0:27

So we built a lot of eVTOLs

0:29

of almost every configuration

0:31

you can imagine and everyone that's out

0:33

there and some that aren't. And

0:36

when we went to go study how to put

0:38

it into production, we

0:40

spent a lot of time trying

0:43

to come up with a design

0:45

that could beat existing airplanes.

0:47

I was in a lot of design reviews in which

0:49

I would go, look, we're not going to spend all this

0:51

money, hundreds of millions

0:53

of dollars, to come up with an electric

0:56

airplane that doesn't have the performance

0:58

of a Robinson, okay? We

1:01

never were able to do that with,

1:03

battery electric designs

1:11

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to The Vertical Space

1:13

and a terrific conversation with John Langford,

1:16

CEO of Electra. John has

1:18

over 30 years of experience in this space, so

1:20

he knows what's been done and believes he has an elegant,

1:22

smart approach to our industry with Electra. We

1:25

talk about the key drivers for, and what becomes

1:27

first in advanced air mobility and

1:29

how factors such as market acceptance, use

1:32

case, certification, tech readiness,

1:35

and infrastructure requirements dictate

1:37

what type of vehicles will fly first with

1:39

commercial relevance. We extensively

1:41

discussed eSTOL its advantages

1:43

and disadvantages compared to other proposed vehicle

1:45

types of today. He explains that

1:48

most use cases don't need pure vertical

1:50

or hovering. John explains why

1:52

Electra decided to use blown lift, STOL

1:54

technology and hybrid electric power.

1:56

He discusses how there are no mode changes

1:59

in Electra's aircraft. And that's why he believes

2:01

Electra has several advantages. We

2:03

discuss Electra, its unique characteristics

2:05

and market fit. Listen to what use

2:08

cases they're targeting with a soccer field sized

2:10

operating spaces. And John's response

2:12

to Luka's questions of the regulatory path of

2:14

landing and taking off from a soccer field.

2:17

He also makes clear that there'll be selling and not

2:19

operating their aircraft. John

2:21

mentions that pure electric does deliver on

2:23

the promise of low noise and that the hybrid

2:26

power may require pure electric in different areas

2:28

and use cases. We then discuss

2:30

Aurora Flight Sciences, why they started what

2:33

they did for the first decade and their challenges,

2:35

their pivot and trigger point for their success

2:38

the importance of Global Hawk. And their

2:40

years of subsequent success and their eventual

2:42

acquisition by Boeing. Listen, we

2:44

enjoyed this conversation for a variety of reasons,

2:47

but one standout is that no other guest

2:49

has referenced as many of our podcasts

2:51

and guests as John has in this conversation.

2:54

So, John, thanks for joining us and to our listeners,

2:56

we hope you enjoy this conversation with John

2:58

Langford, as you innovate in The Vertical

3:00

Space. John

3:48

Langford is the CEO of Electra which

3:51

he founded in 2020 to develop sustainable

3:53

aviation solutions for regional mobility.

3:56

In 1989, he founded Aurora Flight Sciences

3:58

Corporation, a pioneer in

4:00

robotic and autonomous aircraft. Aurora

4:02

was acquired by Boeing in 2017.

4:05

John served as Chairman and CEO from

4:07

1989 to 2019. A

4:09

native of Atlanta, Georgia, john

4:11

earned his bachelors, masters, and doctorate

4:14

degrees from MIT. While at

4:16

MIT, John organized and led to Daedalus

4:18

Project, which in 1988, shattered

4:20

the world's distance endurance records for human

4:22

powered flight with a 72 mile

4:24

flight between the Greek islands of Crete

4:26

and Santorini. Prior to starting to Aurora,

4:29

John worked for Lockheed Corporation, The White House

4:31

Office of Science and Technology Policy and

4:34

the Institute for Defense Analyses. John

4:36

was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in

4:38

2018. He is a fellow in the American

4:41

Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and

4:43

have served as AIAA president

4:45

from 2018 to 2020. He

4:48

worked on over a hundred aircraft

4:50

development programs, many of which he organized

4:52

and led. In 2023,

4:54

the AIAA awarded John, the Reed

4:56

award for Aeronautics, the highest honor they

4:59

bestow for notable achievements in the field of aeronautics.

5:02

John is a lifelong aeromodeler and passionate

5:04

STEM education advocate. His

5:06

family owns Estes Industries, the

5:08

world's leading manufacturer of model rockets

5:10

and model rocket engines. John

5:13

Langford, welcome to The Vertical Space. Great

5:15

having you on.

5:16

It's great to be here. Thank you.

5:18

First question we ask everyone, is there anything

5:20

that very few in the industry agree

5:22

with you on?

5:23

Well, if you judge by the

5:25

responses to the SFARs

5:28

that were put out last summer, we

5:30

at Electra have a pretty different view

5:32

than much of the industry on

5:34

what those SFARs said.

5:36

So I would start with that. There's

5:39

three big pieces that are fundamental

5:41

to that in the SFARs.

5:43

The first is reserves.

5:45

The second is training

5:47

and particularly the use of onboard

5:49

pilots and two seats. And

5:51

the third is the whole issue of a powered lift

5:53

category and a special type cert

5:56

Our response to the SFARs that

5:58

the FAA put out, the draft for comment,

6:01

there were sort of two people who responded

6:03

in favor of it, Electra

6:05

and the Airline Pilots Association. And

6:08

then pretty much everybody else came,

6:10

came out against it and,

6:13

and saying that it would be, everything

6:15

from, an inconvenience to

6:17

an industry killer. And you've had a lot of the other

6:19

guests, on there who've spoken, to

6:21

that, in the past. on

6:23

our part, from Electra's point

6:25

of view, I think the reserves, the issue of

6:27

reserves speaks to the whole fundamental

6:30

issue of electric propulsion,

6:32

how it really fits into aviation,

6:35

whether it's ready for prime time, and I assume

6:37

it's something we'll spend a lot of time on today.

6:40

But, I do think the issues on reserves,

6:43

on training, and on the powered lift

6:45

types are, are three things that clearly

6:47

the industry and Electra

6:49

probably take different views on.

6:51

John, just go into a little more detail on each if you

6:53

could.

6:54

Yeah, it was interesting at

6:56

the Honeywell summit, which you

6:58

guys were at and did a piece

7:00

on. one of the eVTOL's

7:03

CEOs made a comment to

7:05

the effect that a requirement

7:08

for 45 minute reserves, they couldn't even fly

7:10

for 45 minutes, much less

7:12

have 45 minutes of reserves. And,

7:15

we nodded and said, yeah, that's what we've been saying

7:17

for five or six years. And,

7:20

and so the question of, do

7:23

you make airplanes fit into

7:25

the current regime? And,

7:28

that includes the sort of safety regime.

7:31

Or how much do you modify

7:33

the environment to fit the capabilities

7:36

or lack of capabilities of the new,

7:39

aircraft. And I think that's really a really central

7:41

issue. I can spend, I'd

7:43

like to spend, in, in just a second, a

7:45

fair amount of time on, a quick

7:47

view of electric propulsion. But I

7:50

think reserves are really fundamental and

7:52

the reserves are not arbitrary

7:55

numbers that have been made up, they're

7:57

something that has been developed over many years

7:59

and proven by experience.

8:02

They'll probably will need to be somewhat

8:04

modified for some of the new capabilities,

8:07

but, I think you, you face

8:09

a big sort of dichotomy

8:11

in the aviation world today where

8:14

the standards of safety

8:16

are so high in the Part

8:18

25 world, and

8:20

people project that to all

8:23

other phases of aviation, and

8:25

then to start right off with

8:27

saying, well, we have to modify the existing

8:29

safety regime in order for these new

8:31

airplanes to work at all should

8:34

give people pause. And certainly

8:36

at Electra, the whole business

8:38

plan is built around the

8:40

assumption that we have to operate

8:43

in today's regulatory environment,

8:45

in today's airspace because

8:48

the way you get a return on an investment

8:50

is to, minimize the amount of time

8:53

that investment is sitting out there before it can produce

8:55

revenues. And so our whole business

8:57

plan is designed to fit into

9:00

the existing regulatory structure

9:02

as it is, today. And I think that's a

9:04

pretty big difference between us and most

9:07

of the other players in the AAM, the

9:09

new entrants into the AAM market.

9:12

John, have you heard any credible arguments

9:15

in favor of changing the reserve

9:18

requirements? Is there something about the

9:20

concept of operations or the flight environments

9:23

that are different from when those reserves

9:25

were initially determined? And by the way,

9:28

do you know the history of how

9:30

the industry converged on 30

9:32

minutes for VFR, 45 for

9:35

IFR

9:35

Well, you've asked the other guests

9:38

that question, and I'll give you the same answer

9:40

they did, which is no. ha

9:42

Thank you for listening.

9:43

So there's no real physics based

9:45

argument and I know a lot of people are going we're gonna be flying

9:48

short distances and we're gonna know

9:50

where all the landing sites

9:52

are all the time but

9:55

you know as a former

9:57

glider pilot and somebody at

9:59

Electra, we spend a lot of time looking

10:02

at landing sites and when we talk about

10:04

Electra, that's a big part of what

10:06

we're doing is opening up new

10:09

places to operate out of. And

10:11

while there are a lot of landing places,

10:14

there are not infinite numbers of possibilities

10:17

where you can conduct a, a

10:19

safe, non emergency

10:21

landing, and we are not trying

10:23

to build, a chairlift

10:25

here, right, which operates from one

10:27

point to another point and nothing

10:29

in between, we think

10:31

that what you have to have is a system

10:33

that can go anywhere. A lot of What

10:36

Electra's focus is to decarbonize

10:38

aviation, but also to expand

10:41

the places aviation can operate.

10:44

And, and if you're going to do that, you cannot

10:47

have something where you are built

10:49

around assumptions that you always know where you're

10:51

starting. You always know where you're ending

10:53

and you're operating like a chairlift or something.

10:56

You talked about, training as the second.

10:58

Yes, the Electra airplane is built with

11:01

two seats up front. It is intended

11:03

as a, single pilot operation,

11:05

nine seat aircraft. But

11:07

there are two piloting stations up

11:09

front. Now that initially

11:11

came from just listening to

11:13

our customers. Many of whom said, look,

11:16

the kinds of things we want to do

11:18

with this airplane includes

11:21

building time as part

11:23

of the pilot training pipeline, right,

11:26

the, and so our customers want

11:28

to use it as a training tool,

11:30

a tool for building

11:32

time as pilots move

11:35

up from ab initio trainers,

11:37

which that's not what we're building, but

11:39

we assume you're already a licensed pilot

11:41

by the time you get into this. But

11:43

that you build time in order to move up

11:45

towards the 1, 500 hour number

11:48

and, that's part of what the customers want to

11:50

see. And so that's very consistent,

11:52

I think, with the FAA's approach

11:54

that while they think simulator

11:56

training is great, particularly for upset

11:59

training, they still want you to have

12:01

time with an experience, with a, be

12:04

able to do check rides, right, in the airplane. And,

12:06

I agree with that. I certainly I've heard

12:09

the arguments, oh, well, F 35s, are

12:11

single seat airplanes, but most

12:13

of the military airplanes historically,

12:15

even the single seaters, there's some two

12:17

seat version that you work up to, and the

12:19

military doesn't start you off in

12:22

those super high end airplanes.

12:25

So we looked at it. We think it's just

12:27

extremely prudent, to be able

12:29

to use this as a training device,

12:31

even though it's certified and we expect

12:33

most of the revenue operations will be flown

12:36

single pilot. The third is the powered

12:38

lift certification piece where,

12:40

you know, it's goes back to the V 22

12:43

thing, and this is one of the questions that

12:45

I ask anecdotally,

12:47

but have never really gotten a great answer

12:49

to, which is the V22

12:51

and the AW609 have

12:54

very long, very expensive

12:56

development histories behind

12:58

them by teams of people who were well

13:01

funded and knew what they were doing, and

13:03

have struggled to get into certification.

13:06

The AW609 is still working on

13:08

that and there are unique

13:10

things about airplanes that have these mode

13:12

changes that fly from vertical flight

13:15

profiles to horizontal flight profiles in

13:17

that transition, and while a lot of

13:19

that will certainly be masked in the flight

13:22

control systems, it is still a very

13:24

different animal. When we built the Electra

13:26

airplane, one of the key

13:28

advantages that we think is that there are

13:31

no mode changes in what we're doing. It's

13:33

a conventional airplane with a wing,

13:35

from the beginning of the flight to

13:37

the end of the flight. and that is, the

13:39

basis of a lot of, what we think

13:41

are the both operational efficiencies,

13:44

which translates into costs, and

13:46

also operational safety.

13:48

You in one of your presentations, John,

13:50

caught my attention. There's a reason why

13:52

the President's flying in a helicopter and

13:55

he's being escorted by two V 22s.

13:58

Yeah, and we saw that yesterday

14:01

at Manassas. The president

14:03

came out to give a speech close

14:05

by and Marine One flew

14:07

right into the terminal there

14:10

and it was a helicopter older

14:12

than, well, not all of us

14:14

on this call, but many of the people who work

14:16

at Electra, those helicopters are older

14:18

than, but yeah, absolutely,

14:20

if the concept's not safe enough for the president

14:22

of the United States to fly on, why is it safe

14:24

enough for me to put my kid

14:27

or my mother on?

14:28

So, John, an elemental

14:30

stem cell question, what comes

14:32

first in advanced air mobility? What

14:34

drives the need for the first commercial

14:36

vehicle?

14:37

I think it all starts with an air

14:39

vehicle that works, and

14:42

I can't think of another

14:44

time in aviation where we're

14:47

talking about certification

14:49

and huge expenditures

14:52

on new infrastructure for

14:55

an airplane no passengers

14:57

have flown on and we have no passenger

15:00

feedback about whether

15:03

people are even going to want

15:05

to fly on these aircraft. So

15:07

I'm a big believer that what comes first is

15:09

you gotta make the airplanes work, and that means

15:12

not flying them just in private

15:14

tests, but actually in public use.

15:17

So the point you need to be able to roll

15:19

out a vehicle that's actually going work.

15:22

So many the use cases

15:25

in advanced air mobility you would think

15:27

could be more economically and safely

15:30

addressed with eSTOL

15:32

versus eVTOL. Talk

15:34

about that a little bit. You've already highlighted in

15:36

this conversation, there's a lot of challenges

15:39

with vertical lift. You talked about cost but

15:41

I'm sure you will. But there's a safety

15:43

concern in the transition, but

15:45

it seems like an awful lot of the missions

15:48

in regional air mobility, and

15:50

in other areas that they

15:52

can be better served by

15:54

the eSTOL.

15:55

Yeah, let me talk a little bit about how

15:57

we came to the idea

16:00

of Electra and it was through

16:03

building a lot

16:05

of eVTOL airplanes. At

16:07

my previous company, Aurora Flight

16:09

Sciences, we can talk more about Aurora

16:12

in a second, but we were

16:15

primarily in a rapid prototyping

16:17

operation, we built all kinds

16:20

of advanced aircraft concepts,

16:23

and that's what we offered to our customers. And

16:25

we did electric airplanes really

16:27

from day one, or we tried

16:29

to, right? The very first airplanes

16:31

we started building in 1989 for

16:34

high altitude use were intended to be electric

16:37

originally. In fact, battery electric

16:39

using, one shot

16:41

lithium thionyl chloride batteries to,

16:45

to get to very high altitude so you didn't have

16:47

to build an air breathing propulsion system

16:49

that worked at 85, 000 feet. In

16:51

about the mid 2000s,

16:54

starting in about 2002 and then

16:56

flying in 2009, we

16:58

did a hybrid electric airplane called

17:00

Excalibur for the Army that

17:03

had a gas turbine and

17:05

a generator and three electrically driven

17:07

lift fans that also had batteries. And

17:10

then we did a program for DARPA

17:12

that was called the XV 24 Lightning

17:14

Strike, which was a very large

17:17

turbine driving generators, 3

17:19

megawatts worth of

17:21

electricity, driving 28 fans

17:25

buried in the wing. It ended

17:27

up being a tilt wing to get the,

17:29

the high speed and the VTOL, working

17:32

together in that. And as part of that program,

17:34

we also did a subscale demonstrator, which was

17:36

purely battery powered and autonomous. And

17:38

we used that to demonstrate the full flight envelope.

17:41

And then we went from there into a program

17:43

with Uber, which for an airplane

17:46

that we called the Pegasus and Boeing called

17:48

the PAV. And then we did a proprietary

17:50

program with, with Porsche. So

17:52

we built a lot of eVTOLs

17:55

of almost every configuration

17:57

you can imagine and everyone that's out

17:59

there and some that aren't. And

18:01

when we went to go study how to put

18:03

it into production, we

18:06

spent a lot of time trying

18:08

to come up with a design

18:10

that could beat existing airplanes.

18:13

I was in a lot of design reviews in which

18:15

I would go, look, we're not going to spend all this

18:17

money, hundreds of millions

18:19

of dollars, to come up with an electric

18:21

airplane that doesn't have the performance

18:23

of a Robinson, okay? We

18:26

never were able to do that with,

18:28

battery electric designs,

18:31

but what did happen was some guys

18:33

up at MIT, John Hansman and Mark

18:35

Drayla and one of their grad students,

18:38

Chris Corton, began to say, hey,

18:40

look, for most use cases,

18:42

it does not have to be strictly

18:44

vertical, right? What you really care

18:46

about is the runway

18:49

independence. There are some cases where you

18:51

have to hover, where you need that pure

18:53

vertical, or you need that pure hover capability.

18:56

You always will, and so those

18:58

will be the province of, of,

19:00

helicopter designs, but in most other

19:03

cases, every other case

19:05

that doesn't have that absolute requirement

19:07

for vertical or hovering, you're

19:10

better off with the

19:12

physics of a wing, and a wing is

19:14

essentially a thrust multiplier, whereas

19:17

with a VTOL design, all of the lift

19:20

is provided by the thrust, so you

19:22

know, you have to have thrust higher

19:24

than your weight. And in a

19:26

normal airplane, what a wing does is

19:29

act as a thrust multiplier. So if you have a 10

19:31

to 1, lift to drag ratio, you can get away with

19:33

1 10th the thrust that you would need

19:35

if you were trying to take off vertically. And,

19:38

that gives you a physics advantage

19:40

that, is why most airplanes

19:42

that you see are, what we call CTOL, or

19:44

you use a wing throughout the entire

19:46

flight envelope. The science that

19:49

Electra is harnessing

19:51

in this is a technique called blown

19:53

lift, which is something that

19:56

has been around for,

19:59

oh, 50 years or more, since NASA

20:01

in the 60s and then 70s

20:04

really pioneered it, and the French

20:07

and the Japanese, and there

20:09

were some Air Force programs that looked at this.

20:11

By blowing the wing, bathing the wing

20:13

in carefully designed

20:16

flap systems and with the higher velocity

20:19

air from the propulsion system, you

20:21

could get lift coefficients that were

20:24

multiples of what

20:26

you could get from a conventional sort of static

20:29

configuration system. So instead of getting,

20:32

a lift coefficient of two and a half, you

20:34

could get lift coefficients approaching ten.

20:37

And if you can do that, you can

20:39

fly much slower,

20:41

and if you can fly more slowly, you can take

20:43

off and land in very short distances. Blown

20:46

lift as it was developed in the 60s

20:48

and 70s was always

20:51

that it was being done with gas

20:53

turbines. And gas turbines,

20:55

are basically,

20:58

well, if you look at the history of CTOL airplanes,

21:00

we've gone from four engines to three engines

21:02

to two engines, and people would

21:04

go to one gas turbine if they could,

21:07

obviously they don't because of the redundancy

21:09

need to be able to lose one at takeoff,

21:12

but, you essentially pay

21:14

for the maintenance cost by the gas

21:16

turbine. So the blown lift wants continuous

21:18

blowing across the wing in an infinite

21:21

number of propulsors and

21:23

the gas turbines want to have one

21:26

propulsor. And so that was

21:28

fundamentally the problem of, the early

21:30

blown lift designs was they were never economical

21:33

matching with the propulsion systems that are

21:35

available. The insight that Hansman

21:37

and Drayla and Corton brought to this

21:39

was that distributed electric

21:42

propulsion actually solves

21:45

that problem. And so with

21:47

the electric motors, you can now

21:49

have good specific

21:52

power and good efficiencies on

21:54

a number of small propulsors and,

21:57

the exact number you have to optimize,

21:59

but a lot

22:01

more than two, we have eight on the airplanes

22:04

that we're doing, which matches very well

22:06

to the requirements of blown lift. And so that's the

22:08

fundamental physics behind

22:10

what Electra is trying to do. It

22:13

gives you a two

22:15

to three times the

22:18

useful load fraction compared

22:21

to a vertical lift design,

22:23

for a given vehicle weight

22:26

and a given mission. And

22:28

then we spend that advantage

22:30

in a couple of ways. We spend some of

22:33

it in, we have a better useful

22:35

load fraction than a VTOL design. But

22:37

we also spend some of it in

22:39

things like development costs

22:42

and in manufacturing costs that we're

22:44

focused on how you reduce the

22:46

non recurring costs by not

22:48

being highly vertically integrated, but

22:50

by using more COTS

22:52

components, and I don't mean commercial COTS,

22:55

just other aerospace level

22:57

components, and we can talk

22:59

more about that, and then in the recurring,

23:01

we're, we have not settled yet in

23:03

the production of how much is going to be composite

23:06

and how much is going to be metal,

23:08

but, we don't have to use

23:11

the ultimate lightweight solutions

23:13

that the VTOL folks get driven

23:15

to because we have

23:18

that physics advantage that we can spend in

23:20

a couple of different ways. And

23:22

overall, we think it's going to make a

23:24

much more cost effective proposition

23:28

both for the operators and as a business

23:30

than anything else we have been able

23:32

to come up with, and that includes, as I said,

23:35

looking at pretty much every eVTOL

23:38

concept, out there. So that was

23:40

the genesis of when

23:42

I, left Aurora and started

23:45

Electra about three years ago.

23:47

So John, you were looking for design and you saw

23:49

this insight that distributed

23:52

electric propulsion enables

23:54

a really effective blown wing design.

23:56

What beyond that

23:58

helped you refine that down into

24:01

a product and commit to that

24:03

product? What mission set did

24:05

you want to go and target with this aircraft?

24:08

Well, we started with the whole

24:11

suite of urban

24:13

and regional air mobility

24:16

missions. One of the beautiful things

24:18

about the eSTOL, particularly

24:21

when you couple it with the hybrid electric

24:23

propulsion, essentially the blown

24:26

lift gives you the very short

24:28

runway capability, and the hybrid

24:31

gives you the ability to go long

24:34

distances, and in this case, long distances

24:36

is hundreds of miles. And

24:38

so we look at the whole set of missions.

24:41

One of the things we,

24:43

announced this week is we've crossed the

24:46

2, 000, pre orders,

24:48

or letters of intent for the 9

24:50

seat airplane that we're developing.

24:53

And you just look at the range of folks

24:55

who are buying that and

24:57

what they are planning to

24:59

do with it. And it basically

25:02

breaks out into helicopter

25:04

operators. Our launch customer was

25:07

Bristow, one of the world's premier

25:09

helicopter operators. The

25:11

people who really understand

25:13

both the pluses,

25:15

but also the minuses particularly

25:17

in terms of cost and noise of helicopters

25:20

today, and we believe

25:22

we can operate at 70

25:25

percent less direct

25:27

operating costs than the helicopters they're

25:29

flying today, and to get in and

25:31

out of all of the heliports, for example,

25:34

that ring Manhattan. And so the

25:36

first people who are really interested in that are the helicopter

25:38

operators, right? Then we move

25:41

into, the second category,

25:43

sort of regional air service

25:45

providers who want

25:47

to expand the number of

25:49

destinations that they go to. The

25:51

kinds of things that we're offering, if

25:53

you can get in and out of a soccer

25:56

field sized location

25:58

there are a lot of things you can do

26:00

around the world. Our

26:02

level zero requirement, as we call

26:05

it, is to be able to get in and out of

26:07

Wall Street Heliport, right? That facility

26:10

is what we have chosen as sizing

26:13

our capability, that's

26:15

where the 300 foot

26:17

by 100 foot operating

26:19

space comes from in our requirements

26:22

is that existing piece of infrastructure

26:25

at the Wall Street Heliport. And there's

26:27

space at the other heliports

26:29

that ring Manhattan for that

26:31

as well, although like

26:34

at 30th Street West, you can't actually

26:36

fly directly into that today.

26:38

There's a barge that's big enough that

26:40

would have to be refurbished, and there's a horizontal

26:43

space parallel to the river

26:45

at 30th Street that is large enough,

26:47

but has a temporary building in the center

26:49

of it, but the Wall Street Heliport you can fly

26:51

in and out of today is the idea,

26:54

and everybody in this market is

26:56

talking about the airport shuttle mission

26:58

to go from Wall Street to

27:00

JFK or to Newark or whatever.

27:03

That's what Blade does today

27:06

and we start with that mission and we can

27:08

certainly do that mission and we can do it

27:10

at significantly lower cost

27:12

than Blade is doing it today

27:15

with the helicopters. But then

27:18

we can keep going with the

27:20

airplane and you can go

27:22

to the Hamptons or to Martha's Vineyard

27:24

or Boston. Or you can keep going

27:27

further and you can go to Washington, D.

27:29

C. We spend a lot of time working that

27:31

route between New York

27:33

and Washington. Because if

27:35

you look at that today, it's about

27:37

four hours at a minimum.

27:40

No matter how you go, whether you drive, take

27:42

the train, fly commercial, it

27:45

all starts at four hours and goes up

27:48

depending on what kind of delays you may

27:50

encounter. And the only

27:52

way to, to really

27:54

save time is to get in closer. This

27:57

is not a case where going faster

27:59

in the airplane really makes that big of a difference.

28:02

You can take a private aircraft from D.

28:04

C. up to New York, but you're going

28:06

into Teterboro or Westchester and you've still

28:08

got to get down to Manhattan, so our

28:10

view is you've got to be able to get into Manhattan

28:13

with whatever device you're talking about and that's

28:15

what our level zero requirement is. Once

28:18

you can do that, then you can

28:20

go all kinds of places. You can go

28:22

to, places like Santa Monica, which

28:24

are existing airports, but which,

28:27

carriers like JSX can't get

28:29

into today, but which they

28:31

would love to access and which

28:33

we can because of both the space

28:36

and the noise that we the

28:38

quiet operations and the short field

28:41

operations will be able to do non

28:43

interfering approaches into places like

28:46

into big airports JFK, but

28:48

will also be able to operate off

28:50

of the tops of parking garages

28:53

which will allow us, we think, to get into

28:55

places like Tyson's Corner, which

28:57

is, a couple miles from where I'm sitting.

29:00

It'll allow us to operate out of big

29:02

warehousing distribution centers.

29:04

It'll allow us to go into

29:07

destinations, like

29:10

islands that don't have airports

29:12

that might have ferry service or

29:14

helicopter service, but don't have an

29:17

airport for a fixed wing service.

29:19

There's actually a lot of those out

29:22

there. Obviously, it allows you to do

29:24

every road as a runway. today

29:27

roads are emergency runways for airplanes,

29:29

of course. But in the

29:31

medical evacuation or in the defense

29:33

applications, we use a lot

29:35

less road than others. And

29:39

the 300 by 100 foot is

29:41

about the size of a soccer field, and if you

29:44

go and look around the world

29:46

at how many soccer fields there are

29:48

and where they are it's

29:50

amazing.

29:51

If I was building an aircraft

29:53

that was range constrained, I

29:56

could only effectively go 25

29:58

or 30 miles in my mission, then yeah, I

30:00

would focus on these urban centers finding

30:03

a way to make that mission profile

30:05

work from downtown to the airport and all

30:07

of that. But that comes with so much baggage

30:09

and you have an aircraft that is far

30:12

more versatile. And so

30:14

why even focus on those

30:16

missions first? The last few things that you

30:18

mentioned, going to places that

30:20

people want to get to, but there isn't a small airport

30:23

there, to me, that seems like

30:26

such a layup for you. And

30:28

why not focus on that first? Or maybe

30:30

you don't care. Maybe you're just in the business of selling

30:32

airframes and the customers will fly

30:34

them where they will.

30:36

One of the other things that we are adamant

30:38

about is that we're not the operator.

30:41

We're not trying to be our

30:43

own user. We are

30:45

going to, established

30:47

other customers and that's part of that

30:50

2000 pre orders is

30:52

it's something like 40 different customer

30:55

organizations, and one of the

30:57

beauties of those pre orders is it puts

30:59

you inside an NDA

31:02

veil that you can, operate

31:05

where you can tell them what you're really doing

31:07

and they can tell you what they want to do

31:09

and what they're really doing and the things that

31:11

they want, the features that they

31:13

want on their product and,

31:16

and that is, that's basically what

31:18

we're focused on is listening to the customers,

31:20

and making sure we deliver what

31:23

they want. At the same time,

31:25

you have to have a visionary element as well

31:27

to it. It's the Steve Jobs iPhone,

31:30

analogy, right? That people aren't really good

31:32

at market research because it doesn't

31:34

really help you on things that don't

31:36

exist today because people don't really

31:38

know what they want if they've never had one.

31:41

And so we're balancing that, right, between

31:43

the existing missions, which will be

31:45

the early adopters, some of which

31:47

are even literally direct replacements

31:50

for airplanes that are in the fields today,

31:52

and the expansion markets

31:55

that are enabled by the new capabilities

31:57

that airplane offers. We think

31:59

that's one of the things that makes it such a robust

32:02

plan, right?

32:02

Yeah. think you're bringing forward a versatile

32:05

aircraft that you

32:07

put it in the hands of the customers and let

32:09

them show how they're going to use it, rather

32:12

than, of the other companies in the space

32:14

being so prescriptive with this

32:16

incredible new set capabilities.

32:19

And they have very narrow vision how

32:22

end users going access. I'm

32:24

a big fan of letting the industry

32:27

discover how customers

32:29

are going to use it by putting a versatile platform

32:31

in their hand and something that's

32:33

really multi mission capable and

32:35

then watch them apply it and learn

32:38

from that.

32:38

We absolutely agree with you.

32:40

what is the, regulatory path to

32:43

landing an aircraft in a soccer field?

32:45

Well, you can do it today with a helicopter,

32:47

right? It's the same, structure

32:50

there is on, operating on the same flight rules

32:52

and stuff as helicopters are today. The,

32:55

the joke in the helicopter the field

32:57

is you can land a helicopter anywhere once

33:00

and, and honestly, as we look

33:02

at our business plan, particularly

33:04

for some of the things like where

33:06

you're dealing with, establishing commuter

33:08

services to towns, to communities

33:11

that don't have an existing airport, or

33:14

you're going to do, package e

33:17

pickup or delivery to not

33:19

just between distribution centers, but

33:22

even to retail stores,

33:24

that we think that

33:27

the local regulations

33:29

will be an important part

33:31

of this. And that's why we go back constantly

33:33

to the noise, right? And why we go back

33:36

constantly to the need to get these things

33:38

out there and, and begin to demonstrate.

33:41

And, I think what happened a few weeks

33:43

ago in New York when Joby and

33:45

Volocopter did demonstration

33:47

flights off of the Wall

33:49

Street heliport and they were very warmly

33:52

received. And

33:54

there's always some laws of unintended consequences

33:56

right, when people say hey that's really, yeah, that's

33:59

really quiet, that's all these other guys,

34:01

right, say, now that

34:03

option exists, we're not going to let into

34:05

our space, That

34:06

be

34:07

things that you see,

34:08

John, I want to ask you a quick question given you brought

34:10

up the noise. what's your noise signature versus

34:13

Joby? say

34:15

signature is. So, and

34:18

I'm

34:18

a advantage

34:19

out, what ours is.

34:20

a you have I saw presentation you gave

34:22

that compared to helicopters the significant

34:25

difference to helicopters. And, there's

34:27

probably people listening to podcast

34:29

right now, some of whom may be critics

34:32

of eSTOL. So give

34:34

a little bit of a flavor first of all, what's

34:36

the noise difference? Would electric

34:39

eVTOL companies say, I have a significant

34:42

noise advantage over eSTOL,

34:44

or at least a hybrid eSTOL, which you have? And

34:46

then just give us a quick rundown on

34:48

what would the critics of eSTOL say overall?

34:52

Well, let me start out with the

34:54

promise of lower noise is

34:57

definitely one of the promises of electric

35:00

that I think electric can deliver on,

35:02

right? There's a lot of hype and promise

35:04

around electric aviation in general, much

35:07

of which I think will be very hard for

35:09

that people to deliver on, and

35:11

we can talk about that more in a second, but I

35:14

think noise is one of the ones that really will,

35:16

because the motors are definitely

35:18

quieter. If you have a lot of small

35:20

props, you can have lower tip speeds,

35:24

and then the design of

35:26

the props is, advanced quite a

35:28

bit. So there, there's no question

35:30

that these things are going to be a lot quieter.

35:33

Will the difference between the eVTOL and

35:35

an eSTOL pure

35:37

electric mode, will you be able to tell?

35:40

I doubt it. I don't have specific

35:43

numbers today. It's all aspect, angle

35:45

dependent and stuff. But I will

35:48

say that in the flying we're doing today,

35:50

we do have a chase plane and you never

35:52

hear the electric airplane

35:54

if the chase plane is in the air. We

35:57

are collecting noise data on that, and it's

35:59

great, and, we're super excited

36:02

about that. I think the electric

36:04

airplane promise of lower noise

36:07

will be delivered on by everybody. On

36:09

the hybrid, obviously we have

36:12

a generator on there, a turbo generator

36:14

in our case. It's small and we're

36:16

working to make it quiet on the two seat

36:19

tech demonstrator that we're flying today it

36:21

was designed to be inexpensive, so that

36:24

turbo generator is not particularly quiet, but

36:27

the airplanes are designed to be flown,

36:29

and we've tested this, that's why we did our first

36:31

flight purely electric, because,

36:33

we are working to make

36:36

sure in all modes,

36:39

it's extremely quiet, but we recognize

36:41

that there are some cases when you want to be, completely

36:44

our airplane can operate without the turbo

36:47

generator on. And the analogy I give

36:49

on that is, is, with your, a

36:51

Prius, right? When you pull out of the driveway,

36:54

you're probably operating purely electric,

36:56

and when you get out on the freeway,

36:59

the, gas engine kicks in and

37:01

that's how you get the range. And I think operationally

37:03

you're going to see a similar thing with the hybrid airplanes.

37:06

In cases where there's

37:08

an extreme noise sensitivity, like

37:10

some of the military missions or some

37:12

of these close in neighborhood missions, you'll

37:15

probably will be flying them purely electric

37:17

for the part where you're low. The other

37:19

big thing of course besides emitting

37:21

noise is how much are you

37:24

emitting at the source, and then what is the

37:26

trajectory, right? One of the ways that the

37:28

big turbofans really benefited

37:32

noise reduction on current jets, of course,

37:34

is that when you had two of

37:36

them, you climb a lot

37:39

faster than the older jets did, and therefore

37:41

you get away from the ground, and therefore you expose

37:43

a lot less, surface area. And

37:45

the eSTOL does that as well with the steep

37:48

approaches in both, both for takeoff

37:50

and landing, that, that's another

37:52

factor in how you minimize the ground exposure.

37:55

It's also another thing most people don't realize about

37:57

the eVTOL airplanes,

37:59

which is that everybody pictures

38:02

them taking off and landing

38:04

straight up and down. That's not

38:06

how helicopters work, but the big thing

38:08

on the eVTOLs is you

38:11

take off vertically, but then you've got

38:14

to get on the wing as fast as possible

38:16

Let's talk about eSTOL safety

38:19

case and how you are going

38:21

to approach safe,

38:23

slow flight, let's take, final approach

38:26

with the aircraft. What is final

38:28

approach speed and what are the safety

38:30

concerns you and the team had

38:33

to overcome with that

38:35

and what do you expect is going to need to be

38:38

accounted for in the certification process for

38:40

this? And we talk about, slow speed control,

38:42

we talk about wind shear, talk about

38:44

power loss on final approach. Walk

38:47

us through that.

38:48

Sure. One of the

38:51

interesting things about a powered

38:53

lift airplane, about the eSTOL

38:55

operation, is that the stall speed

38:58

is no longer a function

39:00

just of the geometry of the airplane,

39:03

the way it is in a normal

39:05

conventional CTOL airplane. What's

39:07

the flap setting, right? And that's, that's going to

39:09

pretty much determine the stall speed. In

39:11

our case, it's also a function of throttle setting,

39:14

because of the blown lift.

39:16

With the blown lift, you're flying at speeds

39:18

considerably below the

39:20

power-off stall speed. We

39:22

are expecting to be operating, 30

39:25

to 35 knots in the

39:27

approach regime of these

39:29

airplanes. That means

39:32

that if you're coming into a place like the

39:34

Wall Street Heliport, you have

39:36

to have multiple levels of redundancy

39:38

in the powertrain. And that is one

39:40

of the beauties of, the, of distributed

39:43

electric.

39:43

So, so approach to safety is that we're not

39:46

to allow the power to fail through

39:49

redundancy and reliability.

39:51

There's eight motors, there's four batteries,

39:54

there's two generators, and there's one

39:56

turbine in, in those, and it's

39:58

sized so that if you

40:00

lost the turbine on a critical part of

40:02

the approach you have, more

40:04

than enough battery capability. Even if

40:07

one of the battery systems fails, one

40:09

of the strings, one of the buses,

40:11

you can lose two motors in any,

40:14

scenario. And that's to handle the

40:16

extreme STOL, and obviously,

40:19

one of the other beauties of this

40:21

design at its heart, it's a conventional

40:24

airplane with a fixed wing and so

40:28

A complete power loss situation

40:30

in a a battery vertical lift airplane,

40:33

you're gonna come down. And, in the

40:35

electro eSTOL concept, you're going to glide

40:38

down. That's a much safer situation. We

40:40

saw that just last week, in Loudoun County,

40:42

not far from here. a Caravan

40:44

coming out of Dulles. And so, we

40:46

think that's an important, safety

40:48

feature.

40:49

What are the other aerodynamic

40:51

risk factors in

40:54

slow speed flight in the traffic

40:56

pattern on final, that

40:59

your aircraft needs to designed around?

41:01

Well, obviously one of the things about

41:03

flying slow is wind

41:06

and turbulence. One

41:08

of the really great things about

41:10

the electric propulsion,

41:12

and this is again why we think

41:15

it's the marriage of distributed electric

41:17

and blown lift that really is the

41:19

enabler to make all this

41:22

work, is that you can now use

41:24

the different electric propulsors

41:27

as part of your control system, and in fact,

41:29

we, we do that in the

41:31

design that the differential

41:34

thrust, for example, is mixed right in

41:36

to, the yaw control and

41:38

also into the roll control and

41:41

it's actually a strong pitch actuator

41:43

as well and well, so you have tremendous

41:46

control effectiveness that

41:48

you don't have in a normal

41:51

airplane, where the control get squishier

41:53

the slower you go, and

41:55

ultimately, you lose control authority. That's,

41:57

that does not happen on these blown lift

41:59

airplanes. That's one of the advantages of

42:01

this is that you have very

42:03

powerful control actuators all

42:06

the way through the flight envelope. And we plan to use

42:08

them. That's one of the ways you handle, gusts

42:11

and turbulence and things like that.

42:12

And so how does this apply toward preventing

42:15

one wing from stalling and

42:17

causing a spin and et cetera? Will this system

42:20

be designed to account that and prevent

42:22

that as part of the envelope protection?

42:24

It is power by

42:26

wire, first off, and

42:28

then the entire airplane is

42:31

a fly by wire, and while I

42:33

think pretty much every,

42:35

you get arguments about how much autonomy

42:38

people have in the AAM space,

42:40

but I think pretty much everybody buys

42:42

into the idea that it's a fly by wire system,

42:44

and so much so that we often don't

42:47

comment on that or talk about it. But,

42:49

I would just note that at the

42:52

moment there are no Part 23,

42:54

certified fly-by-wire systems.

42:56

There are in military jets,

42:59

there are in bigger airplanes, but

43:01

the certification piece of that is,

43:03

important and is significant. It doesn't

43:05

have challenges of autonomy,

43:08

the unknown pieces but it

43:11

also shouldn't be taken for granted.

43:13

What you get out of FBW

43:16

is the ability to have protection throughout

43:19

it, just as you do on the A320

43:21

or the big jets. And that'll be a big part of this.

43:24

Absolutely.

43:25

Okay. And then with respect to my last, question

43:27

on this is, low level wind shear.

43:30

What does that present for this

43:32

type of very slow flight? What type of risk

43:34

does low level wind shear present? The

43:36

airplane perhaps finding itself on

43:39

short final, an increased sink

43:41

yeah.

43:42

What do you need to be

43:44

especially wary of at these types of speeds

43:46

how do you solve for

43:47

that? That, that is one

43:49

of the things that we are looking at

43:51

It's related to the other piece of this

43:54

is the precision touchdown, part,

43:56

that it's, it's pretty easy to

43:59

take off of a, in 150

44:01

feet on a 300 foot space,

44:03

it's pretty easy to take off in those conditions,

44:06

and landing, if you need only

44:08

100 or 150 feet of ground roll, that's

44:10

not too bad. But if you've only got 300,

44:13

you've got to hit the space exactly.

44:15

And so that's one of the real, that

44:18

we see as one of the challenges in

44:20

this. And that's where, while there's no

44:22

autonomy per se in

44:25

this airplane, there's a lot of automation

44:27

and a lot of work is going

44:29

into the pilot guidance

44:32

and exactly

44:34

what roles the pilot is playing

44:37

and the flight computer is playing. Hitting

44:40

a precise touchdown

44:42

point. There is no flare planned

44:44

for what we're doing, okay, so we come straight

44:46

in, if you have an aim point, we're gonna

44:48

hit that, but your point is, well, do you know

44:51

the atmospheric profile between

44:53

here and there? And that

44:55

is a research topic on

44:57

whether we are going to, in

44:59

some cases, need you

45:01

know, a LIDAR profiler or some

45:04

kind of atmospheric profiler

45:06

in these, very very short spaces.

45:09

We are trying hard not to

45:11

because we are big believers in light infrastructure

45:14

but we have

45:16

not ruled out that you might need to put some kind of atmospheric

45:21

profiler at these very small spaces,

45:27

particularly if there's large building obstacles

45:29

or stuff around, so you could feed forward, essentially

45:36

in real time.

45:37

Right, so you're saying it's really these extremely

45:39

small landing spaces where

45:41

this becomes stringent because otherwise if

45:43

there's wind shear day and you're landing

45:45

on thousand foot runway you just increase your approach

45:48

speed like airplane would

45:50

you account for it that way.

45:52

Yes, exactly.

45:53

John, tying back to one of the comments Peter

45:55

made earlier about the market opportunity

45:59

outside of these 300 foot balanced field

46:02

lengths, have you given

46:04

thought to the idea that maybe this is

46:07

too complex tackling some of

46:09

these issues and there's enough of a market

46:11

opportunity in some conventional missions

46:13

where you're introducing an aircraft that has

46:16

significant direct operating

46:18

costs savings. So, why

46:21

not go and utilize existing 2000 foot

46:23

runways and avoid

46:26

these kinds of safety

46:28

issues that we just talked about and

46:30

go serve those missions and there's plenty

46:32

of those. What is the benefit of

46:35

having the capability to land on a 300

46:37

foot field? And, what does

46:39

that translate directly to market opportunities?

46:43

We've looked at this, it's a great

46:45

question, and we've looked at this, in sort

46:47

of, I'll broaden the question to how

46:49

you use blown lift,

46:51

and, the NASA X 57

46:54

and the Electra eSTOL set out to use

46:56

blown lift in two different ways, right? Essentially

46:59

what the physics of the blown lift do is make

47:01

the wing look

47:03

aerodynamically like it's larger than

47:06

it physically is, and

47:08

we use that to have a large

47:10

wing which gives slow

47:13

speeds and therefore short takeoff and landing,

47:15

and the X 57 was focusing

47:17

it more on CTOL mode and

47:20

have efficiencies in cruise.

47:23

And I think that, where you set

47:25

that knob depends on

47:27

the mission that you're trying to do. beat

47:59

Yeah, I'd be really curious to understand, a

48:01

customer of yours that's in the logistics space,

48:04

that's in the Caravan space, for instance today,

48:07

how do they think of the added

48:10

benefit of, this kind of short

48:12

field takeoff and landing capabilities,

48:14

and whether they would be

48:16

eager to go through the,

48:19

trouble of setting up a private field

48:21

and creating, presumably this

48:23

needs to be an available service,

48:25

and so you need to be able to go in and out in

48:28

all weather conditions including IFR,

48:30

and so that means developing

48:32

procedures for those airfields. So why not

48:34

just go to a nearest 2000, foot

48:37

runway, wherever your current operations

48:39

exist and utilize an aircraft that is

48:42

much cheaper and easier to operate?

48:44

Couple of, couple answers to that. The first is that

48:46

in our analysis, it's not a lot cheaper

48:49

than, the actual cost for

48:51

being able to do, both

48:54

what we would call a very short field urban

48:57

air mobility mission. Short field, the helicopter,

49:00

analogy mission, versus

49:02

the the, sort of Caravan mission

49:04

on that. And our analysis

49:06

is that we can do both,

49:09

but the kinds of things we're looking

49:11

at, the time savings, I go back to

49:13

the time savings comes from getting in close

49:15

from starting and,

49:17

ending your journey, close

49:20

to the customer's point of origin and

49:22

point of destination and, yes,

49:24

there's an argument that, oh, there's lots of underutilized

49:27

airports in the U. S. Yeah, and

49:29

most of them are places people don't want to go.

49:32

Okay, that's why they're underutilized.

49:35

Their warehouse is not on an airportand

49:37

there's 4000 warehouses

49:40

in the Amazon network alone

49:42

and the Walmart network alone

49:44

and you've got 10 or 12

49:46

of those players in the US economy

49:50

and so you have tens of thousands

49:53

of these middle mile logistics places you'd like to go your

49:57

you're not going to build conventional

49:59

airports at all of those. Are you

50:01

going to be able to take a piece of

50:03

the existing parking

50:05

lot and, stripe it off and

50:07

fence it off and operate aircraft out

50:10

of there? We think the answer to that question

50:12

is yes.

50:13

Well, that's actually one of my questions is,

50:16

if you have a customer that has

50:18

these types of facilities and maybe they're,

50:21

well located next to a highway network,

50:23

but they want to bring

50:25

an air capability into those locations

50:27

and they have the lot or they have open

50:30

space, walk us through

50:33

what it would take for them to,

50:36

be able to fly in

50:38

and out of there. Do they have to go and deal

50:40

with zoning county ordinances?

50:43

Does it happen at the state level? I

50:45

think a lot of us in the audience know what the fAA

50:47

has to say about this, paint that picture

50:50

for types of customers. how

50:52

easy or hard that going to be for to do?

50:55

Sure. Well, yeah, well,

50:57

and you had Dave Stepanek on, from Bristow,

50:59

and Dave talked about a lot

51:01

of this in his interview. What

51:03

Bristow is looking at is not

51:05

necessarily flying an E STOL

51:08

airplane onto an existing oil and

51:10

gas platform. That's probably going to

51:12

stay as a helicopter mission, although

51:14

Electra also says, well, here's

51:16

how much a barge costs, and

51:18

a barge that you can operate our airplanes

51:21

off of is, is actually not an expensive

51:23

proposition, but be that

51:25

as may, Bristow's current market,

51:28

is to expand into exactly that, or

51:30

in current vision, I, and I not

51:33

putting words in Dave Stepanek's mouth,

51:35

he said this on his podcast

51:37

with you, is exactly to expand

51:39

into some of these middle mile kinds of things.

51:42

And who better than helicopter

51:44

operators to address those

51:47

questions that you're talking about?

51:49

We do not have the answer

51:51

to every question that you answered in

51:53

there, but you can do all of these missions today

51:56

with helicopters. It's

51:58

just not, economically feasible

52:01

and with the noise,

52:03

we think not very, sustainable in

52:05

that. But, you

52:07

could do air service with helicopters

52:09

into these distribution points but

52:12

we think for the middle mile, you need to do a couple of thousand

52:14

pounds and, we think the

52:16

economics begin to really work on

52:18

this size airplane more than some

52:20

of the smaller UAVs. What's

52:43

the interesting really going to be to routine

52:46

drone deliveries in residential areas?

52:49

We're hoping it's where everybody goes,

52:52

oh, they notice it the first few times

52:54

you Do it and then it goes to

52:57

a background effect.

52:58

One question that I wanted to ask was, what

53:00

extent, John you considered

53:03

general aviation an an interesting use case.

53:05

You mentioned, the three up front, but I haven't

53:07

heard GA that to me

53:09

is, a really interesting market.

53:12

Yeah. Well, GA is, it

53:14

goes back to a lot of your autonomy

53:16

guests that you've had on and discussions.

53:19

At Aurora, we had a program called Centaur,

53:21

and Aurora still has that going, which is,

53:23

a DA 42 that was modified

53:26

to be an optionally piloted airplane, where

53:28

there was a human in the left seat and

53:30

a robot in the right seat, and

53:32

we did it in a way that it didn't void

53:35

the normal category certification

53:37

of the airplane when you put the robot in, and

53:39

we spent a lot of time making the robot removable

53:42

and in a way that didn't void the normal

53:45

category cert, so you could fly it manned in

53:47

a normal category, you could fly

53:49

it, robotically in a,

53:51

in an experimental category then,

53:54

and we demonstrated that. I personally flew

53:56

on one of those. And it's

53:58

pretty weird sitting behind the robot while

54:00

the robot flies it. There was a safety pilot,

54:02

of course, on the airplane, but all they

54:04

did was avoid other

54:07

traffic right. That was the, their role on that

54:09

was the detect, see and avoid. And

54:11

so, I always thought that the

54:13

real role for autonomy in the US

54:16

airspace system is really in the revitalization

54:19

of general aviation. I, I think

54:21

that's where it's going to ultimately

54:23

make a huge difference, because

54:25

if you look at it for the last 50 years,

54:28

it's been a steady decline of the

54:30

number of rated pilots, Learning

54:35

to fly safely

54:37

in the United States is a little

54:39

bit of stick and rudder

54:44

and a lot of procedures. Where

54:46

a lot of the costs, the proficiency

54:48

and the, I'll just call it the hassle,

54:50

comes from. And that's the place

54:52

that I think autonomy can help the most. So

54:54

I'm a big believer on general aviation.

54:57

When I was at Aurora, we were looking at,

54:59

what it took to get an STC on the automation

55:02

package and when you talked to Rob Rose

55:04

a lot of his comments are very familiar, because

55:06

we looked at all of that and worked on all of that at

55:08

Aurora, with the goal of getting

55:11

to a general aviation airplane

55:13

that you could fly with the kind of, training

55:16

and proficiency that goes into a

55:18

driver's license and not what you

55:20

currently have to have for

55:21

You brought up Aurora, Tell us some

55:23

highlights from Aurora that you think

55:26

apply to Advanced Air Mobility that you

55:28

think our audience be interested to hear about.

55:30

Well, the first comment I would make

55:32

about Aurora is that it started

55:34

out to be an environmental company That

55:36

the mission of Aurora Flight

55:38

Sciences, when we started in 1989,

55:41

was to do robotic airplanes for global

55:43

climate change research. And

55:45

for our first decade, that

55:48

was pretty much our exclusive focus

55:50

of trying to build

55:52

new tools for atmospheric scientists

55:54

to probe the

55:56

stratosphere. And that

55:59

turned out to be challenging,

56:01

primarily in terms

56:03

of the financial support

56:06

that is out there for climate

56:08

research. People seem to have lots

56:11

of opinions on the climate and it's proven

56:13

to be remarkably difficult to

56:16

build a company around,

56:18

um, the, environmental

56:21

research tools and the exploration of

56:23

the stratosphere. Aurora pivoted,

56:26

about, 8 to 10 years into

56:28

its history to being what I would call

56:30

more conventional UAV markets, meaning

56:32

that we got into the defense sector, prior

56:34

to 9 11. And the program

56:37

that I think really made Aurora,

56:40

which a lot of people probably don't

56:42

fully appreciate, was Global Hawk. We

56:44

bid that as a program to

56:47

DARPA, or DARO, back in 1994.

56:50

And the only requirement that they put out

56:52

was a 10 million unit flyaway

56:54

price. That was the firm requirement.

56:57

We took that seriously, and we bid

56:59

that, and we told them, here's

57:01

what we think you can do for a 10 million

57:03

UFP. Bob Mitchell, who is one

57:05

of the absolute, both aeronautical

57:08

and management geniuses of our

57:10

business, who was the president of Teledyne

57:13

Ryan at the time, built the airplane

57:15

the Air Force actually wanted. And,

57:17

of course, they won that., Aurora

57:20

pivoted quickly and got onto that team

57:22

as building composite parts, for Bob

57:24

and his team on the Tier 2 Plus. And then it

57:26

went from Tier 2 Plus to Global

57:28

Hawk, from DARPA to the Air Force,

57:31

from Teledyne Ryan became Northrop

57:34

then 911 happened and all of a sudden, Global

57:37

Hawk was a very large program

57:40

About two weeks before

57:42

the 911 attacks Aurora

57:46

put in a bid to

57:48

Northrop at the time, to build

57:50

all of the composite parts except the wing,

57:52

on Global Hawk, and we had won it. And

57:54

all of a sudden, that was just a huge program.

57:57

It was very painful, a lot of learning

57:59

and rapid growth into that, but that

58:01

was the program that really made Aurora

58:04

transition from being a, a

58:06

small, shop that had been

58:08

pursuing the environmental market into

58:11

the serious player it became in

58:13

the aerospace market.

58:15

And John, how has Boeing benefited

58:17

from the acquisition of Aurora?

58:19

What was the rationale behind that? Some

58:22

would say that one of the reasons that this

58:24

transaction happened was because Boeing

58:26

wanted to kill the D8 Double Bubble who

58:29

compete with the 737. What do you think about

58:31

that?

58:32

Well, I, I'm a huge admirer

58:35

of Dennis Mullenberg, and Dennis did

58:37

a great interview again on your show, and

58:40

I think in that interview a lot of Dennis's

58:43

vision and enthusiasm really

58:45

came through very clearly in that.

58:48

And we were part of that. Dennis was

58:50

out to transform Boeing.

58:52

He realized that just

58:54

because you're the best in the game

58:57

today doesn't mean you will be

59:00

in 50 years. And our

59:02

job was part of that

59:04

portfolio, was to be a disruptive innovation

59:07

force at Boeing that

59:09

was looking at generations

59:12

of airplanes in the future. And,

59:14

and Dennis, I just think is a terrific,

59:17

visionary. He was the driver

59:19

behind the Aurora acquisition.

59:22

And so Aurora's role

59:24

was to become an autonomy

59:26

center, a prototyping center. Boeing

59:29

had a lot of aspirations. Boeing did not

59:31

and still does not have a Part 23

59:34

division, a division that can do Part 23

59:36

airplanes. At various times they've

59:38

said that's not a market we want to be into, but

59:40

other times they have been interested in it, so

59:43

there were a lot of pieces that combined

59:45

into there. Absolutely true that

59:47

the D8 was the thing that got

59:49

that round of the discussions that

59:51

it led to the acquisition did start

59:53

with teaming discussions on this

59:56

NASA, Advanced Concept

59:58

Demonstrator back in 2016

1:00:00

or so, came out of the NPLUS 3 program

1:00:03

and the D8 was a program that had been

1:00:05

led by MIT and that Aurora

1:00:07

had worked on and was very

1:00:09

interested in. But that was, that was a piece

1:00:12

of the discussion. Aurora and Boeing had

1:00:14

a number of previous programs

1:00:17

for a number of different customers,

1:00:19

several of them in high altitude, long endurance

1:00:21

things where we were both competitors,

1:00:24

but also we were, suppliers

1:00:26

to them on, on high altitude

1:00:28

programs, what the world came

1:00:30

to see as Phantom Eye. There were programs

1:00:33

before Phantom Eye, but The, Phantom

1:00:35

Eye was the one that that became

1:00:37

publicly announced and flew. And, you know, Aurora

1:00:39

did the wing on Phantom Eye.

1:00:42

We did all the engine testing. This

1:00:44

was back in 2007/2008.

1:00:47

So there was a pretty long history

1:00:50

of collaboration working

1:00:52

for and with Boeing before

1:00:54

the discussions that were kicked

1:00:56

off in 2016, that were in fact

1:00:58

centered initially around the D8, but broadly

1:01:01

they were centered around Dennis's vision of how

1:01:03

you built a great aerospace

1:01:05

company for the 22nd century.

1:01:08

How do think that plan is shaping up?

1:01:10

Well, I don't think it's any secret that Boeing

1:01:13

has had some tough times, the Max and COVID

1:01:15

were a double whammy. that,

1:01:17

that hit them and all the big

1:01:19

players particularly hard. I'm impressed.

1:01:22

I think Aurora's doing well under Boeing.

1:01:24

And I was really pleased at the

1:01:27

AIAA SciTech, just

1:01:29

a couple of weeks ago here that the DARPA

1:01:31

TTO director on stage, publicly

1:01:34

commented on how well

1:01:36

he thought the Aurora Boeing

1:01:39

merger and integration

1:01:41

was goIng. Usually

1:01:43

we see, big companies buy

1:01:46

the little companies and then smother them with bigness. that's

1:01:49

in he said, I don't see that happening at Aurora.

1:01:51

I see Aurora doing really well and

1:01:54

keeping their

1:01:57

small company mojo while still doing

1:01:59

a good job of reaching deep

1:02:01

into the Boeing system for talent

1:02:04

and resources. And, I think

1:02:06

when your customers are saying that, that's

1:02:08

what you want, right? You want it, you're, we're

1:02:10

all in business, for our customers.

1:02:12

and, I was really pleased to hear that. So

1:02:14

I think that's a great testimonial for everybody

1:02:17

who's worked hard to make that integration

1:02:19

One of the comments you made earlier I'd like to

1:02:21

get your further thoughts on. Aurora

1:02:23

being great in research and development,

1:02:26

but never really building more than one

1:02:28

of anything and then to see you

1:02:31

move into Electra starting

1:02:33

a company that really is very much product

1:02:35

focused. What are some of the insights

1:02:38

in terms of commercializing technologies that you

1:02:40

have learned along the way at Aurora

1:02:43

that you internalized as you started

1:02:45

to build out Electra.

1:02:47

Well, the company culture is something

1:02:49

that is, very difficult

1:02:52

to change in, any entity even

1:02:54

in small organizations, particularly in large

1:02:56

organizations, it's hard to change the culture

1:02:58

once it's, locked in. And,

1:03:01

you get really good at doing one

1:03:03

thing, and you know, Clay Christensen

1:03:05

said that your, disabilities are

1:03:07

a byproduct of your strengths, right? that

1:03:10

what you're good at also defines what, you're

1:03:12

not good at. Cause you have all these systems and processes

1:03:14

in Aurora's case that are set up to do

1:03:17

new things quickly but

1:03:20

not to do the same thing, over

1:03:22

and not to, support products

1:03:24

in the field if from

1:03:28

Something at Aurora, I you know I

1:03:30

always kind of regretted

1:03:32

that. I mean to make a real

1:03:34

impact you have to not

1:03:36

just invent new things, you have to

1:03:38

fuse them into the world where

1:03:41

people can use them to make a real impact.

1:03:43

And that's what I wanted to do with,

1:03:45

Electra. So Electra is

1:03:48

not at all competitive

1:03:51

with Aurora in terms of company mission.

1:03:52

John. you've had a lot disciples from Aurora

1:03:54

who are in Advanced Air Mobility. Who's doing the most

1:03:57

interesting work?

1:03:58

One of the things I am most proud

1:04:01

of, from the Aurora

1:04:03

experience is what I call the Aurora Diaspora,

1:04:06

of people who came to

1:04:08

Aurora right out of school,

1:04:10

for whom Aurora was their first

1:04:12

job, and I I was their

1:04:14

first boss, who have gone on to

1:04:17

be CEOs or founders

1:04:20

of companies. It, the list is like

1:04:22

15 or so. It's amazing.

1:04:24

And a number of them have been on your show. So,

1:04:27

Brian Yutko, one of the true

1:04:29

stars of his generation you who

1:04:32

was, what or one of

1:04:34

the most rapidly advanced people in the history of

1:04:36

Aurora, ran the

1:04:39

R& D center in Cambridge, and then was

1:04:41

the, head of all the product development.

1:04:43

He's now the CEO at Wisk, but Paul

1:04:45

Eremenko hired him out the aero

1:04:47

department. His first job was on the

1:04:49

goldenEye at, at Aurora.

1:04:52

He's, had a incredible career

1:04:54

at Google and Airbus

1:04:56

and, now Universal Hydrogen

1:04:59

and, Billy Thalheimer, at

1:05:01

Regent, Adam Woodworth, who,

1:05:04

was our go to guy

1:05:06

for small UAVs at Aurora,

1:05:08

until, Google lured him to the West

1:05:11

Coast, and now he's the CEO

1:05:13

at Wing. it goes on. one of

1:05:15

the, one of the bigger ones was Insitu.

1:05:17

Let me ask you a quick question. John, if

1:05:19

we had Brian and Billy in room right

1:05:21

now and you closed the door and said, okay, guys,

1:05:24

here are the things you're doing really well and

1:05:26

here are a couple of, things you

1:05:28

should take a look at. What would be one

1:05:30

two things they're doing really well? What are

1:05:33

one or two pieces of advice give to Brian and

1:05:35

Billy?

1:05:36

I wouldn't try to give them advice. I

1:05:38

would ask them for advice. I would say,

1:05:40

you tell

1:05:40

That's a good answer.

1:05:42

uh, Part of being successful is

1:05:44

having good ties

1:05:47

and loyalty in all directions,

1:05:49

right? It's not about burning people down,

1:05:52

to build a successful company. It's

1:05:54

about, helping everybody

1:05:56

reach their full potential. And,

1:05:58

we always said that

1:06:00

the, you hire on talent.

1:06:03

And then you find a role for people

1:06:05

in the, business. And I think the string

1:06:08

of people who have gone on to start

1:06:10

their own businesses or become CEOs

1:06:13

of either their own business or a business

1:06:15

that somebody else helped start, is something

1:06:18

that I'm very proud of and that speaks well

1:06:20

to that.

1:06:21

Such a universal truth. And, now

1:06:23

you're embarking on a similar journey

1:06:25

with Electra. When

1:06:27

you look that journey, how

1:06:29

do see the capital requirements

1:06:32

for bringing Electra Aero's

1:06:34

first product to market and,

1:06:36

into reasonable scale production?

1:06:39

How is this going to compare to what an

1:06:41

eVTOL project? We all have good

1:06:43

examples and familiarity with what those cost.

1:06:46

How much capital have you raised so for

1:06:48

Electra?

1:06:49

Well, one thing my mother taught me, you never

1:06:51

talk about money in public so I'm not

1:06:53

going to give you a straight answer on that question.

1:06:56

I will say the total we're looking

1:07:00

is based on things like

1:07:02

what Pilatus spent to bring

1:07:04

the PC 24 into

1:07:07

certification. And, Pilatus

1:07:09

is one of my favorite companies. I, I

1:07:11

think they are just a fantastic

1:07:13

example. And, their airplanes

1:07:15

are wonderful. And they did the

1:07:18

PC 24 for somewhere around

1:07:21

400 million or something like that.

1:07:23

And I think that is a reasonable

1:07:26

number to bring something in this

1:07:28

class range into,

1:07:31

certification. That's a 20

1:07:33

percent of what some of these other guys

1:07:35

are spending on on this and frankly,

1:07:38

I don't know how they have 700 people.

1:07:41

Yeah, I mean, to get the certification, if

1:07:43

you can do it for about 400, I'd say

1:07:45

that's, 25 percent of the

1:07:47

cost of what these other players are going to take. Maybe

1:07:49

20%.

1:07:50

So we've lot questions John. Is there

1:07:52

else that we haven't talked about you'd like to

1:07:54

discuss?

1:07:55

Yeah, I wanted to just touch on

1:07:57

the STEM and,

1:07:59

diversity and inclusion element

1:08:02

of, industry, which is one

1:08:04

of the things that, I am

1:08:06

really, passionate about. We touched on

1:08:08

it a little bit in that, how you grow

1:08:11

leaders and how you help people

1:08:13

develop to their potential. But,

1:08:16

that starts really young,

1:08:18

and I am a huge believer

1:08:21

in both the sort of workforce

1:08:23

development, which is the pragmatic

1:08:25

way to look at STEM, and

1:08:28

then the, the sort of, it's the right

1:08:30

thing to do, sort of morality

1:08:32

angle of STEM, and,

1:08:35

I think that is just

1:08:37

so the important

1:08:39

and foundational to everything

1:08:42

all of us in this industry are doing.

1:08:44

I grew up in the sixties when Apollo

1:08:46

was on the evening news every

1:08:48

night, it was the good news story

1:08:51

of the 60s and

1:08:59

it attracted a whole generation of

1:09:01

people into the workforce. Today,

1:09:03

we don't have

1:09:06

that as much from and we can't take

1:09:08

for granted as an industry that people

1:09:10

are going to want to just flock to what we're doing.

1:09:12

I think we're all made up of total

1:09:14

aviation people and, true believers,

1:09:17

but we can't just depend on

1:09:19

that cadre of folks. We have

1:09:22

to be, evangelists in this

1:09:24

for, our profession. And,

1:09:26

that's part of why I've been

1:09:29

very passionate about, programs

1:09:32

like FIRST Robotics or like the Team

1:09:34

America Rocketry Challenge and why

1:09:36

our family has gotten involved with Estes

1:09:39

Industries because I see

1:09:41

the hobbies like model rocketry as

1:09:43

being incredible,

1:09:45

STEM development and workforce development,

1:09:48

tools.

1:09:49

Five, ten years from now, how is

1:09:51

world different than most people

1:09:54

are expressing it? You've heard sounds

1:09:56

like just about all of our podcasts, and

1:09:58

you're hearing them pontificate on what's going

1:10:00

to happen in the next 5 10 years in

1:10:02

this world of advanced air mobility. How

1:10:05

was your than what you're hearing

1:10:08

of our guests?

1:10:09

Well, first, I will caveat

1:10:11

that, the reality is I have no idea,

1:10:13

right, because, it's really tough

1:10:15

to have a crystal ball like that. I tend

1:10:18

to think, though, that being

1:10:20

a big student of history, that, I

1:10:22

look at the VLJ market, I look

1:10:24

at the commercial drone market,

1:10:27

I lived through the hype and excitement,

1:10:30

that surrounded both of those, and

1:10:32

if you look at those, you

1:10:35

think, well, there'll be

1:10:39

few players that emerge in a dominant position

1:10:41

there'll be a handful of zombies and there'll

1:10:44

be an awful lot of roadkill.

1:10:46

I think the big outstanding

1:10:49

question for me is whether the eVTOLs

1:10:51

are going to end up being the aeronautical

1:10:53

version of the Segway. And there

1:10:56

was a great article in Wired magazine

1:10:58

a few years ago that was titled,

1:11:01

well, that didn't work. The Segway

1:11:03

is a technological marvel. Too

1:11:05

bad it doesn't make any sense. And

1:11:08

it, goes back and dissects the,

1:11:10

I'll call it the rise and fall of the Segway,

1:11:12

which was, an amazing invention

1:11:14

by an amazing person. Dean Kamen is

1:11:17

truly remarkable. And

1:11:19

what he's done in his career, and

1:11:21

particularly with FIRST Robotics, I think is

1:11:23

nothing short of amazing, but the Segway,

1:11:26

was, we weren't going to be walking anymore

1:11:28

because we were all going to be on Segways. And,

1:11:31

that's not how it played out. So

1:11:34

I push those as cautionary tales.

1:11:36

And, I guess that's my big question of

1:11:38

whether, you're going to see a lot of the

1:11:40

eVTOL stuff end up as aeronautical

1:11:43

Segways.

1:11:43

What advice would give to our listeners

1:11:47

are starting companies with all of your experience?

1:11:50

Agree that it is a remarkable

1:11:52

time for innovation

1:11:54

and thus for entrepreneurship answer

1:11:57

in aerospace I encourage

1:11:59

and support that. My, advice

1:12:02

would be not to get captivated

1:12:05

by chasing unicorns. That

1:12:07

the idea that it's how much

1:12:09

money you raise, that's the

1:12:11

goal, or the metric that's

1:12:13

that wrong. I believe that the

1:12:16

goal here is to build sustainable,

1:12:18

viable businesses. That means

1:12:20

they have to have customers and revenue

1:12:23

and ultimately earnings. And,

1:12:26

I think that's what you've really got to

1:12:28

focus on when you build a business is,

1:12:30

how am I going to get to, revenues

1:12:33

and earnings and not, just, some

1:12:35

kind of paper valuation. That is the

1:12:37

encouragement I give students

1:12:40

and people when they ask about

1:12:42

it.

1:12:42

This has been a great talk, John. Is there

1:12:45

anything else you want to add, or would

1:12:47

you like to wrap up the podcast in any particular

1:12:50

way?

1:12:50

No, I think we've covered a lot of stuff

1:12:53

and I look forward to your skillful

1:12:55

editing to make sense of,

1:12:59

this.

1:12:59

Well, I gotta ask, and I'm not sure if you'll

1:13:01

answer it you've heard so many of the podcasts,

1:13:03

what's your favorite?

1:13:05

Wow, that's an excellent question.

1:13:07

I like a lot of them for different reasons.

1:13:10

No, I'm not going to give you one, absolute

1:13:12

winner. I think to me

1:13:14

the beauty of it is being able to hear,

1:13:17

the whole range of voices, right? Of being

1:13:19

able to, listen to, folks

1:13:21

like Dennis Mullenberg or Bob Pierce,

1:13:24

at the same time we're, talking to people

1:13:26

like Brian and, some of

1:13:28

your other guests. I think you're doing a great

1:13:30

service for the community so I appreciate

1:13:32

it.

1:13:33

John thanks for being on. It's been great having you.

1:13:35

Thank you.