This Week in Startups - The Next-Generation of Single-Stage-to-Orbit Spaceplanes with Radian's Richard Humphrey | E2022

Episode Date: October 8, 2024

This Week in Startups is brought to you by… Lemon.io - Hire pre-vetted remote developers, get 15% off your first 4 weeks of developer time at https://Lemon.io/twist Vanta. Compliance and security shouldn't be a deal-breaker for startups to win new business. Vanta makes it easy for companies to get a SOC 2 report fast. TWiST listeners can get $1,000 off for a limited time at https://www.vanta.com/twist AssemblyAI. Get maximum value from voice data with AssemblyAI. Build powerful products and features for your end users on the industry’s leading speech-to-text models. Get 100 free hours to start building at https://www.assemblyai.com/twist * Todays show: Radian’s Richard Humphrey joins Alex to discuss the future of space travel, focusing on spaceplanes like the Radian One (2:05). The two dive into technological advancements (10:20), funding challenges (14:28), the potential to reduce orbital launch costs (47:56), and more! * Timestamps: (0:00) Radian’s Richard Humphrey joins Alex (2:05) Discussion on Richard Humphrey's aviation history and spaceplane development (4:22) Spaceplanes versus rockets: advantages and disadvantages (8:51) Lemon.io - Get 15% off your first 4 weeks of developer time at https://Lemon.io/twist (10:20) Spaceplane projects: historical context and current technology (14:28) Funding challenges and venture capital interest in space industry (17:14) Radian 1 spaceplane's rocket sled launch mechanism and specifications (20:22) Vanta - Get $1000 off your SOC 2 at https://www.vanta.com/twist (25:28) Reusability and refurbishment process of the Radian 1 spaceplane (29:03) AssemblyAI - Get 100 free hours to start building at https://www.assemblyai.com/twist (30:33) Radian 1 project updates: recent tests and future timeline (39:00) Commercial model and government interest in horizontal launches (42:38) Orbital launches: future demand and space economy implications (44:49) Space launches: US and Chinese dominance, and potential for rapid cargo transport (47:56) Private orbital flights: cost, feasibility, and space tourism (53:19) Reducing orbital launch costs and the transformative potential of space access * Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com * Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp * Check out Radian: https://www.radianaerospace.com * Follow Richard: X: https://x.com/RadianSpace LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardhumphrey⁠ * Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis * Thank you to our partners: (8:51) Lemon.io - Get 15% off your first 4 weeks of developer time at https://Lemon.io/twist (20:22) Vanta - Get $1000 off your SOC 2 at https://www.vanta.com/twist (29:03) AssemblyAI - Get 100 free hours to start building at https://www.assemblyai.com/twist * Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland * Check out Jason’s suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis * Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com * Subscribe to the Founder University Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@founderuniversity1916

Well, that's why it's exciting and fun. But I have to ask, do you need a crash test dummy to affix onto the sled? Because I have some time. I have a helmet. I'm saying, are you volunteering? This is great. I am volunteering because it sounds like good fun. And that also makes a great YouTube video.

This week in startups is brought to you by lemon.io. Hire pre-vetted remote developers. Get 15% off your first four weeks of developer time at lemon. dot i.o slash twist vanta compliance and security shouldn't be a deal breaker for startups to win new business vanta makes it easy for companies to get a sock to report fast twist listeners can get a thousand dollars off for a limited time at vanta dot com slash twist and assembly ai get maximum value from voice data with Assembly AI. Build powerful products and features

for your end users on the industry's leading speech-to-text models. Get 100 free hours to start building at AssemblyAI.com slash twist. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to This Week in Startups.

My name is Alex, and we have a really awesome show for you today. You might not know it, but I am an enormous science fiction nerd. And one of my goals before I die is to get myself up into space. So when I'm, I hear about companies that are working on ways to get things into orbit faster or cheaper or just

have a different approach. I sit up. And then I heard about a company called Radiant Aerospace. They're doing some testing. They are working on a space plane. So I had to put them on the Twist 500. I had to get the company here on the show. So please welcome Richard Humphrey, the co-founder of Rating Aerospace to the program.

Richard, hey, how are you? Good to be here, Alex. Thank you. So, you know, before we get into space planes, you have a history in aviation. you were one of the founders of Kavu, which was a private airline, about 15 years ago, give or take. If you're going to make me think about that, yeah. I think it was that long ago, Alex. It was, yeah, when we started.

You sold that company to another company that I think actually eventually shuttered. And then you founded Radiant in 2016. I'm just curious how much of your interest in planes originally led to Radiant pursuing the kind of space plane approach to getting up into space. Oh, you know, it's not disconnected. You're right about that. Truthfully, I go back, like every young man when I was a kid, right, super into space as a kid. I had my telescope. My dad bought me. We'd go out in the backyard. You know, I carried that wonder with me always, you know, as I looked up in Boy Scouts. We were talking about Boy Scouts earlier as an Eagle Scout. I started a rocketry program in Boy Scouts and we rolled it out into the whole organization.

And so I was always really fascinated by getting to space. So I had this supraterrestrial kind of desire always. That's where the airline came from as well. But the connection of really getting to space and going to space was something that was very much part of my desire for my whole life. And it was an ambition of mine when I was a kid. I wanted to meet a rocket scientist. So, you know, I was like, I want to meet some rocket science, please. I was always working to get connected to a rocket scientist.

And when I exited out, I started doing a little angel investing stuff. I got connected to another space company at the time. It was one of the very first. It was a group of angels that was supposed to be all about space. There was one deal at the time in the whole industry. It was called X-Core. While X-Core didn't come to fruition, in that process, though, I ended up meeting some other. I met a rocket scientist who then became my co-founder, Livingston Holder.

He's a genius and brilliant. And we started talking about this conversation of single-stage orbit going to space. He was trained as an astronaut. The rest of us all expected to go to space since we were kids. So that conversation, it started in a bar in New York, and we closed that down and went to two more after that, evolved into a conversation about, hey, this didn't work in the past. It's been looked at for a long time, Alex. You probably know that.

And it's is the time now. I think everybody believes it can happen, but when is that time? And we think that time's now. So I want to talk about space planes generally. And then we're going to niche down into the Radiant one aircraft you guys are working on. But for getting to orbit, people now think of rockets. I think SpaceX certainly has increased the launch cadence of the world. And now you can get a shared rocket slot and you can get up.

Space planes are very different because they seem to launch mostly horizontally versus vertically. So can you just talk to me about the advantages of space planes versus rockets, just so folks have a broad idea of the problem space you're working on? Yeah, sure. So horizontal launch, the focus of space planes literally it goes back to the 60s and 70s, and NASA put a good effort into it back in the 80s under one of the greatest, I think, NASA administrators, Dan Golden, but literally a focus on space planes because of the reusability. So the initial effort was about if you could create a spacecraft that could go to space, performance mission, come back and fly again. This was unheard of at the time, right? Because we were throwing away

$100 million flights over and over again. Space planes was really deemed to be the easiest way to do that, right? And so shuttle was a nod at that, right? That was its initial, original intent. They tried to keep shuttle a reusable vehicle by refurbishing it, but the truth was the cost of refurbishing shuttle was more expensive than just having built it new each time. So it didn't achieve its mission of being really reusable. So that's part one. The other part is by flying to space in a rocket equation, you know, there's an extra variable that you get to include. And that's lift. You know, a typical rocket will, when it takes off, you have to have rust greater than the weight. And you burn a large portion of your substantial portion of the fuel, just overcoming gravity from

that zero to one mile per hour kind of space. So when we take off, when a space plane takes off, you're gaining lift. Typically, in our case, for example, we're going to be rust that's less than our weight. And the reason is the rest of the weight's being picked up by the wings. And for the longest time, Alex, in history, you know, this was almost a religion. You know, are you, you believe in space planes, you believe in rockets, you know, and it's, we're at that point in time where we're converging and the technology is really caught up with it. And we're going to talk about the launch mechanism here because you guys have a, what I'm calling a rocket sled.

So everyone, hang on. We'll show you how this is going to work in a video shortly. But I'm curious about the disadvantages here because that sounds fantastic. It sounds like very little downsides. The only thing that I can come up with when I was just prepping for our chat today is that the per launch payload for what you guys are building does seem to be dramatically smaller. Something about 10% of what you can put onto. Falcon 9. So I'm curious, is there anything else that I should keep in mind when I'm weighing

space planes versus vertical launch rockets in my head? Well, that's that particular payload capacity you're talking about is on purpose. That's a, that's a white space. We've got a lot of small sat launchers and things launching in the 100, 200 kilogram area. And then, of course, there's a lot of large launch. So Falcon and those, you know, the 25,000 and up categories as well. But that middle section, there wasn't a lot there. So we aimed at that 5,000 pounds for a real specific market reason. I think you're talking kind of payload mass fraction. It's true. In a single stage to orbit, you're going to carry less payload for every pound of vehicle and fuel. That's just one of the downsides. Why is that? Well, it's a single stage, so you're not getting to really restart

the rocket equation. For those that don't know, a multi-stage rocket, you're going to first launch with the booster. When the booster peels off, and Falcon's case comes back and lands, second stage goes, the rocket equation starts over again, and you've now got a smaller mass, lots of propulsion, lots of Delta B to start with. So that's kind of how that works. We're cheating a little bit when we say single stage to orbit. The sled does give us Delta B. We do take off fully fuel, there's fuel things there. I'll talk about that in a minute. But what's the penalty, though? I think that was your question, if I got that right. The penalties are we're carrying wings all the way to space.

So we do have to, you know, that's part of the penalty we pay. We're taking, you know, rolling landing gear all the way to space. So those are those are just weights that a vertical rocket, you know, would argue they don't take to space. On the other hand, though, we get the lift. And that's really what makes up the equation. All right, founders, are you tired of doing all your own software development? Do you need help, but you can't afford all this time it takes to find? great talent? Are you dreading the endless interviews and email chains just to find somebody

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Now, when we're talking about the history and your co-founder, Livingston Holder, he was actually part of what was then Boeing's X33 effort, which was a multi-year, almost decade-long space plane project. So just to kind of set the historical stage here, what was that and why didn't Livingston pulled that off at the time? No, no, no, no, no, yes, by the way. I'm not trying to say that. Oh, yeah, no, in fact, Livingston was the one who recommended canceling the program

based on where they were at the time. So they'd be really clear about X-33, you know, was one of those under that NASA program that I was talking about when I started the conversation here. It was run by both Boeing and they were both bidding on that project at the time. I think, yep, there you go. Venture Star, exactly. That's a great image there. What did we run into that was sufficiently difficult that Livingston said, okay, guys, we need to, we need to shut this down for now. We're not going to get there with this project. Yeah. Yeah. So there was a formula that used to be done in aerospace world.

when you wanted to build something that was really cutting edge, you would just do all the math that you could. And then there was this little cloud, you know, it was called, you write the word miracle in there, and you'd have to kind of figure out and solve for it. And that's how you'd get a, you'd close the physics. And, you know, people in the industry will say it all the time. And, and there's no miracle required, you know.

It's like, really that's the, so the technology just wasn't there yet. Yeah. They had to invent, you know, what's the next metal? after titanium. Well, that's that's two billion dollars. And then, oh, we got an aerospike engine, totally not proven, no validation around that. That's two, four, or five billion. We don't even know. And we don't know if it'll work when we're done with it. The technology, the math of the weights in that equation, so they were looking at metals at the time and they were looking at different types of propulsion, all of which had to be invented among other things. If you remember,

computers at the time, while they were very primitive, they were very massive in weight. I mean, what's in the weight of the iPhone now was 4,000 pounds, a penalty, you know, on a shuttle system or something. So it just sort of gives you an idea of the things that they were up against at the time. Of course, it was all being bid for cost plus programming. So programs of record mentality, you know, that didn't suit it either. So it was going to cost a lot of upfront development cost with no clear path. So he saw the... that there wasn't enough technology at the time to do it. And I think he wouldn't disagree with me on this.

When I first met him and started talking about this, he goes, I've been there, done it. It can be done. You know, and that's how our conversation started in a bar that I was telling you about. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So it sounds like an effort that had the right goals, but at the time just didn't have the right pieces in place.

We had to invent new metal. We had to invent new engines. computers were massive and slow and crappy, and now they're much smaller and faster and better and just lighter. So the state of the yard has advanced to the point in which you and the radiant crew think that we now have, I guess I presume, all the pieces within reasonable reach to get a space plane from, you know, the ground up and back down again. Is that fair?

That's right. That's right. Okay. No pre-scheduled miracles involved in the math now. So you guys have raised, according to Crunch Base, 27.5. million dollars i just wanted to first check that number with you and then i want to ask about it but is that ballpark the capital yeah that was the last round we we've raised 32 million 30 million total yeah and seed capital yeah we had a little about six million before that so and when you're raising

money you know when i think about venture capital firms they're often on kind of a 10-year fund cadence and so forth and you guys haven't been working on this now for roughly eight years does Does space and cutting edge space business work fit into the venture capital model? Because you guys seem to have a longer time horizon than most funds do. I'm just kind of curious how that works out in a business context. That's a great question. We sort of discovered that during the early stages, that this just didn't fit typical venture capital model.

Venture is typically, it's a little more, these numbers will be, they've grown since then, but a typical venture fund wanted to see you get to an MVP. by kind of on the high side, it was like 50 million, right? Yeah. And then you needed to be producing revenue. And then they'd let you run forever without whether you're profitable or not, but you had to have revenue. That was kind of one of the typical models.

And then it was like, we got to get out in five years. And it didn't initially suit well. So we found our early investors were the family offices and disruptive thinking kind of funds. So, you know, our very first venture fund was called Bat Shitting. crazy ventures, you know, it was like they literally were setting out to get involved in the companies. We're going to change the world, you know. As we, as we set out on our venture to make our dent in the world, we found those that really shared the same passion. The lead investor

in our last round, which is called finding structures, it's a fidelity group. That was part of their thesis, their investment thesis, was let's find the big companies. They're being overlooked by adventure that really will make a difference and change the world. And because we are who we are, we can help at least make our contribution to that. And so that's been amazing to find other groups them and other groups like them. So that's how that's been working out for us. But we do have, I don't know, 10 or 12 venture firms on the cap table. Yeah. I'm just curious, you know, as you guys have made progress and we'll talk about the recent taxi test and so forth in a minute. But as you've made progress hit, I presume, proof points or milestones and gotten closer to commercial

does that unlock a greater kind of like run of venture capital firms that might be interested in investing in Radium? I'm just curious how the picture changes as you guys make progress. Yeah. I think as you get closer to, you know, your IOC, that makes everything a little more possible. You start getting into the same with the government, same with venture. We're finding that we're now in that gap, you know, to where we're, our launch dates are within the boundaries of venture. government programs and things like that. So the answer is, yeah, we got a lot more attention we've had in the past. That's for sure. Okay, fantastic. Now, our phone's ringing for a change instead of dialing for dollars, you know. Well, I mean, you had to do the grunt work to get to the point in which you are

more viable. But I do want to show people what you are shooting towards. We have a copy of a video that you guys have that is demonstrative of the project. So, guys, let's run that. And then, And Richard on the other side, I'm going to drill you on a little bit because there's a couple of really cool things. But let's first watch this so everyone on YouTube can see it. And now we have we have touched down. So a lot of questions about this. First of all, talk to me about the rocket sled. So if you're listening to the audio version of this, there is a large seemingly minivan sized sled on a long track that has engines, jet engines or rocket engines on it.

and it carries the spaceplane, the Radiant 1 for a while before it takes off under its own engines. So, Richard, tell me about this amazing sled you're going to build. Yeah. So first of all, you're calling exactly what we call it to, Rocket Sled, right? Right on. It's bigger than a minivan. I'm going to tell you that. It's a little bigger than that.

How big will it be? Well, I'd say it's probably like four minivans. Oh, okay. Maybe bigger than that even. These would be big minivans, you know, when I think about it. Those are three rocket engines on the back of that. It's not only a sled, though, by the way, it's also a fuel tank. So as we roll down that runway, we get our momentum, right?

We go from zero up to almost Mach.7. Okay. And as we're doing that, the sled itself is actually fueling. It's transferring fuel into the rocket and into the space plane, the vehicle itself. So that when we depart at the end of the runway, we've actually continued to fill the vehicle so that we depart 100% fully fueled. So we're not leaving the runway already having taken down 4 or 5% of our fuel. So it's a really important part of the equation. Yeah. All that. So does the space plane's engines, they're firing at the same time as the rocket sled. And that's

what the refueling matter. So you're not burning through. Okay, that makes a lot of sense to me. Yep. Yep. Yep. They're all burning. Yep. There you go. There we go. Yes. Our AV team has reminded me that the video I just saw explained that to me. So four or five minivans is the sled size. How big is the space plane? It's a little hard to kind of guess from the video how big this thing is going to be when it's built. Yeah. I would tell you, it's about the size of a 787 in the link and about as wide as a 737 in scale, if that helps you.

Does that give you about 190 feet long? That's what maybe put it into something like that. We have to put it in yard so everyone can imagine it on a football field. So there we go. So yeah. 60 yards. Yeah. No.

180 feet? Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. You scared me there. I'm like, maybe I can't do multiplication anymore. I've lost it. Founders, do you want to sell to bigger customers?

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Get $1,000 off at vanta.com slash twist. That's vanta.com slash twist for $1,000 off your sock, too. But this is a big plane on a big slide. And I wanted to get into that because I'm curious how much length you need to actually launch this. Because that will determine takeoff points, if you will. So how much space do you need for the track here? Yeah. So typical airport runway is about, is roughly 10,000 feet long,

a little more than that, and about two miles. This track would need to be the same about two miles of track. So we lay down two miles. No, it's not too bad. What that allows us to do is not only lift off, but in the event of some kind of anomaly or emergency, right, we can keep the vehicle locked down and we can secure it and not launch. So it's got a safe benefit to that too.

So we've got to be able decelerate. So not only you get up to speed, but then have enough track to decelerate as well. Okay. And decelerate under a fully fueled emergency. So do you have rockets in the front of it that can fire to essentially reverse the momentum? Or do you just let it just like break down? Yeah.

There's a kind of three different types of breaking that are involved there. They're pretty complex. And they each have like a zone of space. where they would cover that and take it all the way down to a stop. Earlier, you said that you're kind of cheating about the single stage. And essentially, what it feels like you've done is take that first stage, strap it to the ground, and make horizontal momentum as opposed to vertical momentum. Is that just more efficient than going straight up?

Because it just looks so much simpler to me. Like, this is how we launch regular planes. I don't know if it's simpler than vertical, but it's an important part of the equation. going to launch it this way. If we're not sending the first stage off into the ocean as we've done all the years in the past or landing on a barge in the ocean and shipping it back and staying it back up again, what this does is it just, you know, it retracts back and it gets a little refurbishment, inspection, things like this. And it's ready to be used again. So that first stage never leaves the ground. So that's the, it's an important part of the calculation because here's what you'll

appreciate, Alex, is if you imagine the takeoff way to this, it's got 95% fuel on board. you know, it's very heavy, you know, when it takes off. So if we had to put roll, you know, takeoff gear, if you will, on the vehicle, then we're carrying those heavy takeoff gear all the way to space. What we have on the vehicle are landing gear. And the landing gear were, you know, we're 5% or so of what we are takeoff. So it makes a big difference. So we're not carrying this heavy landing gear all the way to spacework.

And I want to clarify at one point that you mentioned, you know, very minor refurbishment on the sled. itself because a question that I had was, does the rocket propulsion harm the track itself that the sled runs on? I don't know if it's going too fast with that to be an issue, but what refurbishment is necessary on the ground side of the Rating 1 project? Yeah. So refurbishment is maybe even a stronger word than I need to use here, but it's an inspection above all. We'll probably, you know, be replacing some of the brakes. Two things you've got to know here. One, I'm not an engineer. I'm an entrepreneur, or not an engineer.

So if you're going to try to catch me here, you might give me, but I'll put my CTO on any time. The other thing to know is that the sled is, you know, we consider it a very civil engineering design effort. So while we're working on that, that probably has the least resolution of all the things working on because it's not the hardest thing to solve. Got it, got it. So do the hard things first and then work on the sled later on because that's just a large

thing on a track. Only so many hard things you can work on it one time. Yeah, the answer is, is what will be refurbished? The engines won't be. These are reusable engines, or reusable engines on the vehicle. And when I say that, I'm for sure guessing we're going to be refurbishing some of the brakes each time. There's other things.

And then different things will have different life. Some things will have a 10-use life. Some things will have a 50-use life, just like aircraft. You're a pilot. You know what I'm talking about here. But that's what we're- But you just touched on a very important point, which is reusability. Because one of the things that's most exciting to me about space plans is,

once you get them up, they come down, their planes, they land, you can use them again. And so I'm curious, how much refurbishment do you think the actual Rating 1 space plane will need discounting everything else that's on the ground?

Yeah, so we're building and designing this to be 100-use vehicles, so we expect it to be reusable a hundred times in a row. The amount of refurbishment, again, that's going to be more specifically solved during later stages, but, you know,

engines are going to have a lesser life than the airframe. It's typical also in aircraft. You know that? There'll be basic consumables, like brakes and tires and things like that too. The important one that I'm guessing you're asking about is, what about the TPS, right? TPS is one of the, in the shuttle program, right? That was actually the critical failure. It was a very delicate thermal protection. It was super fragile, and it was in a critical path for success, and it was one of the most expensive parts of the refurbishment. We're now 20 plus years later, NASA left the development spigodon for thermal protection. Other developments happen with companies like GE and others to develop more hardened thermal protection.

And with the support of NASA and some of our Space Act agreements and some of these other industries, you know, leading suppliers, we've been able to marry a few of these together. and we've developed a thermal protection product that actually is completely reusable, Alex. Like when we come back through the atmosphere, and we've tested this already under plasma torches at NASA, it has almost the same exact properties after flight than it has before flight, meaning it can take repeat multiple uses before it would get all the way to where we'd have to retire. Yeah, well, I mean, honestly, I thought that the thermal protective system was going to be

the thing that would be the limiting factor on the reusability of the space plate, that eventually it would just get so burned, to use a very non-scientific term, that you'd have to kind of retire the craft. But it sounds like it's very strong. So then just because I'm very curious, Richard, what is the thing that makes the 100-use target 100 versus 1,000, say? I'd say an abundance of caution, right? It would almost be unbelievable to step forward and make a question. claim of a thousand others do it i suppose but our team comes from the background of you know high credibility you know with the things they've done in the air force and and NASA and others they just nobody we just have kind of a conservative approach that stuff so behind the scenes you know we want

to make it 500 right that's what we're working towards but but a hundred's what we'll you know we're putting out there is the target that we want to make sure we can get to and a hundred is outstanding right it hasn't ever been done before, and we're going to, we're going to make that number. Now, engines aren't going to, they're going to require refurbishment in between maybe at 50 uses, something like that, maybe 25. But the economics of the company work at 100. So if you end up getting 150, 200, whatever, that's all gravy. But I presume you've modeled this out that with 100, everything kind of maths.

Oh, absolutely, yeah. Yeah, the break, the, the break even of reuse is, you know, in the low 20s. So it makes sense, really. It's kind of game change. It's exciting what we're doing. I'm just, I love it every day, you know. Okay. Are you worried that your startup is the only company out there that's not building with

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30% fewer hallucinations. If you want to put your audio data to work and build powerful AI experiences for your customers, head to AssemblyaI.com slash twist and get 100 hours for free and join over 200,000 developers who are building amazing apps with voice data. Go to assemblyaI.com slash twist today. Yeah, no, no, I feel the same way. But I do want to narrow down to what you guys announced recently. I think it was in September that you guys discussed the first round of ground taxi tests with your prototype vehicle, which is called the PFV-O-1.

I think we have an image of that. So I'm curious, what was the series of tests? How did they go? And then just because a lot of people who watch the show know how to build software, but less how to build a spaceplane, now that you've completed this first set up to ground tests, what's the next iteration that we'll get to see from the rating one? Yeah, yeah. So, PFV, that stands for prototype flight vehicle. It's our first one. That's a composite bird.

And the testing that happened so far, we've got it out on the ramp. Sometimes it was 115 degrees out there, Alex. We had the first time around, I think we melted. All the tires melted like in the first half hour. It was pretty burrow. We did this in Abu Dhabi. So if anyone was curious why it was 115 degrees. It wasn't North Valley here in the States.

They were over the Middle East. Right. Right. So there's a lot in that process of just making sure, you know, all your control surfaces work, everything's operating properly. We've done some hops, Alex, where we've, it's been off the ground. but we haven't taken it up to altitude and started applying it just yet. Okay.

That's coming up. So you're asking about what's next. That'll be obviously the next stuff. We've already taken a lot of the learnings out of this and we continue to iterate in the back room, you know, doing our design work. This is what we call AVO-9. So that's our ninth iteration of the design. We're now three cycles past that for various reasons. We've got a little bit different tail configuration.

Okay. few things like that that are coming out of. But what we learn most is that what we know what we're doing and learning inside the computer and inside the wind tunnel all converge. So everything seems to be matched. That means our modeling, all the wind tunnel modeling as well, everything seems to match. And this is important. We don't want our first vehicle to be, you know, this 190-foot vehicle, the 60-yard vehicle,

that is going to and then find out, oh, geez, we should have put the tail in a different place. So this is really important. So we're really pleased with the results, by the way. I can tell from the release you guys put out. But this is a ghost question, but this is a startup show. So I'm curious to actually build the PFVO1, how much that cost? I don't know if it was like a million dollars or like 15 because I know it's a smaller version, but I have no idea what it costs actually put that together at your stage.

Yeah, yeah. So it's big. It's about the size, I think it's 16 feet long, something like that. That's like five and a half meters, five and a half yards, Alex. You have to use American measurements. I mean, this is. You guys are based on Washington. I'm on the east coast. This is a yard country and everyone else is correct. But I'm with you. I'm with you. I'm often struggling with a meter conversions as well. So it's, it's pretty, it's pretty. big. I mean, it's a, you know, this is an aircraft. You, you fly Cessna's. Alex, you know, this is a little smaller than a Cessna, but not a lot smaller and it's more durable, you know, in many ways. What I think about what it cost was, it's hard to put those into numbers. Because if you just said, what's the hardware cost? Well, that's one number, but the, all the time that went into the design of getting at that point, that's another number. But, you know, I'd say this is probably a $4 million endeavor. When you add up all the effort and time and work that goes

into a hardware costs or not that or something on the order of 10, 15% of that, something like that. Okay. And then as you guys go from this, you know, 15, 16 foot plane to 190 feet, how many more iterations are you going to need as you go from this to that? It's not clear to me. It could be one. It could be five. It could be zero.

But I'm curious. Yeah. We have a really robust test flight program that will continue to iterate over time. We've already got PFV2, the Look Prototype 2 on the drawing boards or beyond the drawing boards, and soon ready to go and start its build. The next thing we'll be doing also is a test flight sled. So it won't be rocket power. These are jet engines, by the way, that are on here.

And we'll be putting jet engines on there. But we're going to start testing separation, flight on a sled. These are really complex technologies that really need to be iterated. So we're starting in, you know, kind of a low-cost test bed and continuing to iterate while we get it smarter and smarter about it. Well, that's why it's exciting and fun. But I have to ask, do you need a crash test dummy to affix onto the sled? Because I have some time. I have a helmet.

I was going to say, are you volunteering? This is great. I am volunteering because it sounds like good fun. And that also makes a great YouTube video. But I mean, I joke, but I am curious about the time here. You guys have been working on this for 80s. years or so, clearly making real progress. But are we eight years away from the first test flight of the full-sized, Rating 1 plane? Or is it more like three? What does that time for?

No, Alex, we're expecting to get first flights of Radian 1. Rating 1 is the full-sized vehicle in 28. And 2029, by the end of the decade, we expect to be doing orbital flights. And the other thing to just keep in mind, Alex, is while we're eight years since we've founded, those first two years, we were just running trades. We were, you know, we were just committing ourselves to the business. We each were running other businesses and things like that. So you say eight years. Yeah, it's eight years, but, you know, we really consciously dove in and became full-time, you know, committed, being able to really dive into this full-time. And when I say full-time, and we went from like, just are we going to do it and not do it to be 80 hours a week kind of thing. So it's really been

commitment on all of our part. But it's, I think every one of us would say, you think this is our life's work, you know, it might be some of the most important work we'll ever do. We're going to get into the space economy and why I think you might be right in a second. But just one last question about the business before we go broader. 2008, not that far away. 2009, not that far away. How much more money are you guys going to raise between now and then just thinking kind of venture capital terms for the other founders out there who are listening? Yeah, yeah. It's, Alex, it's over a billion dollars. it's needed to get all the way to the first flights.

Scaling up will be even more than that. It's a very good business case. There's an incredibly solid. And I'll tell you, we just like our numbers in the technical side that are conservative, we kind of run that the same way because I think it's just more compelling story. So, you know, it's got a very high IRA. It's got a very large gross profit margin built in. I mean, we see we see flights.

changing by an order of magnitude, you know, in terms of the cost per human flight. And it's still profitable, you know, under that environment. We've got bookings already. We've got the first couple years of bookings already committed. We got over $2 billion in commitments in terms of, you know, like letters of intent, things of that nature. And then we have hard orders that are in hundreds of millions. Well, that's quite a lot. Now, if you're going to need a billion dollars, though, there's only so many buckets of money you can go out and get. And so I'm curious when we think about funding for this market, how much of this is private money versus how much of this is public money? Because we've talked about NASA a lot, there is a spigot of money from the government into

the space economy. Is that something that you guys are going to be looking to tap more, or is this mostly going to be private capital? No, it's something that's been big part of a lot of our conversations. And when we founded the company, we felt it was extremely important to have a business case that worked that didn't require government participation because, got it. First of all, it's an unreliable piece of business to project in the future. Now, it doesn't mean it's unreliable once you have it, but I'm just saying you making a business case like, oh, I'm going to go sell the government. That's a really, that's a really tough sell. At least at the time, we're in a little different world right now in terms of, you know, we've got the China parity heading

towards us and the defense world. It's looking at things a little differently, but we didn't set out to be defense focused or even government focused now. So model closes 100% under a commercial model. Turns out, though, no surprise, but turns out there's a lot of government interest in what we do. And we're in those offices. We're in the offices you were just talking about. Yeah. I mean, frankly, just I know this is just my personal view, but I can see if we get to the point in which you guys are going up as often as you hope to, I mean, just looking at the EU and their struggle with the Arian program, you know, I can see a lot of government's been very curious and very interested in having launch capacity through your company, demand,

domestic to them if you only need a couple miles and you can land it on a runway. I mean, you probably don't need space ports to be as single purpose and as big maybe. I mean, to me, a lot of countries are going to want this. Yeah. No, no, you're right. We've talked to most space agencies around the globe already and there's a lot more than there were just 20 years ago. I mean, every country's really decided they need to have a space presence. Now, most of the offerings right now, though, require you to, you know, either, go to the Russians or you've got to go to the cave where, you know, there's not a lot of places to launch. So, and there's very few places and very few countries that can launch from their sovereign

soil. But there's a lot of interest in that. And I think just like aircraft at one point, it became a national security issue and a national business issue to every country that some countries have one airplane, but it's, you know, Bhutan Airlines, you know, and it's important to to their economy to be secure enough to be able to travel in and out of their country. I think there'll be something very much like that for space. What's unique about the horizontal launch, which you were talking about, the unique characteristics, I forgot to mention this, but it means you can launch inland too. So right now, every vertical launch, you know, happens on the, you know, pretty much the

eastern or southern seaboard or could be north in Alaska or something for polar orbits. But in general, the launches all need to be on the coast. So if all the fall, if there are any falling or the first stage falls in the ocean, right, that clear the sea and clear the area, that becomes a very limiting factor. If you're a landlocked country or you have an unfriendly neighbor on the other side that you don't want to launch ballistic missiles over for fear they would retaliate, this answer is that calling. So a lot of interest in that, of course. Or you can be Kazakhstan with lots of space and you can launch from there no matter what,

because, hey, why not? I want to talk about the space economy, though, because, One thing that I've been really excited to see is how we have rebuilt our species level launch cadence. And we have a chart that we're going to pull up here showing you kind of orbital launches by year. And if you're watching this on YouTube, I'll explain really quickly. The red bars, which spiked back in the 70s or Soviet Union, the U.S. was a much smaller

launch country at the time. And then recently, the U.S. has definitely taken the lead. And we are now seeing record launches to orbit as a second. species, which I think is very exciting. The question that I have there, Richard, is just how much more do we need to serve both the defense use case and the kind of space economy use case? Because I look at this chart and I go, wow, you know, we're going to do probably 250 or launches this year as a species. Does that number need to be 2,500 or does it need to be 500? So I'm curious just how much demand there is that isn't being met by existing solutions

today that you guys might service in a couple years. Yeah, I think that demand is going to absolutely continue to grow. Alex, there's multiple demands for that. Some are going to be going outside low Earth orbit, right? We've got programs that are going to take us to the moon again. We're going to go back to that. That's not what Radiant does, but that's one piece of the kind of growing reason. There's going to be more launched.

Of course, satellite systems, constellations, those aren't going to slow down anytime soon. But what's really going to grow, and I really think this is what I consider like Space 3.0, we first started putting things up into space and then we started moving things in space that used to be on Earth, right? Data transfer and things of that nature. But now we're really building humanity in space. And that is going to come and surprise all of us, I think. There's nine space stations, I believe, under development right now. There's a few that are really leading tenders. I think Axiom's going to just do a fantastic job, and they've been doing a fantastic job.

These companies really, they're going to rely on Starship to move their vehicle into space because you want something big at HeavyLifter. But that's not the vehicle to use to close their business model the rest of the year, moving people and supplies back and forth. So rating really will fit in that category. There's lots of demand in low Earth orbit. We don't think we actually have the modeling for this. And industry would clearly back this up.

But there's about $250 billion of low Earth orbit market for launch. You know, coming by the time we arrive is what I'm talking about. So it's just growing. Yeah. It's a great graph. I know it. What you're not commenting on and that you're probably thinking about, though, is that yellow line really has gotten very, very big.

Or I should say the orange one, not the yellow one. And that's, you know, that's part of, you know, what we should all be concerned about, right? We've got an adversary. And I think they're, in terms of a parody, I believe it's pretty clear that they're being on par with the U.S. capabilities, 2027, I believe, is the parity date. So. And if you're listening to this on audio, the orange bar that he's referring to is the Chinese launches.

And one thing you can see now is the amount of launches from Russia have reached essentially de minimis level. And it's the U.S. and China that are now the two, really the two main forces in getting things up into space today. And the EU is trying its best, but it does seem to be, I don't know, tertiary, Richard would be, I think, fair to say at this point. I think so. Yeah. That's a good word for it. Okay. So getting things to orbit, talked about that. Clearly, lots of demand that you mentioned. We've talked about defense a little bit. There's going to be a lot of defense applications for more frequent, you know, multi-thousand-kilogram launches. But one thing that you guys had on your site that I think people don't discuss enough is what you called rapid point-to-point cargo

transport. And I'm so excited that someone's talking about this because roughly 10 years ago, I was watching a TED talk and a guy was talking about fast freight and how we're going to be able to get to anywhere in the world in an hour, you know, with this type of technology. And then it felt like it just fell off the map for a while. I'm curious how much of a use case that really is for Radiance tech or if that's something you guys are going to do after you sort out the more kind of low-worth orbit launch materials? Yeah. So it's absolutely, I think, something we all want to see happen and the world is going to see

it happen. And we're definitely aiming at that. There's no question about it. It's not the low-hanging fruit for a bunch of reasons. In the very simplest way, it's going to be, it's going to come down to economics versus value. So it's going to work in the, I'll tell you what's not going to work. It's not going to work in the businessmen who wants to go New York and Tokyo in an hour. It'll go.

The flight will take an hour, but how reliable will, is a rocket going to be in the beginning of the launch cycle, right? We often have delays. We have delays because of, you know, the liquid oxygen, you know, is overboiled or we've got weather or something like that. So just a six hour delay and suddenly the value proposition has really really gone away. We're not going to put these rockets in. New York City. You know, it's just not going to happen. So they're going to be in more remote places. So they're going to have to be like, but Alex, it's coming. And in, in certain terms, you know, you can be on a standby basis where the vehicles fueled up and ready. This is, this would be more for

governments and that nature. But imagine, you know, during conflict or things like that, you need to get something over and delivered in a certain point. We don't have to come down on land. We can actually deliver a payload somewhere out in the middle of the ocean and submarine picks it up or on an island where there's no access to to help people out or a crew that needs food or certain supplies or mission critical parts. You know, mission critical parts are sometimes, you know, you have a $100 part that may slow down, you know, a $10 million mission of any kind, sometimes machinery in a factory or something like that. So, so this is a real important and it's happening, Alex, you know, it definitely is happening. It just won't be the very first thing

we do, which I think is what you ask. But it's 100% on the roadmap, you bet. Okay, so one thing that it always blows my mind is how expensive private jet travel is. Because you have to have a crew and a plane and inspections and fuel and da-da-da-da-da. And there's just no cheap way to do it. Flying private is just expensive full stop. This is going to be like flying private times, I don't know, 10. But it does strike me that with the growing billionaire class that we do have in the world,

there's going to come a time when flying net jets or flying your Gulfstream is going to be pretty posse. People are going to be like, well, no, I took my orbital plane over here. And that's going to be the real flex, I think, for the future. We'll talk, though, like, you know, it's probably much more expensive to get all the way up into orbit than it is to do, you know, stuff around the Earth. But does this ever get to the point in which it's like six figures to launch a Radian one and maybe land it somewhere else in the world?

Or is this always going to be in the multiple millions of dollars? I'm just not quite sure how much the cost comes down. Yeah, we're clearly, you know, like all aircraft over time, they get more efficient and they get better. I don't see us getting, you know, into the six-figure zone. I'll tell you when that's likely to happen. We've got a payload in there, a payload bay that's pretty big. We've got a lot of a board system weight and extra eclos, which is, you know, the oxygen and things like that that are in there that are necessary. some of that over time as it becomes more reliable.

You know, we can, you know, airplanes don't have an afford system, right? It just, it either works or it, you know, but there's no ways we're in parachutes. There's not a capsule to bring you back. So we get to that level, a lot of that weight comes out and that just means more passengers. So, you know, could this be a 10, 12 person, 15 or 20 person vehicle at some point? Once we get to that level, then you would come under the million dollar mark. So it's not impossible and it's not that far away, but it's not, it's not version one. I know that I'm pushing the later envelope of iterations.

Yeah, no, I love it. You're asking the great questions. It's where the world's going. I mean, we need to be aware of that and be thinking about that. At the start of the show, I said I'm a science fiction nerd and I want to go to space. And that's not idle. I really do. And I would like to also get to go up and feel, you know, weightlessness and leave our gravity well without selling my house.

So when you talk about, you know, getting to 12 people, 15 people, that could lower the per ticket or per seat cost here to the point in which it would be almost reachable for folks who are not Jeff Bezos. And that's really exciting because right now, you know, if I wanted to go up, it would cost infinite money and it wouldn't work that well. But it seems like you guys could unlock a tourism component here that would be a fun extra business model for the company down the road. Yeah, yeah. It's almost in the extra category. You know, I love our team. I think we just, we have such incredible people. They're mostly, you know, we got rocket scientists and PhDs and world-class leading engineers.

And, you know, I think if I walked in tomorrow and said, hey, we're changing our business model. We're going to fly rich people to space. They'd be like, that's not what I thought I signed up for. I'm out of here. Yeah. But it's in our business model. You know, I think it represents like 7% of, you know, the potential of, you know, the potential. of revenue there.

So it's not that we're ignorant to it. I think the capacity of billionaires that are willing to pay 55 million, I think it's 58 million, whatever the current price is. I think we've seen many of those tapped out. They seem to be fewer and fewer of them left. I think they all had a great time,

the ones that did it, but there's fewer of those. But the sub five million dollar, which is what we're aiming at long term, is that's that's not that's a much bigger pool and guys like you are going to make a lot of money so I have no doubt that we're going to see you there I mean Richard I'm a journalist so if I end up on one of those that my publications is going to have to foot the bill if you will but I'm going to get to space come hook crook hell high water whatever it is I I need to

I need to see our planet from above you know I overview effect no I totally get it that's a that's game changing from what I understand, not been to space, but it's funny you say it, because you say it with the same kind of passion, me and my three other co-founders, the four of us, we each showed up at the table going, somehow, I'm going to space. I've always expected to go. The world has not progressed the way I wanted to. And, you know, it was definitely a thought experiment, but you know, you think about, like, imagine the world if we can make this happen, you know, and then the other half of that equation is, and imagine if we don't. Like, that's also something I'm not really willing to accept.

So that was very passion-driven, mission-driven company. These were at the core, at least of our co-founders. And I would tell you most of the people on our team, especially in the engineering business, and outside too, I often see them go, this is why I got into aerospace. This is what led me to become an aerospace engineer or do something else in aerospace,

was this concept of single stage to orbit, flight, you know, just get in a plane, go, come back, and it goes again, it goes again, and get to really see, see this kind of aircraft-like operations. And I know we need to wrap up, but like the thing about the future and keeping our eyes up above the horizon, I'm knocking at founders of companies like Albedo Space, which is doing, you know, very low orbit on high-res imaging, axioms building private space stations. there's a company that wants to use a neat water-based propulsion system. They're going to get water from the moon to fly around in orbit.

There's just so much neat stuff. And it's only going to go faster and get cooler if we can get the price of getting up into orbit down. And so that's why part be it for me to root for any individual company because that's your job. But I really hope that, frankly, it works and that we can all get up there and do a lot more because it's too fragile to live on one planet. and I really do think we need to become at least here and on the moon, if not Mars, if not further around and so forth.

And baby steps to get there, but Richard, I'm glad you're working on it. And just before I let you go, where can folks find your company and find yourself on the great wide internet? You can catch rating at rating aerospace.com and that's where you'll find me as well. So we're Seattle-based, and that's where you'll find us in person. I got a quibble. You're not actually Seattle-based. I thought you were in Bellevue.

Yeah. Okay. Greater Seattle-based. You got, you're very, very specific. Do you know the area or something? Most people would. I used to be a Microsoft beat reporter. Of course.

Well, then you, yeah, you know, you know magnolia and all of those things. But yeah, no, you know, and I love your perspective on, you know, how low-cost access will change. You know, the abundance of all things is in space, right? It's not on Earth by tearing it apart, you know. So if we can access space regularly, there's just no doubt in my mind that that's how we change the world. You know, that's why we're doing it for life on Earth, not for, like,

life and space. It gives us something that I think we all need a little bit of lately given politics and geopolitics. I think it just gives hope, you know, and there's no IRA that you can apply to hope and optimism. But this is the sort of thing that puts a smile on my base when I get up, much more so than a new SaaS application for PE veterinary clinic roll-ups, you know? So I'm, I'm optimistic about this. Richard, thank you much. The next thing is here. We love your passion. Thank you. Thank you for having me today. Enjoyed it. Yeah, absolutely. And we'll have you back when the plane goes up. Everyone, this is Twist.

More interviews coming. More live news. We'll see you around the internet. Bye.