Astromechanica founder Ian Brooke raises funding to build supersonic hybrid-electric aircraft starting with unmanned DoD platforms

Uh, yeah. How do you pronounce the name of the company? Let's settle this debate once for once. Astro Mechanica. Astro Astromechanica. There we go. Uh, can you give us a breakdown of of what you do? And I'd love to hear like the the brief history on the launch.

I remember there was like a video you posted of building something maybe in a garage. It went viral. It was very cool. And there was some debate over it. Now it's a real company. Raised a bunch of money. So take just take me through the little journey. Yeah. Yeah.

I you know I guess it starts my background of like I'm lifelong aircraft builder, pilot, fly jets, the whole nine on that. Yeah. And uh Yeah. You flew uh you where what kind of jets did you fly? You kind of private private jets. Um, I built like I built my first plane when I was 17.

I did experimental airplanes, drones in like the early 2000s before drones were a thing. So, anyways, from that like I think with like a lot of good companies, you're really just building the thing you want. Yeah. Uh, this is just not a thing that exists.

Unsurprisingly, one cannot just go buy like a bleeding edge fighter jet. So, so yeah, you know, going with that, uh, I'd always been obsessed in all the technology. Um, interestingly I was working on like this hybrid electric architecture initially coming from the private jet world for lower cost of operation.

Uh, it's just like simpler systems and it turns out there was a really neat technological unlock for supersonic flight. So that's where a lot of this kind of kicked off and it was an especially novel architecture.

I think this is why it was just so alien and like I had just been spending so much time in all of the the various like subcomponents and and disciplines there. It's like there's this really unusual combination when you combine all these things together. you get this totally new architecture.

So, uh the big one for us is like transition up to what we call a ramjet mode. Yeah. So, you like there are really good solutions for like I really like what the Hermes guys are up to.

Um like there's definitely other good solutions out there but this it hits this kind of interesting sweet spot where like we're getting a lot of performance with a relatively I mean it's still millions of dollars but like relatively inexpensive system.

And the other thing that comes up a lot is like people are seeing all the engine stuff and yeah, you know people think we're an engine company. was more it's like if you want to have a computer you have to make the microprocessor first. Okay.

Uh but this round getting this done is like finally shifting it to us going into the aircraft development. So Okay. So you're building a plane. Yeah. Yeah. I mean that's my background. Like I was a plane guy that just needed a better engine. Better engine.

Uh and so yeah, we're we're at that stage now with the round done. Um you know and like people had always seen me kind of like I was like this guy in San Francisco that was like I had a machine shop at a manufacturing business previously. like people knew I was good at building stuff.

Um, but we've had just this like compounding effect of like the the talent that I have been very lucky to accumulate here and just the people that have joined on cuz like good engineers see an interesting like technical solution and thing to work on. Yeah. So, I mean I I love my team. Everybody's like incredible here.

So, like we've now got that that then makes it easier to get more capital. Yeah. Then we've spending some time in DC like Andre's been been great with this and and like you know you it's also very important to have an actual customer.

I think this is the other way where I came from more of a small business world and like I wasn't interested in just I don't know like developing things for the fun of it.

Like I what I'm hearing is like you like maybe the company's like very clearly at this moment shifting from you know science project that you would have worked on for free to like okay like real commercial opportunity. Let's go. Let's go full send. So yeah, I mean in a nutshell it's, you know, make the engine.

So you go in the initial like demonstrator phase. So demonstrator the engine that got the money to now build the demonstrator aircraft. The one we're pushing for is the world's first non-stop transpacific non-stop supersonic aircraft. So we could do, you know, California to Taiwan without refueling in under four hours.

Okay. So it sounds like direct competitor boom. It's been a decade in boom. Really? So, so yeah, I mean, you know, Blake's going for like airliners and he's he So, we're we're focused on again my world is more private jets and really So, is this a GFream?

Are you are you coming for GFream or or or you know, let's get It's more like we're coming for net jets if you know something like that. Sure. We're going to spend the next seven to 10 years doing DoD. So, interesting. Like like you need to have an actual It's so expensive to make an airplane.

It's not hard to make a thing fly. It's hard to make a thing fly that is safe enough to put people on it. So my strategy on this is you go to a space like well you know unmanned drones military where like technology and capability matters first. Yep. Totally. You can prove it out there.

You can you know there's going to be things that are going to come up and you're going to learn it. It's just it's a cheaper place to learn. Yeah. Yeah.

Then you're in a position where like well when you have an actual business you've been making I mean the the drones unmanned aircraft we're making are like at the smallest 20,000. Like they're not small planes. Yeah. Yeah.

Uh, and and I'm curious is is the right place if you're developing a new airplane to start with, you know, autonomy just because in theory after you fully develop it, it's like will pilots even be flying or they'll just kind of like I am a pilot so I have feelings on that.

But it is it's definitely something of like no one this is another kind of odd thing. No one has ever used autonomy in the certification and development of a manned aircraft.

And I actually think this is one of the ways we can make it a lot cheaper because ultimately it's about getting data and proving this thing is safe. The only way you really prove it's safe is you've flown it. And so if you have a human on board from day one, you can't take the risks that you want to.

Like SpaceX proves this with Starship, but you're like, you know, the actual cost of the hardware is not that high. So you're better off being really aggressive, getting things in the air, de-risking.

I mean again you're saying this at her of like they're making you know like the plane is a bit more rough but the point is like they can make a new plane every year and like by the time it's like if you want to get to very good things you want to do more iterations. So this is our our similar strategy.

I mean we we develop new engines every like four months. Yeah. Uh and I think Whimo kind of took a similar path where like there weren't random passengers in the back for years and you'd see oh there's a safety driver in there and then eventually they pull the safety driver out and put the passenger in the back.

Exactly. Yeah. you just want to spend time where you can map you can map out all these weird little edge cases things like that.

So so that's you know a big part of how how we tackle this and like it's so yeah you always want to go for like big lessons very important lessons as inexpensively as possible because eventually you kind of lock into a point where like everything will be so expensive that you want to have you don't want to make any any changes it's just too costly to do it at that point.

So that's where I think ultimately we can actually get to the passenger flight point quicker and cheaper by starting an entire unmanned aircraft business first because it's functionally quite similar in the technical challenges. And yeah, we can we can de-risk it all, learn all the hard lessons.

Um, and you know, in the meantime, like it's also very cool just getting to make these things. So, you know, it's photogenic work. Everybody loves seeing the engines on Twitter and stuff like that. For sure. No, it looks it looks incredible. Um, I'm curious. uh A16Z make sense in the round.

Lower carbon was a big logo there. Is uh is that Saka and his team saying like this is really cool, we want to back it or is there a uh is it a fuel efficiency, you know, kind of kind of thing in the long run? Yeah.

Um the so my the very first check institutional check into the company was actually lower carbon and uh Shiao at lower carbon was was my guy. Um and you know he was betting on it was just me in the machine shop and like I had you know getting close to that first prototype.

Um and so yeah from there like the system we get the range because it is more efficient. So so yeah there's just an obvious efficiency argument here. The other one for civil applications not for DoD but for civil is taking a page out of the rocket book. We don't plan to use jet fuel.

So rockets have switched to LNG or liquid methane. It's if you just swapped that fuel, it's 30% less CO2 just as direct fuel swap. It's more energy per unit weights, 50 mega versus 42 per kilogram. Whole bunch of benefits. There's a reason the rocket folks went to it.

So, this is another one of those kind of insane bets for like if you're Boeing or someone like you're not going to suggest a thing like that, but when you're starting from nothing, you can you can make these these bigger bets. So, yeah.

Uh you know, if you were to do the combination of the engine plus the fuel change, you're around 60% less CO2. And then there's guys like I love Casey Hanmer, Terraform, there's a lot of folks working on synthetic fuels.

If you have an engine architecture around uh you know LNG, I think that's the best fuel for electroynthesis. So if you want to have like inexpensive decarbonized fuel, it's also your best option. So like options first solve for economics of like LG is a tenth the price of jet fuel.

So first make it affordable then you can go for the clean stuff after that where I mean it is already cleaner and then you can just fully decarbonize from there or you know but first stay alive as a company. So first economics then go for that. Smart.

Uh bit of a random question but I'm curious since you're an aviation nerd. Uh China earlier this week dramatically canled some Boeing orders. Uh they have their own internal uh aircraft. Uh it's like Comarmac, the C919. Do you see them like permanently trying to shift over to that?

Uh or is it just so hard to build a plane that they're going to kind of kind of keep coming back to Boeing and and Airbus over time? Yeah. Yeah, it's tough to say on that.

I would say well engines are harder and to that end we're I think you know even they're using just as we actually use Pratt Whitney and GE components things like that and what we're doing that's sort of like being TSMC that one I don't think they could get figured out anytime soon and the comarmac uses you know uh still American engines so um I'm pretty sure at least so that one's harder on the whole airframe I think they could get it figured out I'm sure it just depends on how as with all these things it's just a money pit how much do you want to throw go into it.

Um but but why is it so so what is what's the componentry of like the J35 then? Why why can they do that? But but uh which is like a you know defense application versus a commercial it it's so again to this thing of it's not hard to make a thing work and fly.

I mean I did this in my shop kind of as proof of like getting a thing to initially go not very complicated.

The economics of air travel are dependent on it never breaking and that is a you don't really know that like even Pratt Prattoon with a recent gear turbo fan is like it's going to be like a decade until they get payback on that and they know how to make things like that.

So this is the sort of challenge you run into of you know what is going to come up you know after 5,000 hours after 10,000 hours and it turns out this thing it's like oh there's cracking on this component and now the engines and like meanwhile use what we've got right now. like, "Yeah, it's good for 30,000.

" Like the CFM56 was like it's like 50 to 60% of all airliners um or narrow body ones. And like that engine can stay on wing for almost 30,000 hours. And it's just so proven.

And this is this thing you see in aviation where like there's always these things that seem really appealing because it's a performance optimization. You're like, "Well, of course I want to burn less fuel.

" But when you try to implement this thing that's technically better, it's like, yeah, but it turns out it broke at some slightly higher rate and you already had terrible margins and now it doesn't work. So that's where that that's going to come up. Um, it's just not something that's like obvious on day one. Mhm.

Well, congratulations on the round. Congratulations to you and the whole team. An overnight success. Overnight success. Uh, thanks for coming on. Seriously, I appreciate you coming on and breaking it down for us. Thanks so much. Yeah, we'll talk to you soon. Bye. Uh next up we have Sham Sankar from Palunteer.

There's a ton to talk about with him. Uh he's uh published 18 thesis about the defense reformation, the primacy of winning uh and also just sits in a very interesting place as Palunteer's first uh forward deployed engineer. And so I want to hear uh what he's hearing from Palunteer customers