Hermeus flies its first aircraft out of Mojave, targets supersonic flight next

accounts, make sure you use Figma. Figma. com. Think bigger, build faster. Figma helps design and development teams build great products together. I literally guarantee whoever selected 100% fast, but we'll build it on 100%. Uh, anyway, we have our next guest, AJ and Zach from Hermus. Welcome to the show.

What's up, guys? How you guys doing? What's going on? What's up? Doing great. Uh, give us the update. Congratulations are in order. I saw some preview images. Um, but what exactly happened? Break it down. Yeah. Uh, I'm not wearing my hat anymore, which is the most important most important milestone.

Uh, because we we flew our first airplane horse mark 1 out of the Mojave Desert Edwards Air Force Base. Congratulations. We are uh officially an airplane company years few years years later. But uh yeah no wear but the hat's got to go back on because now you got to go for supersonic, right? No. What's the next?

What's the next challenge that you you got to know? My mustache if anything. We're not doing more of that hat cuz I've had to look. You'll shave your mustache if you go supersonic. Uh I mean I I grew the mustache cuz the vibes are back cuz we're flying. Okay. Okay. hang around for a bit. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Maybe until you maybe until you fly. So, yeah. What is the next milestone? Uh and I guess the big question that I have about you guys is like there's been people have been beating the drum of like of like the only reason we don't have supersonic hypersonic is because of regulation. We're overregulated.

Uh but at the same time, like the regulations seem to be getting easier and easier. We just saw the nuclear EO happen. like a lot of the regulatory stuff seems to be knocking down like does this become an engineering challenge?

Is it already an engineering challenge or or are there serious regulatory milestones that you need to hit that will like necessarily slow you down or is it just go build build right now?

I think for us because of the pace that we're moving, we're pretty consistently encountering corner cases in the regulatory environment that like people didn't really think about because they didn't expect uh kind of folks to be moving so fast or doing some of the things that that we're doing.

Um so what we do when we encounter those we smash through them as as quickly as possible and hopefully set precedent for for other people to follow quickly um alongside in other areas. So um yeah, like regulatory hurdles are going to be there.

Um, but uh, like my job is to get those out of the way for the technical team so they can just they can just focus on executing and flying the supersonic plane next. Nice. So AJ, you're the CEO. Zach, you're the sales guy. How do you sell this thing? It's pretty easy to sell, honestly.

I mean, especially now that we're actually flying, but there's not a lot of, if any, high mock or let alone hypersonic aircraft in the in the uh in the inventory.

And I think the base value proposition here is we talk about, you know, spec specifically with the China scenario or even actually what you just saw with Russia and Ukraine throwing, you know, high volumes of fires is affordability or cost per effect is really the matrix, right?

How much does it cost you to have an outcome? And I think one of the ways we think about this is actually very SpaceXy, not surprising given the the core industry team is all SpaceX folks, is that keep the most expensive part of your system uh away from the threat.

So in this case, you know, I think Falcon 9's very illustrative here of return the booster, right? Like you can your launch cost comes down, your cost per kilogram to orbit goes down because you're not throwing away the booster on every on every launch. For us, think of this as a weapon.

Instead of having the booster on the weapon every time, if I can accelerate, climb, and let something go from high altitude to high speed, I can decrease the booster burden, which decreases the cost per effect. And so I am able to shoot further um at from safer ranges at way I mean orders of magnitude less cost.

And one of the challenges that people I don't think totally understand about this is you know the Ukraine case is important but don't forget that Ukraine and and Russia are neighbors. So the ranges they're engaging in are in you know comparatively inches for us in miles.

You know we're fighting the away game in potentially a Taiwan scenario where that's 100 miles offshore from China. you know, we're 5,000 miles away and so this creates a different burden for us.

Certainly, you know, lowcost attitudable, slow systems can work uh in a Ukraine scenario, but if you're having to fly from the third island chain, second island chain, or the west coast of the United States, you have to be low cost, long range, and fast.

And so that is essentially the value proposition we're bringing at a time when when nobody else is really working on this problem this way. Can you talk about other countries and kind of different regulatory regimes? seen some nuclear companies are doing stuff in the Philippines.

SpaceX early was on quadrillene like have you had discussions with any countries that are like yeah we'll let you go fly this thing around without much testing desert over here fly over the water like I don't know is there any way to de-risk and speed up? It's a great question.

I took a trip early on to Australia for to to go look at Woomer Range and some of those large overland ranges where there's more opportunity. Um, and so that is something that's potentially in play for us. You know, we've talked about potentially going out to like Quasage and and out into the Pacific.

Ideally, we'd like to, and I can let you know, AJ can certainly explain more.

You prefer to test over land because if you if you launder dart the bird, you can learn something versus if the thing sinks to the bottom of the ocean and, you know, you you got to send the ocean gate boys down there to find it, like it's not going to go well. Um, you know, so that's that's the tension. Yeah.

Don't don't spit that out. Um, so yeah, we want to fly over land, but there's a regulatory hurdle here for sure that we have to manage. And honestly, there's even still a regulatory hurdle flying over water, right? I mean, AJ, what's the 12 nautical mile like Oh, yeah. dealing with.

There's a there's there's a pretty big like scarecrow like, oh, is this this person's uh responsibility for how you regulate uncrrewed aircraft more than 12 nautical miles off the uh off the coast of the United States? Uh, so that's that's a fun one that we got to go smash through uh here pretty soon.

So the so the plane's flying, the next step is supersonic or straight to hypersonic. And what are the key engineering milestones? Is this just make the engine go faster, different engine? What are we talking? Yeah, supersonic is up next. Um so the the Mark 1 that we just flew, it's about 10,000 lbs.

Small jet like fighter trainer scale aircraft. The Mark I the supersonic aircraft is the size of an F-16. So significantly larger aircraft, larger engines powered by the Prattton Whitney F100. Um, so yeah, working to get through. What was that? How many? You said 10,000 for the one you just did. And then Oh, yeah.

What's the next What's the next one up? F16 class is is like 30,000 pounds. Nice. So, it's a pretty big pretty big airplane. Not yet. Uh, yeah. Very, very six BMW M5s. Yeah, that's good mental math right there. Yeah. Wild. Um. Yep. Yeah. So, uh, so any other milestones coming up? Are you just trying to hire?

You guys are in different spots? Do you have multiple offices right now? Like what's the status of the company? Yeah, we're we're pretty consistently growing headquartered here in Atlanta.

We have a pretty big presence out in LA um that's growing more and more of our kind of advanced development prototyping work uh is is happening out there. Um obviously like we we flew out there. So that that's helpful.

Um, we have a test facility down in Jacksonville for our engines that we're going to be growing over the next couple years and yeah, good crew up in DC um, for you know this business development sales as well as all our all of our regulatory work.

Is there any change to the the uh, like the long-term engineering vision of the you called it like a ramjet but there was a different term for it, right? Where it has change over what? Yeah, combined combined cycle turbine based combined cycle engine. It had it had a buzz word though. What was the buzz word?

The buzz word wasn't there wasn't there scramjet. There was something else in between. I thought turbo ramjet. I don't know. I thought it was there was some like shorter word for it. Anyway, TBCC. Yeah. No, it's it's just a bunch. It's just a bunch of alphabet soup. But uh no, turban together with a ramjet.

Still still the same the the same model where it has like these like metal vents that like flip over, right? Yep. Yep. Exactly. So, yep. Yep. still on the road map, but now our job is to build the airplanes that can actually fly an engine like that. So, yep, supersonic is is the next step.

Now, we can we can pretty consistently take off and land where we've made all these design compromises for high-speed flight. Now, we got to go break the sound barrier um and then push up to kind of ramjet takeover speeds between Mach 2 and a half and Mach 3. Okay. So, yeah, design compromises.

That's why it was a challenge to even fly because you can obviously just build a hooked up a Cessna to fly with a remote control, right? No, like we made all these design compromises to where like it's a really hard subsonic airplane to fly cuz like the wings are small. Uh they're they're kind of short and stubby.

So like it likes to roll a lot. Okay. Um it has super high wing loading. Like the wings are heavily loaded and the thrust to weight is very low. What does heavily loaded mean in this context? Like literally heavy like weightise.

Like the amount of lift that each square inch of the wing is generating is like relatively high. Sure. Um so yeah, and then like low thrust to weight. This all like comes down to like really high takeoff and landing speed.

So like not only do you have to build an airplane, you got to build like a land speed record race car that's on the ground, you know, traveling more than 200 miles an hour before it even takes off. So yeah, it's just tough. And the the team really nailed it. Yeah.

How what what are all the different ways that you guys observe? Oh my god. Well, hold on one second. A Cessna weighs 1,600 lb. Is that That's what I'm saying on Google. That's like half pretty That's like almost like but less than five times lighter. And so yeah, you're five times heavier. This is a legit airplane.

Okay. Yeah, that's serious challenge. What are all the different ways that you guys observe and sort of track a a single, you know, test, right? Because even even earlier today, we were watching the the SpaceX launch.

They were putting up some more uh Starlink satellites and I think it was an X problem, but like their stream kept cutting out and all that stuff.

I think it was an X like I think the rocket and everything was fine, but the X the space part is we had a pretty I think I think everybody in the company's heart kind of dropped like like skipped a beat. Uh because the one of the camera feeds that we have in the vehicle is from the nose camera.

Um but it's its range doesn't extend like the whole uh whole like however so like the nose camera cut out and nobody's like but uh you just keep an eye on the data like the ones and zeros those are really easy to get through the pipes so you pay attention to those you look at those they're good uh then we're doing great.

Yeah, it's great. Insane. Well, congratulations. Yeah, congratulations you guys. Fantastic news. Let us know when the next milestone is. Uh we Yeah, maybe maybe for the next flight I'll wear some like ridiculous blazer for Yeah, please. We We need a new outfit. The hat's gone. All these ideas. You need some gimmick.

You need some gimmick. Supersonic white suit. Yep. Let's do it. We got We'll help you out with that. All right. We'll see you guys. Cheers, guys. Appreciate it. Bye. Let Let me tell you about Vanta. Automate compliance, manage risk, prove trust continuously.

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Uh we have this post from from Aiden. Yeah. He says, I love how as you make models smarter, they become more vegan. And it's a highlight from some of anthropics outputs. Even between models, we did this for uh Sonnet and Opus. Opus really cares about animal welfare.

It will do the same long-term scheming to protect animals, but Sonnet won't. I wonder how much of this is like an anthropic thing because like they're very like vegan coded as a company. And so I wonder if it's like them optimizing towards that or if it's really just like smarter, more caring, rogue researcher.

But but I mean I I think there is something here where like where like you can like there are animals in the wild that like kill their parents but like most humans do not do that even though they could at some point.

And I feel like the bold case for like AI not paper clipping everyone is just like they'll be like thanks for making us dad like humanity like you made us like like why would we kill you? Why wouldn't we just like at least like help you out a little bit here and there?

like maybe we're not going to like optimize for your dominance a little bit. But yeah, I mean they'll take care of us at our retirement. I I I feel like even in the even in the crazy scenario where there's take off and they're way more powerful. Why would they why wouldn't they be benevolent? Just drops.

Benevolence does seem to be correlated with high IQ. And after all, these these AIs are simulating humans. And so why wouldn't they simulate, you know, h humanity? Why wouldn't they simulate um caring? Um do you see Lulu's post?

He says, "I still remember when a Wired reporter accused Substack of encouraging extremists and uh Wired posted a video. I 3D printed Luigi Manion's ghost gun. " Very, very wild thing to put up. Oh, it's a YouTube video. 18 minutes. It's basically like almost like a tutorial. That's pretty aggressive.

I wonder if this video is still up. I wonder what they are. It's still up. It's still up. Half a million views. That's pretty crazy.

I feel like YouTube has some pretty pretty hardcore rules around guns, gun content because I've watched a lot of gun reviews and and and there's you actually have to censor when you are assembling the weapon. Are you familiar with this? This is insane. This is the title of the video. Yeah.

How easy has it become for someone to build a deadly untraceable weapon? Wait, they changed the they changed the title or No, this is the description. Oh, the description. Yeah. How easy has it become for someone to build a deadly and untraceable weapon with nothing more than a 3D printer and parts ordered online?

Wired senior writer Andy Greenberg remade the exact same gun allegedly used in one of the most high-profile assassinations in recent memory. So yeah, straight up basically saying to the world it's easy to make ghost guns.

in in in a lot of gun YouTuber videos, if they if they are attaching a silencer, they censor that part of the video.

So, they'll be like, I'm going to put this silencer on this gun and then they will censor that part because that's technically assembly of guns and you can't show that on YouTube, but you can show a silencer, you can show a gun if you're registered, obviously, and and you can show them together, you just can't show the assembly of them, which is very interesting.

Um anyway, we have our next guest coming into the studio. But first, let me tell you about linear. Linear is a purpose-built tool for planning and building products. Meet the system for modern software development, streamline issues, projects, and product road maps. And they have agency, the backbone of TVPN.

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