Escape Dynamics

The company was founded by Richard F. Schaden and a team of California Institute of Technology scientists including Dr. Dmitriy Richard Starson and Shaun Maguire. Laetitia Garriott de Cayeux joined the founding team as the President and COO in 2014.

Members of the Board of Advisors included Peter Diamandis of the X Prize Foundation, Gonzalo Martinez of Autodesk, Harry Atwater of Caltech, Jonathan Knowles of Autodesk, Ingvar Petursson of Nintendo of America, Joseph Meyerowitz (co-founder of Escape Dynamics), and Shaun Maguire (co-founder of Escape Dynamics) of Caltech and Qadium Inc.

The company ceased operations at the end of 2015, commenting in a statement on their website that, "while microwave propulsion is feasible and is capable of efficiency and performance surpassing chemical rockets, the cost of completing the R&D all the way through operations makes the concept economically unattractive for our team at this time."

The key technology areas Escape Dynamics focused on were: i) externally powered aerospace vehicles; ii) efficient, reliable and safe wireless energy transfer; and iii) highly efficient high power microwave sources. Systems the company developed included high power microwave sources (gyrotrons) used to generate microwave energy required to power aerospace vehicles, high-speed steerable phased array antennas for millimeter-wave long distance wireless energy transfer, and electromagnetically powered propulsion systems.

In the summer 2015, the company demonstrated operation of a prototype thruster with specific impulse above 500 seconds using helium as a propellant. The demonstration showed an end-to-end sequence of operation of an externally powered propulsion system. Energy was drawn from the grid, converted into microwaves using EDI's gyrotron, guided through a system of beam shaping mirrors, and beamed from an antenna to a thruster. Conversion of the microwave energy into thrust was performed using a thermal thruster with a highly efficient microwave-absorbing heat exchanger.