The Exchanges

Q All right. Tell me a little bit about what some of these specs were in terms of, you know, things that, that, that we would, you know, understand non-technical people. Like, for example, how far did you want these to fly? How much Uh, you know, what kind of payload, what, what could it, you know, how much freight could it carry? What were you trying to get to?

A Yeah, so the initial specs that Martina outlined, and she did this by taking simple physics around four elements of flight, lift over drag ratio, which is how slippery the aircraft is, the empty weight fraction, which is how much is left over for batteries, the battery energy density, and the conversion efficiency. All of those things together said the theoretical maximum Of an electric airplane was to fly about 250 nautical miles within the context of flying at a hundred knots and carrying 600 pounds and having less than a 50 foot wingspan. And, and I could tell you all the reasons for those things, but fundamentally we wanted to be able to deploy them immediately without regulatory change or helipad changes, um, and do meaningful work, which was move organs.

AI assessment note: “to fly about 250 nautical miles within the context of flying at a hundred knots”

Q So are you commercializing any of this right now? I mean, you're, are you restricted from commercializing it because you still need FAA approval for, uh, You know, for flying these aircraft and, you know, in, in a commercial setting.

A Yeah. It's, it's not a yes or no answer. So we are commercializing with the military. So we received what they call a military flight release to get paid to fly for the military. So we're doing that. We've been doing that for more than a year. We've had air force and army pilots flying our planes. We're deploying planes into bases and we've flown into bases and, uh, and they're doing operational experimentation. Um, And then domestically, we've been flying trial missions with Amazon and UPS and other customers where we're not allowed to get paid, so we move packages for charity, for example, um, because we don't have FA certification yet. When we get FA certification, they can use it for commercial hire, but the, the secret little knob there is that we just got regulatory approval to do this over in the Middle East for hire, for commercial, making money.

AI assessment note: “we are commercializing with the military”

Q So you have got this team gathered. You're going to start to work on building this electric transport aircraft. And was the original design going to be a drone, sort of a fixed wing drone design?

A Yeah. We started with a fixed wing drone design with eight rotors that, that took off vertically thrust vectored forward. That means the rotors tilt in the air to push the air backwards after it's pushing it down. And we designed built and flew a 4000 pound version of this with me in it after 10 months and we kept our promise. And when we did that, um, Martine looked around and she's like, wow, not only did you elicit critical thinking in aviation, You just like blew past companies that were funded to the tunes of hundreds of millions of dollars with this small, scrappy, you know, uh, proactive and, and, and frankly, pragmatic team in Vermont. Um, I want you to build me a commercial version of that.

AI assessment note: “Yeah. We started with a fixed wing drone design with eight rotors”

Q named Martine Rothblatt, who some people will know that name, a pioneer, a very famous, um, engineer. She's a co-founder of SiriusXM, United Therapeutics, um, you know, she's given TED Talks. I've seen her, her TED Talks, um, Amazing story of, you know, of, of innovation. She's working on an electric helicopter, I guess, and what you're invited down to go assess it or what, what, what was the story?

A Yeah, exactly. Um, so Martine, um, through a couple other colleagues that I knew had, uh, been very interested in having people download to her thoughts on electrifying aviation. And one of the entry points was the assessment of this electric helicopter. Like you said, she had commissioned to be built. And so I was given, you know, a rough outline of what it was and, uh, and asked to come and present how batteries, inverters, and motors are Are either fit or unfit to electrify aviation. And, uh, and about halfway through my presentation on batteries, um, this gal who I didn't know at the time, Martine Rothblatt, she, she kind of interrupted me and she said, who are you and where are you from? And I said, I'm Kyle. I'm from Vermont. Um, I've worked a lot in batteries, motors, inverters, and other such things. And she goes, are you getting paid to be here? And I said, no. And she goes, I can tell. And I didn't know quite how to

AI assessment note: “one of the entry points was the assessment of this electric helicopter.”

Q Wow. All right. So this is your idea, and, and did you have any interest? Anybody who were like, who was like, this is it. This is, this is, I'm in.

A I, I met a few people that were in, but nobody that, that was able to, um, to, to catalyze it alongside me. And, you know, meanwhile, I was sponsoring teams at the university here to, um, to build elements of it. So, um, I had, uh, several years of actually senior design teams that had built a flying drone that you flew from the ground doing the same idea, a fixed wing aircraft you flew from the ground. Ironically, those people now work here. Um, but I was just materializing and formulating the ideas. There were a lot of believers in what I was doing. Um, but look, it takes a lot of dough to, to bring an aircraft to market.

AI assessment note: “I met a few people that were in, but nobody that was able to catalyze it”

Q So how did you do that? How did you start to even do that?

A Look, I mean, you have to be like wildly audacious and, and stupid to do any of this stuff, knowing that the probability of failure is pretty high. Um, however, What I did then is I opened up my black book and I called the 20 smartest people that I've ever worked with and started to convince them to come and work with me. And my pitch was simple. Look, let's go change the world. I'm not going to pay anything and I don't know where this is going. And they started joining the team, but I'll tell you what the, the other interesting thing I did is I had this early revelation that it was more important to me that this business and this idea was successful than I Got any financial gain out of it.

AI assessment note: “What I did then is I opened up my black book and I called”

Q In terms of, it didn't, in terms of range, in terms of what?

A Yeah, range and payload, range and payload, and, and, and some of the big realizations we had were that Um, that it was too complex to make truly redundant. What we need is a really simple aircraft. So it was hard. I had to go to Martine and say, look, I think the right thing to do for our program is to retire AVA. That's what we call the first aircraft and start designing this new one. And here's what it's going to look like in concept. And she came to me and she said, I remember this very specifically. She goes, if you're asking me, if you kept your promise, Kyle, You did. And that's all she said to me. And, um, and I sat there thinking about it, and what she was really saying was that you did the right thing. You elicited critical thinking in electric aviation. Now go do the thing you said you're going to do.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, range and payload, range and payload”