Watchers of the Canadian space sector over the last few years have no doubt become familiar with the two main companies that are attempting to build Canadian sovereign launch capacity: Reaction Dynamics (RDX) and NordSpace. Some may have been surprised, then, when a new company emerged seemingly fully-formed out of stealth back in January, the Canada Rocket Company (CRC).
In turn, it may have been even more surprising when this startup, which recently emerged from stealth mode, managed to secure a place alongside RDX and NordSpace as part of Canada’s Launch the North (LtN) IDEaS Challenge to build sovereign launch capabilities.
It’s been a few months since they and their competitors secured the initial funding for Launch the North’s first phase. Now that they’re out of stealth and out in the open, what has CRC been doing? And what makes their approach different and unique in the first place?
We reached out to CRC CEO Hugh Kolias to find out more, and he provided some information about the company and what it’s been up to.
New and experienced space leadership
At first glance, Kolias seems surprising as a launch founder. Prior to the founding of CRC, Kolias’ largest business endeavour was the development of a rental property management platform called “Yuhu,” which was acquired by another related company called HappyCo in 2022. After what his LinkedIn described as “travel and idea exploration,” Kolias shifted his focus to the space industry, founding the then-stealth CRC in late 2025
But when you look at the rest of the team that surrounds Kolias, the presence of space-sector experience becomes much more apparent. CTO and Co-founder David Tenny was at SpaceX for nearly ten years, where he worked on the Merlin engine for the Falcon 9, and Infrastructure head Mel Holmes was at SpaceX as well.
Missions and Architecture head Jared Bottoms was at Kepler, Turbomachinery head Cheikh Abed spent time at ArianeGroup, Enogia and LIFSE, and propulsion head Matteo Di Flaviano was at Pangea Propulsion in Spain. Mina Mitry, Co-founder and CEO of Kepler Communications, also serves as an advisor to CRC.
And even with Kolias, space was part of the gameplan from early on. In an interview with Ripple Ventures’ Matt Cohen, Kolias said that his own education in mechanical engineering at Queen’s University had inspired an interest in the space sector, and it was one of the career choices he was investigating. In the end, an interest in derivatives prompted him to decide to explore investment banking, with the move into building a rental-focused software-as-a-service (SaaS) happening a few years later.
With that SaaS company started, scaled and sold, Kolias looked at the space sector once again, and decided it was time to return.
In his comments to SpaceQ, Kolias emphasized how the company is “repatriating” people with space expertise. “We’re focused on bringing a world-class team of engineers who have built successful launch vehicles from around the world,” including people from SpaceX, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab and ArianeGroup, and have “repatriated seven Canadians back to Canada.”
Kolias said that he was proud of that repatriation, and that it’s “exciting to be part of reversing the brain-drain phenomenon.”
Exiting stealth
After Kolias met Tenny and they decided to start CRC, the company incorporated in November 2025, and exited stealth in January. The reason to exit, Kolias told SpaceQ, was fairly straightforward: “We came out of stealth as part of our LtN submission.”
“We originally decided to submit for LtN to gain awareness within the [Department of National Defence],” Kolias said to SpaceQ, and Kolias also told Cohen that changes in the defence landscape and the international move towards sovereign launch were a key reason for why he decided to start a launch company. The desire to catch the eye of DND leadership makes sense.
But, Kolias said, “as we were putting our submission together, and were able to recruit a number of experienced rocket scientists,” they started feeling that they had a real opportunity to be selected, especially after closing a $6.2 million seed round.
The gambit paid off. Canada Rocket Company emerged from stealth, got into the competition, got a share of the LtN money, and almost immediately became a competitor against two well-established companies deep in fabrication and testing, one with its own growing spaceport.
It’s an uphill battle, but one they’ve joined in earnest.
Medium-Lift methalox launch vehicle
The company has two main competitive distinctions: their use of methalox (methane/liquid oxygen) propellants in their engines, and the decision to focus on building a reusable medium-lift launch as soon as possible.
Medium-lift as a goal is not a big surprise in-and-of itself; NordSpace’s Rahul Goel has made it clear how important that is, and his company is actually producing two separate medium-lift rockets (the Tundra+ and the Tempest) to ensure that they can handle larger payloads.
With both NordSpace and Reaction Dynamics, though, they’re beginning with small-lift launch vehicles, sometimes referred to as light-lift. RDX’s Aurora is a small-lift launcher, and they have not officially announced a medium-lift launcher after the Aurora. And with NordSpace, they’re starting with the small-lift Tundra before scaling up.
But with CRC, the goal is to get to medium-lift as soon as possible. While their pathfinder R-1 vehicle is technically small-lift, they’re aiming to get to their medium-lift R-2 as their first commercial launcher. Kolias explained their reasoning.
“Most launch startups started with light lift,” Kolias said, because “that was their commercial product.” In the 2010s, he said, “most launch companies thought the next large opportunity was light-lift vehicles,” so as to distinguish themselves from the successful medium-lift Falcon 9.
In the 2020s, Kolias said, “the light-lift market is only 10% of the global launch market, and most entrants have found it difficult to commercialize.” There are too many payloads that are too large for light-lift, a point that Rahul Goel has also made, and Kolias said that they view “medium lift as the larger commercial opportunity.”
With that in mind, Kolias said that CRC’s approach is to “get to developing (and deploying) [the] end product as quickly as possible.” If you “take the right development steps,” he said, “focusing on medium lift out of the gate is the quickest, most capital-efficient way of getting to the end product.”
That’s also reflected in their R-1 launcher and E-1 engines, where Kolias described the focus as “being as non-unique as possible.” Developing a launch vehicle in a country that doesn’t have one yet, Kolias said, means that “it’s important to take the lowest number of technical risks as possible, and focus on ease of execution.” It also allows the company to better leverage the team’s experience.
In some ways, this is similar to NordSpace, and Goel said that a desire to use tried-and-trusted solutions is why his company uses traditional kerolox propellants. With CRC, though, they’re going with methalox, which is much newer and less established.
Kolias explained the reasoning for why they went with what he described as “a relatively new fuel source,” one with “less global talent to draw on.”
“Methalox is the fuel type of choice for most modern launch vehicles,” he said. “It burns cleanly, which allows for quicker turn-around times and refurbishment when reusing engines.” Kolias said that “our view is that most of the medium-lift and larger class rockets over the next five to ten years will mainly be powered by methalox.” Given the long development timelines of launch vehicles, CRC believes that “it’s important to also plant the foundations for future technology iterations.”
“If you’re going to spend over $500 million on development,” Kolias said, it’s important to “set yourself up on the right long-term vehicle development path.”
He also noted that methalox has been proven by multiple companies at this point: Blue Origin, SpaceX, Rocket Lab, and ArianeGroup with their Prometheus engine. And as CRC’s team has a number of engineers with significant methalox experience, CRC felt that it was the right move.
Progress since Launch the North
So now that CRC has successfully come out of stealth and become a LtN contender, what kind of progress have they made? Kolias said that there was a lot that would have to wait for upcoming near-term announcements, but he gave SpaceQ some information about how things are going.
First, they’ve opened their initial engine test facility in Etobicoke. Kolias said that this engine development facility “will be operational in a few days.” This initial facility will be followed by a “medium-lift capable test site.” Kolias said that there will be more details in the coming months (or possibly weeks), but what he could share with SpaceQ right now is that it will be for “testing of rocket engines above 1 MN, as well as some [airframe] tests.” For context, an engine producing over one meganewton (MN), or roughly 225,000 pounds of thrust, operates in the same class as the SpaceX Merlin 1D engine used on the Falcon 9.
Kolias said that they have also “secured a medium-lift capable test site,” for which they’ll be providing details in another upcoming announcement. CRC has completed the initial designs, engineering and permitting for the test site.
Kolias didn’t say how they were actually going to be handling launch, however. Despite the obviously limited options in Canada, he said only that “we are in partnership discussions,” and that they are not planning on building their own launch facility.
When asked about manufacturing, Kolias said that “we’ve already begun turbomachinery design,” and have begun manufacturing test articles “using preliminary turbopump designs.” He said that they are also “on track for an end-of-year hot-fire for our gas generator,” which is a component of the rocket engine. Kolias said that they have also “completed vehicle sizing” for the launcher.
CRC will be “focused on using more traditional manufacturing methods,” Kolias said, as opposed to the “latest and greatest in manufacturing techniques and materials.” He believes that that approach can “end up adding additional technical risk, because those methods and materials have to be developed simultaneously.”
Perhaps owing to this more traditional approach, Kolias is confident that Canada will be able to suit their needs in terms of manufacturing. He said that “there are many manufacturers in Canada that have worked with SpaceX, Blue Origin and other notable companies, so there is capacity here.”
CRC will be having their first component test later this month.
In terms of attracting talent and investment, Kolias said that they have already hired 22 people, predominantly “engineers with 7+ years of experience in the launch industry.” Kolias said that they’ve also raised $22.5 million, “in less than six months from incorporation,” of which $21 million comes from Canadian sources.
Kolias credited their fundraising success to their “world-class team,” as well as their focus on developing a medium-lift launcher with its larger potential market. And continuing that fundraising success is central to CRC’s approach, as Kolias believes that private investment “allows us to accelerate our development timelines by being able to raise as much upfront as possible.”