how much easier it is to go along than to stand your ground. It never dumbs itself down to the audience and features some of the most crackling dialogue of all time: “Why Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world… but for Wales?”
