eSpace Webinar – Mikhail Kokorich, founder of Destinus SA

The whole history of humanity is the story of our struggle with space and time. Mastering new horizons, moving ever farther; driven by the desire for a better life or for profit, out of fear or out of sheer curiosity, people found ever faster, easier, cheaper, and safer ways to conquer the space between here and there. The mastering of new territories is impossible to imagine without transport. The invention and proliferation of new means of moving people and goods — such as railways, aviation, containers — has created the modern economy that we know. The aviation industry didn’t experience larger disruption since the proliferation of jet turbines in the 50th. But now we see an explosion of new concepts for automobility that also try to open a new angle – sustainability. The aviation industry is one of the primary pollutants on Earth. The delivery of cargo or passengers creates 10-100x times more CO2 emissions than terrestrial or marine transport. Almost all of the new companies aim to revolutionize only local transport. But without a revolution on long-haul aero transportation, we will not be able to change the face of this big industry.

Mikhail Kokorich (born 1976, in Siberia) is a well-known space entrepreneur. He has founded several successful space technology companies. Dauria Aerospace was Russia’s first private aerospace company. Canadian-based Helios Wire was a satellite IoT operator and sold to EchoStar in 2019. Astro Digital is a prominent US microsatellite company, one of the key DARPA suppliers. In 2017 Mikhail founded Momentus Inc., a provider of space infrastructure services. Momentus went public on the NASDAQ in August 2021.
In 2021 he moved with his family to Switzerland. He started a new company, Destinus, to develop a hyperplane, a hybrid of a rocket and an airplane that can deliver express cargo anywhere in the world in 1-2 hours.