Martin Eichenhofer is the CEO & co-founder of 9T Labs, a company that was spun out of ETH Zürich in Switzerland. The company specialises in providing software solutions and manufacturing equipment for producing high-quality and high-performance composite materials using 3D printing. By marrying the worlds of composite materials and 3D printing, 9T Labs is taking advantage of the superior material properties of composite materials and combining these with the geometric fidelity facilitated by 3D printing. As a result, components that were previously unfeasible to be manufactured using compo ..read more

Chris Voorhees is the founder and president of First Mode, a Seattle-based company that is designing and building technology for extreme environments off and on planet Earth. Chris has decades of experience in the implementation of robotic systems for the exploration of deep space. His notable experience includes his work as a mobility systems engineer for NASA’s Spirit and Opportunity rovers and lead mechanical engineer for NASA’s Curiosity rover. For his efforts, Chris received NASA’s Exceptional Achievement and Exceptional Engineering Achievement medals. Today, Chris oversees the design, de ..read more

Carl Copeland is the founder of Möbius Aero, an electric air race team, and MμZ Motion, a developer of custom, high-performance electric motors. Carl has built various engineering teams and led innovation in the fields of IT, mechanical, magnetic, and electrical design. He has founded four companies and holds over 25 patents, and his most recent innovation, the Field Modulation Motion System, is a novel electric motor design that is significantly lighter and smaller than established electric motors of similar power and torque ratings. The Field Modulation Motion System achieves its high perfor ..read more

Dr Evangelos Zympeloudis is the CEO and co-founder of iCOMAT, a company based in the UK that is developing automated manufacturing equipment for tow-steered composites. Fibre-reinforced plastics, such as carbon-fibre or glass-fibre composites, hold great promise for high-performance and lightweight design due to their excellent stiffness and strength properties at low material density. Traditional fibre-reinforced plastics are manufactured using straight uni-directional fibres or with straight fibres woven into a fabric. Generally speaking, a fibre-reinforced composite derives its strength by ..read more

Stefan Brieschenk is the Chief Operating Officer of Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA), a company in the south of Germany that is developing a low-cost launch vehicle. RFA’s vision is to drastically reduce the cost of access to space through large-scale industrialisation of their operations and manufacturing. Key to RFA’s design approach is a holistic performance and cost optimisation tool that has been developed in collaboration with space industry veterans MT Aerospace and OHB. This approach has led to interesting design choices. For example, the second stage tank is based on inexpensive stainles ..read more

Marc Ausman is the co-founder and CEO of Airflow, a California-based startup that is building an electric short-haul cargo aircraft. Marc holds a commercial pilot license, and among other endeavours, was previously the Chief Strategist for Airbus’ all-electric, tilt-wing vehicle demonstrator known as Vahana. Alongside four other former Vahana team members, Marc and the team at Airflow are building an aerial logistics network to move short-haul cargo quickly and cost effectively by using unused airspace around cities. Key to Airflow’s vision is electric short takeoff and landing (eSTOL). Airflo ..read more

Dr John Williams is an engineer at Lumentum where he works on the extreme challenges of sub-millimetre scale photonic circuits. For the purpose of this conversation, however, we will be discussing John’s former role as a design engineer at Reaction Engines, a UK company that is developing the Synergetic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine, also known as SABRE. The vision of SABRE is to build a new hypersonic engine that can operate both as an air-breathing jet engine and as a traditional rocket. This versatility means SABRE can be used as a propulsive platform for future hypersonic aircraft or to prop ..read more

Dr Sanjiv Singh is a research professor at the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University and the CEO of Near Earth Autonomy. Sanjiv has more than 30 years of research experience in the field of autonomous vehicles and has spun-out multiple companies from his university research. His current venture, Near Earth Autonomy, develops technology that allows aircraft to autonomously take-off, fly, and land safely, with or without GPS. Near Earth’s goal is to develop complete autonomous solutions that improve efficiency, performance, and safety for aircraft ranging from small drones up to full ..read more

In this episode I am speaking to Aaron Daniel and Peter Shpik of Alpine Advanced Materials. Alpine Advanced Materials specialises in the design and manufacture of custom-engineered parts and products for demanding aerospace and energy applications. The company is currently commercialising a high-performance material known as HX5™, which is a thermoplastic nanocomposite originally developed by Lockheed Martin Skunk Works® over a decade of testing and validation. HX5™ was originally developed to replace aluminum at half the weight but with the same strength and stiffness. On top o ..read more

In this episode I am speaking to Damian Jamroz and Grzegorz Marzec of the Polish NewSpace company SatRevolution. The company was founded in 2016 and specialises in real-time earth observation for civilian and military applications. SatRevolution has launched three satellites to date, with the last launch occurring at the beginning of September 2020 on an Arianespace Vega rocket, while the next one is planned for December 2020 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. These satellites are all milestones towards building an Earth-observation constellation that will be operational from 2023. Recently, SatRevo ..read more