Hugh Kolias is looking to take on Elon Musk\u2019s SpaceX with a made-in-Canada rocket.<\/p>\n
The Calgary-born entrepreneur\u2019s startup, Canada Rocket Company, is only nine months old but has already raised $22.5 million, moved into a 7,500-square-foot manufacturing facility in Etobicoke, and broke ground on a 12,000-square-foot rocket engine test site in London, Ont.<\/p>\n
Now, the company is searching for a 500,000 square foot vehicle manufacturing facility, which it hopes to begin constructing next year, with the goal of putting a rocket into orbit by 2032.<\/p>\n
Kolias always had an interest in space, but the Queen\u2019s University mechanical engineering grad began his career in finance before launching a real estate management platform in 2016, which he sold in 2022.<\/p>\n
After spending a year-and-a-half with the acquiring company, Kolias took time off to consider his next move \u2014 just as Canada\u2019s interest in space was taking off.<\/p>\n
Kolias says the world woke up to the importance of space\u00a0after Russia jammed Ukraine\u2019s communications systems, leaving Elon Musks\u2019 Starlink as the only\u00a0way to connect its internet-enabled defence and communications capabilities.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone kind of had this \u2018wow\u2019 moment of, \u2018we\u2019re all reliant on one individual,\u2019\u201d says Kolias. \u201cOur drones, SATCOM (satellite communications), everything is reliant on these signals, and if that doesn\u2019t work, we\u2019re effectively sitting ducks.\u201d<\/p>\n
His ambitions were further fuelled by Ottawa\u2019s\u00a0sudden\u00a0commitment to space sovereignty<\/a>, and a possible\u00a0gap in the market left by SpaceX\u2019s\u00a0impending\u00a0retirement<\/a> of its Falcon 9 rocket before Musk\u2019s \u2018Starship\u2019 is finally up and running.<\/p>\n \u201cOur ultimate opportunity in the next five to ten years,\u201d\u00a0Kolias says, \u201cis becoming that medium-lift provider of choice.\u201d<\/p>\n If successful, Kolias says Canada Rocket Company would offer a launch pad for Canada and its medium-power allies\u2019 orbital technologies, while helping to secure national sovereignty.<\/p>\n The Star spoke with the co-founder and CEO from Canada Rocket Company\u2019s Etobicoke manufacturing facility about his passion for space, the country\u2019s recent entrance into a new kind of space race, and why now is the perfect time to build a rocket in Canada.<\/p>\n Have you always had an interest in rockets?<\/p>\n I was always interested in anything that moves fast. That\u2019s why I went into engineering, but somehow, I got sucked away into finance for a few years and slowly worked my way back to my original passion.<\/p>\n I was fascinated by financial derivatives and ended up working on a trading floor for a summer, and the energy was just insane, so I thought finance would be a cool career. Then I worked for a hedge fund for a few years, which sent me around the world meeting with executives from Fortune 500 companies, but that just solidified my desire to be on the other side of the table.<\/p>\n I figured the barriers to entry for starting a software company were basically zero, so I taught myself how to code and started a software company in 2016.<\/p>\n My family was in property management, so I decided to build property management software. Over the next six years I ended up with about 35 staff, and our platform was used to manage 200,000 apartment units across Canada and Europe.<\/p>\n We had lots of people interested in acquiring us and at a certain point we hit a crossroads where we would need to enter the highly competitive U.S. market or sell. By that point my mind was already focused on hardware, and exploring my true passions, which were aerospace and motorsports.<\/p>\n We sold the business in 2022, and after a year-and-a-half with the acquiring company, I took some time off to consider my next idea.<\/p>\n Why start a rocket company?<\/p>\n I originally thought about starting a motorsports company.<\/p>\n I spent a lot of time at the Canadian Tire Motorsport Track in Bowmanville, and it\u2019s a lot of fun, but I decided not to turn a hobby into work, because sometimes that makes you lose your passion for it.<\/p>\n After I decided to concentrate on aerospace, I travelled to industry conferences trying to understand what problems and opportunities there were. As a second time founder I didn\u2019t want to spend years trying to find product-market fit\u00a0\u2014\u00a0I wanted to get from idea to growth as quickly as possible.<\/p>\n That\u2019s when I met my co-founder David Tenny, who was at SpaceX for about a decade and then in aerospace consulting for another decade.<\/p>\n We were considering different opportunities, like lunar permanence, or defence. Ironically in our first conversation I said I\u2019d love to build a rocket but that\u2019ll never happen. SpaceX\u2019s Falcon 9 owned the market and takes 83 per cent of all payloads into space.<\/p>\n At that point Germany, France, Italy and Spain were all investing in launch vehicles, and Canada had very little ambitions within the space ecosystem. I was actually looking to either move to the U.S. or Europe.<\/p>\n Then while attending an event in Australia, talking to people in the Canadian space ecosystem, I kept hearing these rumours about Canada entering the field.<\/p>\n So, I sent a message to my cofounder and said how would you like to move your family from L.A. to Canada to build a launch vehicle here, because there\u2019s a high probability the Canadian government is going to be super interested in supporting it. He got back to me within two hours saying yes.\u00a0<\/p>\n Without it, there would be no reason for launches to happen in Canada.<\/p>\n The money is one thing, and the way that it catalyzes the private market is a big part of the opportunity. The other piece is if the government doesn\u2019t want launch capabilities, it would take years to go through all the regulations and permitting and approvals, which would make building a launch vehicle in Canada almost impossible.<\/p>\n