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  Image from a mid-October test firing of the E-2 rocket engine injector. [credit:
  John Kraus/Launcher ]

Max Haot is not your typical rocket scientist, and Launcher is not your typical rocket company.

To be fair, Haot really isn’t a rocket scientist at all. He’s more of a video and technology guy, starting his career in the late 1990s by running digital operations for IMG Media and later founding Livestream. He had always maintained a deep interest in space, however, and by 2017 when he began to look around for something else to do, he returned to those dreams.

Haot viewed the opening of the cosmos as an epochal event in human history. “Ultimately think if humans will be around in 10,000 years, the most important events will be Sputnik and the Moon landings,” he said. “I wanted to contribute to that.”