The Next Air Force One
The Next Air Force One" refers to the replacement aircraft for the current fleet of Air Force One presidential aircraft operated by the United States Air Force. The U.S. government is in the process of acquiring and modifying new Boeing 747-8 aircraft to serve as the future Air Force One, with delivery expected in the mid-2020s. These next-generation presidential aircraft will feature enhanced security, communications, and other advanced capabilities to support the President of the United States during domestic and international travel
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00:00Some day in the future, this plane could be the new Air Force One, shuttling the President
00:05of the United States around the earth at hypersonic speeds.
00:09If you're anything like me, you are probably skeptical of that statement.
00:14Back in 2021, I got a phone call from Hermes, the company claiming they were going to make
00:18this a reality.
00:20A passenger plane capable of flying at Mach 5, 2.5 times faster than the Concorde ever
00:26flew.
00:27To say I was skeptical would be an understatement, but then they released this video.
00:33Hello, is that a working turbo ramjet engine?
00:37You have my attention.
00:38So I reached back out to Hermes to take a behind the scenes look at what they're building,
00:43and honestly, I was blown away by a company that any aeronautical engineer would dream
00:49to work for.
00:50What I saw and heard changed me from a skeptic to an optimistic fan of the company.
00:56A company that according to their CEO, AJ Piblica, started with humble beginnings.
01:02Can you tell me what those like early days were like when I was just the four of you
01:06in the basement of like, I don't know if you were literally in a basement.
01:09We were literally, yes, literally, literally in my basement with, with our two dogs.
01:13It was really exciting.
01:15So when we, when we left our relatively good paying jobs and, you know, decided to jump
01:20off a cliff and try to build an airplane together on the way down, we basically kind of gave
01:24ourselves and our families six months to figure it out, you know, essentially starting
01:27from nothing.
01:28Like is, can this idea that, that we've got become a thing?
01:32Can we put together a plan that can get us to, you know, high speed passenger travel
01:37and in some reasonable period of time, reasonable, you know, 10-ish.
01:41Can we bring really strong people in to support that plan?
01:47Can we bring capital to support that plan?
01:49Can we bring customers?
01:51All of those questions we had to answer within, within six months.
01:54Saying you are going to build a hypersonic plane is easy.
01:58Actually doing it is a completely different story.
02:01Software startups have a massive advantage in that they don't actually have to build
02:06anything.
02:07You can bootstrap a software startup with just a few talented and passionate founders
02:11in a garage.
02:12Hardware startups don't have it as easy, and it's why I didn't take Hermes overly
02:16seriously until I saw they were actually building.
02:20Pretty renders of futuristic planes are a dime a dozen.
02:23Here are some we created.
02:25Designing a hypersonic passenger plane on your computer is one thing, but to actually
02:30start prototyping it requires money.
02:32A lot of money.
02:34Raw materials, manufacturing machinery, and the factory space to house them are all costs
02:39that software startups do not have to contend with.
02:42And not to mention, there is a major short supply of talented design engineers, with
02:47major competition between prestigious hardware companies like SpaceX, NASA, and Apple.
02:53Hardware startups are famously difficult to build.
02:57One of the first challenges is to demonstrate to investors that you have a clear path to
03:02revenue, and for that you need customers.
03:05The path to selling planes in the commercial aviation industry is extremely tightly regulated.
03:11Even established multi-billion dollar companies like Boeing have tried to skirt around certification
03:17steps when introducing new engines, because it's so time consuming and expensive.
03:22Even government backed ventures like the Concorde, which had a max speed of Mach 2, are no longer
03:28around.
03:29Even military backed planes like the SR-71 and XB-70, with max speeds of just over Mach
03:343, are also no longer operational.
03:37Trying to go from nothing to a commercial hypersonic passenger plane with a max speed
03:42of Mach 5, with no intermediate revenue, is going to require some extremely patient and
03:47wealthy investors.
03:48However, Hermes' founders, when they were conceiving the company in that basement, were
03:53well aware of this treacherous path to revenue.
03:56We knew from the very beginning, like we couldn't just raise billions of dollars to go build
04:00a really fast passenger plane.
04:02We knew that just like SpaceX, all the steps of like technology, de-risking and development
04:07along the way, we needed to solve important problems for customers.
04:10So it took us a while to sort out like, okay, those problems are in the national security
04:14space and they are very, very important.
04:17And that was eventually the thing that I think really got us to the first round of funding
04:20is kind of making that breakthrough of like, yes, there's this long commercial roadmap,
04:25you know, to fly passengers across the Atlantic Ocean.
04:28But the way you get there is by solving national security challenges.
04:33So Hermes plans to solve problems in the national security space and generate revenue there first.
04:39So what are those national security concerns?
04:43One of Hermes' leading investors is the US Air Force, and hypersonic technologies
04:47are a hot button topic in the defense industry right now.
04:51What were your most surprising findings on the threat environment, particularly with
04:55regard to China?
04:58They're moving so fast, I think it surprised us all.
05:02There's one other thing we should bear in mind, and that is that the things that they're
05:05producing are very technical, very high quality.
05:09They're ahead of us, for example, in some of the space issues and with regard to some
05:16of these very, very fast hypersonic type weapons.
05:23The United States government is keenly aware that they need to catch up to maintain that
05:28terrifying prospect of mutually assured destruction, as hypersonic weapons can evade detection
05:34until it's too late to react.
05:36Intercontinental ballistic missiles are designed to exit Earth's atmosphere, travel extremely
05:41quickly at speeds of up to 7.8 kilometers per second through space, and then suddenly
05:47dive on their targets.
05:49They move quickly, but their lofted trajectory gives their enemies more time to detect and
05:53aim anti-missile defenses.
05:57Hypersonic missiles are designed to cruise within the Earth's atmosphere at about half
06:00the speed of an ICBM.
06:02The atmosphere slows them down, but their low trajectory means they suddenly appear
06:07on the horizon, previously being hidden by the Earth's curve, giving their targets
06:12minimal time to detect and intercept them.
06:16This is the national security challenge Hermes can help address, but not necessarily by building
06:21those weapons.
06:22One of the major challenges in developing hypersonic technologies is in testing.
06:27We visited the hypersonic wind tunnel in UTSA last year to meet with Dr. Chris Combs
06:33to make a U-Haul go hypersonic just for the laugh.
06:37And while we were there, we asked about his perspective on Hermes.
06:41One of the things I thought was interesting that their CEO said was it would be cheaper
06:47to build an airframe and make a hole in the desert than to test this in a hypersonic wind
06:54tunnel.
06:55How much truth is there to that?
06:57So there's a broad spectrum of tests, right?
07:01On the hypersonic wind tunnel side, even, there's facilities like ours where the costs
07:06are relatively low, but the scale is smaller and the flight temperatures are low.
07:12So there's certain types of facilities where you can run in for, you know, relatively low
07:17cost where that statement about, you know, a wind tunnel test being more expensive than
07:23a flight scale test, that wouldn't necessarily be true.
07:27But on the other end, if you go into one of the large scale DOD production wind tunnels
07:32where you could, or at a NASA facility where you could maybe start to approach something
07:37at scale, yeah, that might be the case.
07:40You might be looking at hundreds of thousands of dollars to a million dollars a day or a
07:44week to test, which, you know, it kind of depends on how you set things up.
07:50A cheap sounding rocket test would probably be about $10 million.
07:54And so we're not talking about flight tests, we're still talking about scale.
07:58So it really, it depends on how big is the thing you're trying to test.
08:02You're trying to test the actual vehicle or not.
08:05What type of wind tunnel conditions do you need?
08:07There's a bunch of variables there, but at the end of the day, if you wanted to do a
08:11full scale vehicle, fully integrated, there's not a facility in the world where you can
08:16actually do that on the ground.
08:17So flight test does become your only option.
08:20And that's the first market Hermes is planning to attack.
08:23Real world flight testing.
08:25That's what Hermes' first aircraft, Quarter Horse, will provide.
08:29It will be a reusable hypersonic test bed, providing flight testing services for companies
08:34seeking to validate hypersonic designs.
08:37It will be an autonomous hypersonic aircraft that will not just provide Hermes with valuable
08:42lessons in developing a hypersonic vehicle, but also provide them their first revenue
08:47source, competing with the likes of those $10 million sounding rockets.
08:52While being able to provide much more data, as rockets can only fly through the desired
08:57flight regime for a very short time as they ascend through the atmosphere.
09:01This is a valuable market, with deep pocketed clients like the US Air Force, NASA, and even
09:07SpaceX.
09:08Helping bridge that revenue gap to their final goal of a commercial passenger aircraft and
09:13gaining the confidence of investors.
09:16In April 2021, Hermes received a $60 million jointly funded contract from the US Air Force,
09:23and in March 2022 they secured $100 million of Series B funding with OpenAI founder Sam
09:31Altman as the lead investor.
09:33With this money they have been busy working on the next critical step in developing a
09:38hypersonic plane, the engine.
09:41Boom, the commercial supersonic aircraft startup, suffered a massive setback when Rolls Royce
09:46decided that the commercial supersonic market was no longer a priority and pulled out as
09:52an engine manufacturer, and have since had to scramble to develop their own engine, the
09:57Boom Symphony.
09:58Hermes wisely skipped the step of relying on a third party to solve their engine needs.
10:04Their first goal with that early seed money was to develop their own subscale turbo ramjet
10:09engine.
10:10Skyler Schufert, Hermes' chief operating officer, gave me a tour of their very first
10:16engine.
10:17So this was our humble beginnings.
10:19So the first engine subscale demonstrator that we made.
10:25And so just to take a step back, you know, our engine architecture is a jet engine at
10:29low speed, just an off the shelf jet engine, which is this section here.
10:33And then we wrap the high speed bits around it.
10:35So everything from here back is all custom, mostly 3D printed, but could have been traditionally
10:41manufactured as well.
10:42So this is our shared afterburner ramjet combustor.
10:45And then up front, we have our pre cooler, obviously ground scale hardware, you know,
10:49pretty battleship, rugged scale hardware.
10:53But the pre cooler is what allows the jet engine to get up to the point where the ramjet
10:57can then take over.
10:58Okay, let's pause there for one second, because I want this video to be as accessible as possible
11:04for people who aren't experts in ramjets, or pre coolers, or afterburners, or whatever
11:09the hell battleship rugged scale hardware means.
11:14By that, Schuyler means the prototype engines, which aren't intended to fly, are not built
11:19with low weight in mind.
11:21They are rugged and reliable, they use cheaper off the shelf components where possible, they
11:25are technology demonstrators, intended for rapid iteration.
11:30Spending a lot of time optimizing for weight and other characteristics doesn't make sense
11:34this early in the process.
11:36So if they can use a cheaper actuator designed for a battleship instead of spending an extra
11:41few thousand dollars on a specialized actuator intended for something like an SR-71, they
11:47will.
11:48Next, what even are ramjets?
11:51To understand that, we first need to understand what causes normal jet engines to have a physical
11:56speed limit.
11:58Normal jet engines need to compress air before it enters the combustion chamber in order
12:02to extract as much energy as possible from the fuel.
12:06A normal jet engine does this with the compressor section, where air enters the engine and is
12:11squeezed down into a smaller volume by the compressor blades.
12:15The compressor is driven by the turbines, which extract some of the energy released
12:19in the combustion chamber to drive the compression stage.
12:23This type of engine has a speed limit because of all of those moving rotating parts.
12:29As the speed of the aircraft increases, the incoming air is compressed more and more as
12:34it's forced down the inlet of the engine, which results in ever increasing temperatures,
12:39which can eventually exceed the material limits of the compressor and turbine blades.
12:45Ramjets get around this by using the forward motion of the plane to ram air directly into
12:50the combustion chamber, so we don't need any of the compressors or turbines at all.
12:56The forward motion of the plane provides enough compression alone, however it's not quite
13:01that easy.
13:02The plane needs to be travelling fast enough to achieve the necessary compression for combustion.
13:08A pure ramjet needs some other method to get up to speed, like being dropped from another
13:13aircraft.
13:14However, we can create a hybrid engine, a turbo ramjet engine.
13:19The same kind of engine the SR-71 used.
13:22It used a conventional jet engine with an afterburner, which is simply an additional
13:27fuel injector at the outlet of the turbine, to provide additional thrust, basically an
13:32air breathing rocket nozzle.
13:34It used this to get up to speed, and then once going fast enough, air was channeled
13:38around the compressor and turbine section and dumped directly into the afterburner and
13:43began operating as a ramjet.
13:46This is similar to what Hermes has built and there have been plenty of problems to
13:50solve along the way.
13:51Making the transition between turbojet and ramjet engine is not easy.
13:55It's not an instant switch.
13:58Several things need to happen as the engine transitions from turbojet to ramjet, and in
14:04that time the aircraft is going to be rapidly decelerating as drag acts on the supersonic
14:09aircraft.
14:10If this transition isn't fast enough, the plane could end up not having enough speed
14:15to light up the ramjet, or for a passenger plane the sudden deceleration could just be
14:20jarring.
14:21A lot of first time flyers find the sinking feeling of an airliner decreasing thrust after
14:27takeoff a little disconcerting.
14:30Imagine that, but on steroids.
14:32To ease the transition, we need to push the turbojet to it's limit, getting as fast
14:38as possible before mode switching.
14:41To help with this, Hermes have installed a pre-cooler, something the SR-71 did not have.
14:47This cools the incoming air and allows the turbojet engine to operate at much faster
14:52velocities before the blades reach their max operating temperature.
14:56An engine created by the Japanese Space and Astronautical Science Institute used a liquid
15:01hydrogen pre-cooler placed in the inlet of the jet engine, in front of the air intake
15:07spike.
15:08The liquid hydrogen then travels through the inlet nozzle and combustion chamber, where
15:12it absorbs heat and turns into high pressure gas.
15:16This high pressure hydrogen is then injected into the combustion chamber as a fuel source.
15:22The details of Hermes' pre-cooler are secret, but they are using a pre-cooler to push their
15:28off the shelf jet engine to extremes.
15:30So that's what we did here, so we took an off the shelf jet engine, you know designed
15:35to about Mach 0.8, used our pre-cooler, we pushed it up to about Mach 3.3 conditions,
15:42so around where the SR-71 flew in terms of temperature.
15:44So it was about 800F air coming in, we cooled it down to about 150F, the jet engine had
15:50no problem.
15:51And then all of this hardware, our afterburner combustor, was running during that whole operation.
15:58And then we pulled this out and connected the ramjet combustor directly to the facility
16:04and started it at about Mach 2.8.
16:06What do you mean by the facility?
16:08So yeah, so to be able to test the temperatures and the flow rates associated with high speed
16:16flight, you know, you could do it a couple of different ways.
16:20So there's full like tip to tail free jet testing, where you know all of the flow is
16:25coming in at high Mach conditions.
16:27But for us, because everything internally is all subsonic, we can do direct connect.
16:32So it's not flowing high speed around, it's just kind of flowing directly into the engine.
16:36We did that testing up at Purdue University, and they were able to provide the high temperature
16:41air associated with high speed flight.
16:44So we could prove out all the different- Is it just high temperature or is it high velocity
16:47as well?
16:48So like I said, everything after the normal shock is all subsonic, so it doesn't have
16:51to be high speed.
16:53Now it does create a little bit of risk because you're decoupling the supersonic inlet from
16:57the subsonic flow path, but that's how we were able to do it.
17:00So we did all of this with a team of eight people in nine months for a million and five.
17:05Wow.
17:06Yes, you heard that right.
17:07They have developed a functional turbo ramjet engine with just 1.5 million dollars.
17:13But of course, this is just a subscale model.
17:16It isn't intended for flight, it's a proof of concept, but they haven't stopped there.
17:22Once this concept was proven, they moved on to developing Chimera, the engine that will
17:26be used in Quarter Horse.
17:28We took a quick drive from Hermes' factory over to their test facility at a local airport,
17:34where I witnessed a test of Chimera.
17:44Now if you can't tell by the big stupid grin on my face, I was having a great time.
17:50It felt like the entire test building was trying to take off.
17:57This was a test of their in-house afterburner, which will be used as the ramjet after transition.
18:03After the debrief, Skyler gave me a tour of the modified General Electric J85 engine,
18:09the same engine used in the Northrop F5.
18:12But yeah, so as with, you know, talking down the other subscale engine, but we have the
18:18J85 core, the turbo machinery core right here, and then everything from this spot back is
18:24all of our custom hardware.
18:25So obviously these valves are battleship valves, you know, they're not going to be
18:29something that we fly, it's going to be a lot bigger, but really focusing on the core
18:32pieces here that we need to test on the ground.
18:35And so that's what this configuration is.
18:37So everything is currently, the designs are being flight-weighted, but even this we're
18:42using as a testbed and iterating a lot on.
18:44So the hardware that's inside of here went in like two weeks ago.
18:49And so that's what the team has been working on, is expanding of like some design modifications
18:53for life, for endurance, for performance.
18:56And so we can use this as a test bench to just rapidly turn through things, 3D pinch
19:00some stuff, traditionally manufacture some stuff, and then, you know, get the performance
19:04and duration out of this set of hardware.
19:08With these valves, they're inlet valves or what are they?
19:12Yeah.
19:13So these valves are to represent some of the pressure differential blow-off that we're
19:20going to need when we do the two-mode operation.
19:24Kind of bypass.
19:25Exactly.
19:26So when we transition from turbojet to ramjet, there's going to be a set of valves that move
19:31some of the internal systems around via pressure.
19:35And this is the ground representation of those.
19:38Is there a pump involved with that too?
19:40Because obviously you're getting the ram air for the normal bypass air.
19:44How do you simulate that with a static test?
19:47Yeah.
19:48So that's why some of this is blanked off.
19:50And so we just get as close as we can.
19:52So you're just kind of relying on the air from this, kind of dragging it in?
19:56Yeah.
19:57So you still have all the compressor powering, doing all the work against the air to kind
20:03of like pull it in.
20:04And like you're testing the nozzle as well.
20:07Do you think that's what your nozzle geometry will look like too?
20:09Oh, definitely not that big.
20:11It'll obviously have to be a lot smaller.
20:13Right.
20:14But like just the two ramps, are you just going to go two ramps?
20:16Or is it going to be more of a circular, I don't know, for your iris type thing?
20:22Yeah.
20:23So we will, yeah, the flight vehicle, the high speed tail will have a 2D inlet.
20:28But when we're flying with the off the shelf turbo jet, the off the shelf J85, which is
20:33some of the earlier flight vehicles, we'll just use the stock afterburner that has a
20:37axisymmetric nozzle.
20:38Back in the factory, I asked Guyler why they chose the J85 engine.
20:42So these are out of production, the J85s.
20:45So we didn't work with GE at all.
20:46So it was all just us working with, we were really working with the maintenance repair
20:50and overhaul shops for them.
20:52So that's really where the expertise and knowledge lies.
20:56And these are, you know, these engines were, I think, originally designed in like the 50s.
21:01So there's not a lot of electronics on board.
21:04There's no firmware we have to, you know, work through.
21:06And really, it's a pretty elegant, but hydromechanical system for all the controls.
21:12So really, it's about understanding the configuration of it.
21:15And you can kind of chase down all the different tubes and everything to understand how it
21:18works.
21:19And there's a suite of documentation out there.
21:21So it was really on us to kind of learn how it worked.
21:25I would have assumed you were working pretty closely with the engine manufacturers since
21:29I imagine it'd be pretty valuable for them too to have.
21:33We certainly will be with Pratt & Whitney on the F-100 scale engine because that has
21:36digital control.
21:39It's a much higher performing engine.
21:41So we'll need to understand the details of that a lot better.
21:45And so that one, we certainly will be.
21:47But this one has been around for a long time.
21:49There's a lot of people who understand this engine and the performance needs out of it
21:55are a lot less than what we're going to need for the future vehicle.
21:58We'll talk about Quarter Horse and the kind of scale of that, but this will power Quarter
22:02Horse.
22:03And then over here is the F-100, the Pratt & Whitney F-100.
22:06And that will power Dark Horse.
22:08So the vehicle that comes after Quarter Horse.
22:10How many, is it just one engine?
22:12Two engines.
22:13Two engines.
22:14Two engines on Dark Horse.
22:15And it'll be various engines on Quarter Horse depending on the test that we're doing.
22:19But yeah, so it gives you a sense of scale.
22:21So this puts out, you know, about 5,000 pounds.
22:24This puts out about 30,000 pounds.
22:27So it seems Hermes are well on their way with the development of their ramjet engines, with
22:32both the J85 and much larger F-100 versions being actively worked on.
22:37So what's next for Hermes?
22:40Well, they just tested Quarter Horse Mark Zero, the ground vehicle we saw being constructed
22:45in the factory.
22:46This vehicle was intended to help Hermes develop their in-house manufacturing techniques.
22:52A lot has changed since the days of the SR-71, and this has unlocked many manufacturing techniques
22:59that the engineers of the 1960s could only have dreamed of, like large format 3D printing.
23:06So we're also investigating large format additive.
23:08So that was like very fine, very precise.
23:11But with large format additive, you can deposit a lot more material and so you can build larger
23:16structures a lot faster.
23:17So you can see the resolutions are a bit worse, but you can put down a lot of material and
23:22build large structures.
23:23So there's no real grain on the end?
23:25Has that been processed to polish?
23:28So it's like a weld process.
23:29So you have pretty consistent material properties throughout.
23:33And so that's what we're looking to quantify and get very...
23:36What material is that?
23:38This is Inconel as well.
23:39It's so much heavier than I was expecting.
23:40Like it is just steel.
23:41Yeah, it's just steel.
23:42Yeah, it's high nickel steel.
23:46It's just one of those things that you read about it constantly, but I've never actually
23:50held it.
23:51And in my head, I was thinking it would be closer to titanium, but you know, it's just
23:54heavy.
23:55It's heavy.
23:58It's kind of like less exciting too when you're like actually looking at it, it's like, yeah.
24:01I mean, I'm just nerdy about this sort of stuff.
24:04This is where I get properly just excited, material science, I just think it's so cool.
24:09There's some voids in there.
24:11So this is like a large, very large weld process.
24:14So wire comes in, big laser, and you can deposit a lot of, yeah.
24:18And so that's what's actually in here.
24:19You can kind of see the robot arm that prints it.
24:21I'll take that.
24:22So it's not active right now, but you kind of see the laser arm.
24:30At this point in the tour, extremely loud, high-pitched grinding started, which is a
24:35common theme on these documentary shoots, so I'm going to save your ears and explain
24:39the rest in voiceover here.
24:42Hermes have been manufacturing much of Quarter Horse Mark Zero in-house using a mixture of
24:46small and large format 3D printing, and an absolutely massive CNC machine.
24:52However, one of the most exciting manufacturing techniques that Hermes mentioned was with
24:56Meccano Labs' new AI driven robots, a robotic panel forming process that could form the
25:02outer skin panels of the planes.
25:05This technology could drastically decrease the cost of development.
25:09Body panels in automotive and aviation industries are frequently manufactured by huge hydraulic
25:14presses that force sheet metal into a mold.
25:18These molds are expensive to make, and making small adjustments to a design often require
25:23making an entirely new mold.
25:26This is also even more difficult with high temperature alloys like titanium and in-canal,
25:32something the engineers of the SR-71 seriously struggled with.
25:36The US didn't even have hydraulic presses with enough pressure to form the panels.
25:41The best forge in the United States at that time could only produce 20% of the pressure
25:47needed to form these titanium parts.
25:50Clarence L. Johnson, the manager of Skunk Works at that time, pleaded for the development
25:56of an adequate forging press, which he stated would need to be a 250,000 ton metal forming
26:02press.
26:04Because of these inadequacies in forming capabilities, the final forging dimensions were nowhere
26:09near the design dimensions and much of the forming process had to be completed through
26:14machining.
26:15Meaning, most of the material was cut away to form the part, resulting in 90% of the
26:21material going to waste.
26:23When your raw material is extremely difficult to refine, like titanium, these kind of wastes
26:28really hurt.
26:30This also makes design iteration extremely difficult, but Mackinaw labs are already forming
26:35titanium and in-canal parts, and this, to me, is a key enabling technology.
26:41But, of course, even the most advanced manufacturing techniques don't solve all of Hermes'
26:48technological challenges.
26:49Which is why Hermes have limited themselves to Mach 5, the lower end of the hypersonic
26:54flight regime.
26:55And like you mentioned earlier, that like Mach 5, there was a specific reason why you're
26:59aiming for Mach 5.
27:01What is the advantage there?
27:02Yeah, so we do get the like hypersonic bump, because most people say Mach 5 is where hypersonic
27:08takes over.
27:09But it's not really about the buzzword, although that does help sometimes, get people
27:13excited or make them very skeptical sometimes too.
27:17But it's really about, that is where the technology cliff is.
27:22So on the engine side, it's where you can use ramjets rather than scramjets.
27:27About Mach 5 and a half is where you have to go to scram, because your performance losses
27:31caused by the normal shock become too much to have net thrust going forward.
27:37And then on the material side, the temperatures that the gross acreage sit at are in a place
27:43where metallics can still...
27:44What does that mean?
27:45Gross acreage?
27:47Like the primary structure.
27:49So the primary structure of about Mach 5 sits at 800 or 900 degrees versus like the 1900
27:56degree leading edge.
27:57And so that means that we can use metallics for the primary structure versus like ceramics
28:03that are still kind of in the development phase or like the early research phase.
28:08So we want stuff that can be produced at scale and is relatively available.
28:12And so that is kind of the cliff.
28:14So we're really at the just the very, very low end of hypersonic.
28:17When people see hypersonic, they're like, oh, you know, it could be up to Mach 25.
28:20It's like, no, we're barely hypersonic.
28:22Right.
28:23So you're just going bare metal for the actual skin of the planet?
28:26There is going to be some like judicious use of ceramics that we'll probably use in places
28:32that you might imagine.
28:33But for most of it, we can stick with, you know, off the shelf metallics.
28:39What's the reusability like there?
28:40Is like in canals fine for going through those thermal cycles?
28:44I mean, it's definitely gonna be a challenge.
28:46And so that's that's part of the work is to be very incremental about that.
28:49And our first vehicles are not going to have much life at all.
28:52And really, it's about accessing these flight conditions and starting to test these conditions.
28:57And then the later vehicles will start to solve it.
28:58But really, you almost have to reeducate people around the life of the vehicles, because like
29:03most airliners or even, you know, aircraft, the way that they think about life is like
29:10time under wing, you know, hours of engine operation, hours of flight.
29:15That is a horrible metric for us, because you're not in the air that long.
29:18It's really about cycles.
29:19It's thermal cycles that are going to drive the life of these vehicles.
29:22And to be honest, we just need more data to be able to really anchor the long term maintenance
29:27repair and overhaul models for these things.
29:29Could you see yourself using, would ablatives even work at Mach 5 if needed it?
29:34I mean, it's definitely possible.
29:36It's definitely, it definitely works.
29:39But for the long term vision that we have of being aircraft like operations, because
29:43they are aircraft, you have to use things that don't ablate or else you're having to
29:48replace them every time.
29:49I mean, like the X-15 had a lot of issues with like the ablate of just sticking to windows
29:53and things.
29:54So that was when they started really pushing the flight condition up to Mach like six and
29:57a half towards seven.
29:58For the first vehicles, they just had straight raw Inconel on the outside.
30:01So, and that thing, I think, you know, they flew 199 times with half a dozen or so vehicles.
30:09So that was highly reasonable for like the first time they were even starting to get
30:12to these conditions with a human rated craft.
30:15Rocket based, so a little bit different, but yeah, just kind of an interesting point.
30:21What's the biggest problems you've solved there so far?
30:23Like, have you had the opportunity to test the actual airframe and see what sort of issues
30:29you're going to have with that?
30:30Not yet.
30:31That's part of the work to be done.
30:33But there's a slew of other risks and problems that we have to solve.
30:36So the engine one was where we wanted to focus.
30:38You can't fly an aircraft without an engine.
30:41So that was where we started and has been basically, you know, all of the time in the
30:44company up until this point.
30:46And now we're like at a place where, you know, the major technical risk has happened or has
30:51been de-risked in terms of the mode transition.
30:53And now we're like onto the airframe side.
30:54So even just like high speed takeoff and landing of a remote piloted vehicle is a challenge.
31:00Both of those are solved simultaneously.
31:02What's the challenge?
31:04So the challenge is for a hypersonic vehicle, you want to have very short, stubby wings
31:09because you don't want to take all that drag into high speed.
31:12That's really, really bad for takeoff and landing.
31:14So you're having to thread three needles to be able to have a vehicle that can traverse
31:18all of these flight conditions.
31:20Takeoff and landing is one where you want really big wings and you want to go very slow.
31:24For us, not able to do that.
31:26And so by adding the speed component, now the control system has to be tighter.
31:31All solvable, but not something that we have done as an organization.
31:34So that's what we're kind of focusing Mark 1 on.
31:36So our first variant of Quarter Horse.
31:39Mark 2 will be around pushing the jet engine up in flight to the mode transition point.
31:44So making sure the right flow is being fed to the engine, making sure our pre-cooler
31:48works in the actual environment.
31:50And then the third mark will be the mode transition capable, you know, high speed brake and air
31:55speed record vehicle.
31:57And so being incremental about that.
31:59So we're not going to really start to understand the thermal considerations in flight until
32:05Mark 2.
32:06But we're going to be doing ground testing along the way to be able to understand that
32:09where we're heating up sections of the airframe, making sure that the joints and everything
32:14move the way we expect them to under load and under temperature.
32:17Assuming each mark of the Quarter Horse is a success, Hermes will be moving on to build
32:22their second vehicle, Dark Horse, which will be a fully reusable uncrewed vehicle designed
32:28for defense and national security missions.
32:30It will be Hermes' primary defense product, likely serving a similar role that the SR-71
32:37did before it, avoiding interception with incredible speed and high altitude flight.
32:42Then finally we've Halcyon, the hypersonic passenger plane.
32:47It bears some similarities to the XB-70 with its folding wingtips, which could actuate
32:52downward for supersonic flight.
32:54This in combination with the triangular wedge air inlet increased the amount of compression
32:59lift the plane could generate.
33:01Compression lift occurs as a result of extremely high pressure air created underneath an aircraft
33:07as a result of shockwave formation.
33:10Shockwaves are basically just areas of extremely high pressure after all.
33:14The triangular lip of the XB-70 air intake creates shockwaves that travel underneath
33:19the wings.
33:20The folding wingtips were positioned to reflect the shockwave back underneath the wings to
33:25increase compression lift further.
33:28This increase in lift helped increase the range of the XB-70, which was designed as
33:33a deep penetration nuclear strategic bomber.
33:36The lowering of the wingtips also shifts the center of pressure forward, which helps counteract
33:41a phenomenon where the center of pressure moves backwards in supersonic flight that
33:46can create flight instabilities.
33:49No crewed aircraft has used compression lift since the XB-70, so it's quite cool to see
33:54Halcyon taking advantage of this phenomenon.
33:57It could potentially fly passengers from New York to Paris in just an hour and a half,
34:03practically commuting distance for whoever can afford it, which Hermes claims could unlock
34:08$4 trillion of GDP for economies with access to the technology.
34:14Yeah, so looking back in history when we've seen accelerations of transportation networks
34:18like when Rome built out the roads, we switched from sail power to steam power and marine
34:23shipping or when China built out high-speed rail in the 20th century, all of those were
34:28accompanied by multiple single-digit point GDP growth of the affected region.
34:34And the kind of reasoning behind it is when you reduce the barriers to goods moving around
34:41and people moving around, you increase trade and that increases GDP.
34:46So there's plenty of math and stuff behind it, but it's happened in the past and we have
34:51kind of normalized to the speed at which the world moves around.
34:55So that's what I mean by this untapped resource that we have.
35:03And I think the pandemic taught us quite a bit about how much face-to-face really matters,
35:10especially in the early days of bringing complex goods into fruition and getting them
35:17into a marketplace.
35:19Like if you're selling a commodity, do you need to be in person to sell coffee or a refrigerator?
35:24No.
35:25A nuclear reactor, a hypersonic airplane, something like that, yeah, probably.
35:30How important do you think accessibility to the technology is in order to achieve that
35:36goal?
35:37And how accessible do you see, like, very far down the line of how a normal person flying
35:43on something like this?
35:44Yeah, so the kind of math that we've done in the markets that we've looked at is focused
35:49on business class and first class travel only.
35:52Because I think that's the realistic entry point to the market now.
35:56I mean, we've had seven or eight generations of subsonic passenger aircraft now, and we're
36:02incredibly efficient at them and still continuing to get more efficient prices coming down,
36:07safety improving, of course.
36:09Is the first generation of high-speed airplanes going to do that?
36:13No.
36:14It's going to take time to get through that.
36:16But I do think it will be very, very difficult to operate a service like this at a price
36:24point where, you know, like an economy and a premium economy ticket makes sense.
36:29With the technology set that we're pursuing today, I do think there are additional technology
36:35sets that are less mature, either broadly or in an aviation context specifically, that
36:42can really kind of rewrite the rules of the test there and take that step.
36:47But it's not something that, like, I want to sign up to do in the first generation or two.
36:52So, you know, I think the approach here is very much like a, you know, kind of a Tesla
36:57master plan, focus on the, you know, premium product, if you want to call it that, get
37:04that right, and then drive either, like, efficiency into the system or as, you know, a decade's
37:11worth of technology development has happened in either energy storage or energy production.
37:18I think that's like the key technology area that actually enables that flip to, you know,
37:25cost points that make this widely accessible.
37:28AJ mentioned energy production and energy storage being two key technologies that could
37:34make their technology more accessible.
37:36And that's because one of the largest costs associated with a flight is the cost of fuel.
37:42Ignoring profit margins on a $100 ticket, we can break down where your money goes to
37:47cover the costs of an airline.
37:49On average, about $19 to $21 goes to fuel, fluctuating with fuel prices.
37:55For a hypersonic plane, that fuel cost is going to be much higher, as drag increases
38:01with the square of the velocity.
38:03Although, that will be mitigated somewhat by much lower air densities at a cruising
38:08altitude three times higher than a typical airliner.
38:11Regardless, these aren't going to be cheap tickets, and that's going to be compounded
38:16by Halcyon's relatively small internal volume and the increased cost of maintenance
38:21for a plane dealing with extreme aerodynamic heating each and every flight.
38:26The reality is, Hermes won't be selling these planes to commercial airlines anytime
38:31soon.
38:32Perhaps one day we will see a hypersonic Air Force One, allowing the President of the United
38:38States to appear first on the scene when it matters most.
38:42A powerful diplomatic tool.
38:44I often judge companies by the people working within them, and it's hard not to get invested
38:49in the vision of these companies when people like Tonio Martinez are leading it.
38:54Hermes' VP of Production.
38:56Tonio is among the most experienced engineers in the world in his field.
39:01Having worked on the X-51 Wave Rider, the SpaceX Crew Dragon, and Divergence 3D printed
39:07supercar.
39:08Experience he is bringing to developing the machine that builds the machine.
39:12Where he is focusing much of his effort on ensuring everyone in the company is communicating
39:18and learning from each other.
39:19Not a lot of engineers get the opportunity to work with both the engineering process
39:25and the actual manufacturing process.
39:27What is that like developing that?
39:30That's a good question because a lot of companies are much more siloed.
39:35Where engineering and manufacturing oftentimes aren't even in the same building.
39:38And so that was a very important part of establishing this company was having engineering
39:45and manufacturing in the same building.
39:47And what that allows for is the engineers, as they're designing their parts, they can
39:52come out and work with the technicians who will be putting things together and say, what
39:56about this?
39:57What about that?
39:59Make sure that the things can actually be assembled.
40:01And the same thing with the machine shop.
40:03Some design engineer has to get a part made.
40:06They can go out and talk to the machines, the machinist who's going to make their part
40:10and get pointers on like, use this cutter and make it that radius.
40:13And these types of things that the engineer may not just intuitively know, but they can
40:18get that information from the technicians to make their designs that much better to
40:22begin with.
40:23And then when the parts get made and they're actually integrating the parts onto the vehicle,
40:28you'll see the engineers and the technicians working side by side to integrate those parts
40:31and put them in.
40:32And so the engineer gets the opportunity to go through that process of, I designed this
40:38thing and this is what I was thinking when I designed it in terms of how this thing could
40:42go together and ease of installation and those kinds of things.
40:45And then when they actually see that process or participate in that process, then they
40:50get to, oh, you know what?
40:52If I had done this a little bit different, it would have been a little bit easier.
40:54And so you get to go through those iterations at a company like this, where a lot of other
40:58companies, you just don't get that kind of opportunity.
41:00That's the most, I've had a little bit of experience with that.
41:04I worked in a biomedical device startup and very humbling experience going to the machine
41:08shop for the first time.
41:09They're like, how am I?
41:11This radius is not possible.
41:14But it was the most fun part of it.
41:16I've seen even tolerancing, like you learn about tolerancing, but you never fully understand
41:22it until you see two parts not going together properly.
41:25Precisely.
41:26And that's been, I think a lot of the, that's been, part of what's enjoyable to me is seeing
41:35the look on the engineer's face and the technician's faces and the machinist's faces as they're
41:41collaborating and working together.
41:43And they're actually putting the parts on and either it's like, ah, frustration or like,
41:49you know, yeah, we did it, joy.
41:51But to see that happening, especially with some of the newer engineers that are just
41:55starting to go through this process, it's pretty awesome because you can feel the level
42:00of intensity and energy increasing within the team and the cohesion.
42:05And just, we need this fast pace of iteration within the team and within all the processes
42:12that we, that we build in order to reach our super challenging objectives.
42:17Funny, I think like most engineers actually crave that environment as well.
42:20Like most engineers become pretty discontent when they're pigeonholed too much into,
42:26it's ultimately a creative field.
42:27I think engineers are just like mathematically inclined artists.
42:32So they like to be like thrown into the thick of it.
42:35Yes.
42:36And that is absolutely correct.
42:37I think some companies have so structured their environment that the engineer really
42:48gets pretty boxed in by boundary conditions, by constraints, by their environment to where
42:55sometimes you can go up to an engineer in a big company and say, what vehicle is that for?
43:01And they may not even know because it's just like so pigeonholed into a specific thing.
43:06Here we really encourage critical thinking across the entire team.
43:13So if a machinist is making a part, they should have a good idea of what this thing
43:18is for and what it's going to do.
43:20If the technicians are installing stuff on the aircraft and working with the engineers,
43:26we should see the interaction between these two different disciplines doing the critical
43:32thinking thing because they get to, right?
43:35Because you actually get to do that critical thinking and you get to make decisions based
43:39on that critical thinking because again, we are pushing the decision-making to the extreme.
43:46And by doing that, we eliminate a lot of bottlenecks for decision-making as well as
43:54really making sure that the decisions that are being made in the hands of those who are
44:00actually most qualified to make those decisions, which is usually at the front line.
44:04And so all of our processes are structured around enabling the engineer and the machinist
44:10and the technician to work together to find solutions and then just execute without any
44:19overly constrained or heavy oversight on that process.
44:23Now I know for a fact that any engineer listening to that conversation has their heart pumping
44:28a little bit faster.
44:30So many companies pigeonhole their engineers into ever-increasing specialization, to the
44:35point that it's hard to see the forest for the trees and you kind of just stop learning
44:40and evolving.
44:41Every ambitious engineer wants to work in a company like this, where your creativity
44:46is not only enabled, but encouraged.
44:48And in a company with people as experienced as Tonio Martinez, you are going to learn
44:53a lot.
44:54I realized the opportunity I had to connect enthusiastic young engineers to companies
45:00like this last year.
45:02Helion told us, after our documentary with them last year, they actually hired a specialized
45:07nuclear engineer because of our video.
45:10I feel incredibly proud that our work can serve both our audience and