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A totally green hypersonic rocket plane. This is what Mikhail Kokorich promises. A Russian entrepreneur, he emigrated to the United States before settling in Switzerland last year to found a start-up dedicated to this purpose, Destinus. What is hidden behind this a priori revolutionary project?
Self-proclaimed “Russian Elon Musk” – this is in any case the nickname given to him by the communication teams of his own start-up – Mikhail Kokorich intends to revolutionize the air transport sector. To do this, he intends to design a half-plane, half-rocket device capable of reaching Mach 15, or 15 times the speed of sound. That is to say more than 18,000 (!) km/h. To transport its goods, the craft would fly into near space. All… without emitting carbon emissions. Thanks to liquid green hydrogen.
Recharge did the math. If this plane saw the light of day, it would transport freight from Frankfurt to Sidney in just 105 minutes. Unheard of.
More than a billion to be profitable
In a blog post, Kokorich explains that Destinus needs more than a billion Swiss francs (950 million euros) to become profitable. In a first round, it has just obtained 26.8 million, via venture capital funds and family offices in Europe, North America, Latin America and Asia. He is still very far from the goal, but he says he is confident.
The money raised will make it possible to “continue the development of our hydrogen engines for aeronautics and rockets and test the first supersonic flights powered by hydrogen engines in the next 12 to 18 months”.
Kokorich has no intention of messing around with the aeronautical behemoths Boeing, Airbus or Dassault, for fear of “getting swallowed up”. On the other hand, he intends to steal their best talents, with generous salaries. Destinus has meanwhile launched subsidiaries in Madrid, Toulouse and Munich, the “European industry hotspots”.
Created in 2021, Destinus has already set up a first prototype. The size of a car, it was baptized Jungfrau. It flew successfully for five minutes at less than 150 km/h and less than 20 m altitude in November. A bus-sized model should be available soon, for slightly more advanced performance.
“The very fresh Mediterranean tuna in restaurants in Japan”
Concretely, the Destinus machine must take off like an airplane, powered by an ATR engine (air turbo rocket) to liquid hydrogen, until it reaches an altitude of 20 km. Then he would ignite his rocket engine, also powered by hydrogen, allowing him to fly about 60 km above the Earth, in the mesosphere, an area where air resistance is very low. This is where he would reach more than 18,000 km / h, before landing a few tens of minutes later at the other end of the world.
“The logic is simple,” Korkorich explained in an interview with DroneTalks. “If you want to move something from one place to another on Earth, you have to expend energy in multiple directions. First, you have to overcome gravity as long as the plane stays in the air. So the longer it is, the more losses there are due to gravity. The second is against air friction, and the third is for your maximum speed kinetic energy. »
“Yes, we need to accelerate our vehicle to a very high velocity with a rocket engine,” he explained. “So we spend more energy on acceleration. But because we are flying ten times faster, and because we are flying at such altitudes, where there is ten times less air than at 33,000 feet, our gravity and aerodynamic losses are extremely weak. In fact, you can transport something from one continent to another for less than with conventional planes. It sounds strange, but it’s not: we end up spending less energy doing it. »
Initially, it will be a question of transporting “urgent and high-value” goods. Namely medical deliveries or essential pieces of infrastructure. Subsequently, Destinus intends to diversify its activities, announcing that “the exceptional tuna of the Mediterranean will be in the kitchens of Japanese restaurants as fresh as if it had just been caught, and this, at the same price”.
Where is the scam?
On paper, the Destinus project is a dream. Looking more closely, however, there are some stumbling blocks, reports New Atlas.
On the one hand, the technology that Destinus wants to mobilize – namely, a priori, a derivative of an ATR engine capable of supporting subsonic and supersonic speeds, coupled with a rocket engine sending it to hypersonic speeds – seems currently out of order. of scope. Attempts have already taken place all over the world, without conclusive results. At least not for the use that Kokorich’s team intends to make of it, namely daily flights in the mesosphere, via a reusable device.
With (green) liquid hydrogen, however, this is not totally impossible, specifies the specialized media. But that poses another challenge: designing a hydrogen cooling system capable of preventing the plane’s structure from melting under the “tens of megawatts per square meter” of heat that hypersonic vehicles produce as they pass through the air. , even of low density, at mesospheric altitudes.
Finally, New Atlas recalls the dangerousness of the very concept of hypersonic aircraft. At this speed, each machine becomes a de facto devastating weapon, even without any explosives on board. Obtaining authorizations to fly them every day may therefore prove to be perilous.
“Difficult, but doable”
For his part, Kokorich is aware of the complexity and scope of the task facing Destinus. He considers these technical challenges “difficult, but achievable”.
“I was an investor in Mikhail’s previous company, and his pace of development is unmatched. The team began flight testing with a prototype less than six months after the company was founded. Besides his technical and engineering background, Mikhail is also one of the most organized and structured founders I have ever met,” said Destinus Board Member Cornelius Boersch.
Kokorich does indeed have quite a pedigree. After making his fortune in industrial water treatment, he launched Dauria Aerospace, Russia’s first private space company to build satellites for Roscosmos, the Russian space agency. Following disagreements with Putin and his entourage – he was for the opposition – the entrepreneur left for the USA in 2012.
In the United States, the self-described “Crazy Siberian” has set up two space-related businesses, the satellite consulting services firm Astro Digital, and Nasdaq-listed Momentus, which primarily aims to place satellites in very precise orbits (the “last mile delivery”, one could summarize).
Ultra-promising, Momentus was once valued at $4 billion. But Kokorich’s nationality — as well as some murky areas around his intentions — has posed a problem for the Trump administration, which has seen him as a national security threat. Kokorich was forced to sell his shares in the company. So here he is now in Switzerland, where it took him less than a year to launch Destinus.