Jeff Foust has the story on what Jeff Greason and Dan DeLong are up to (Aleta is going to join up, too, according to an email exchange I had with Jeff G. this weekend). I’ll probably have one of my own up this week.
[Afternoon update]
Alan Boyle (who it was pleasant to visit with in Seattle a couple weeks ago) has a story up now as well.
[Tuesday-afternoon update]
Here is my interview with Jeff over the weekend:
RS: How are you doing?
JG: My health is great, I’m enjoying a lot of long walks through my neighborhood in Midland, Texas, and I am excited about the next phase of my career.
RS: How long has this been in the works?
JG: It is all quite new. I made the decision to leave XCOR at the beginning of November. XCOR reorganized back in June and that took both me and Dan off of any management role on the Lynx. Due to the focus of resources on completing the Lynx, my efforts to work on next-generation R&D projects didn’t gain the traction inside XCOR that I hoped, so I didn’t feel I was in a situation where I was contributing the best that I could to the industry. Once I decided to leave XCOR, I recognized that I have a lot of experience with a problem that many companies have been frustrated by – how to shorten the vehicle prototyping cycle so that time to market is faster and the fly-learn-build cycle is faster. So I decided to set up a company to solve that problem. It’s called Agile Aero and we’re just getting started.
RS: Will you be staying in Midland?
JG: Dan, Aleta, and I all like Midland, so we’ll stay here if we can.
RS: Is anyone else involved in the new company?
JG: Dan DeLong had left XCOR for his own reasons, but since he found out what Agile Aero is working towards, he’s decided to join. Aleta Jackson was laid off just after I left, and she’s also decided to join.
Do you have any financial backers? Do you have any prospective customers?
JG: I have had some initial offers of investment and we’re certainly interested in talking to others; I expect we will need additional resources to hire more people. Realize that right now what we have is a clear understanding of the problem we want to solve – vehicle development speed. We haven’t solved it yet! But I’m confident we have the experience to do it, starting from a clean sheet of paper with our collective experience in the industry. As for customers, I’m definitely interested in talking to them because it will help us know which capabilities to demonstrate first, and I have already had some interesting “can you do something like this?” questions. I also expect we will be available to offer some expertise to other companies while we work on our core technology.
RS: Does XCOR retain rights to any IP on the orbital vehicle? Or do you still plan to do it with another entity? If so, is the new company that entity, or will that be a separate venture?
JG: Before we start working on any vehicle concept for any market, we first need to demonstrate rapid prototyping of vehicles – the faster vehicle ideas can turn into reality, the faster the time to market. Solving this problem will inform how a future vehicle system should be designed and built, and once we’ve done it, an orbital system might look quite a bit different from what I imagine today. I don’t want to make specific vehicle plans until we get the prototyping capability in place. As to whether we would do an orbital system for ourselves or for another customer, time will tell. I would love for XCOR to be one of our customers. Agile Aero intends to make a rapid prototyping capability available for many clients once we have the basic technology in hand. It is a bit like the niche that Scaled Composites used to fill – enabling other companies’ creative aerospace projects, although Agile Aero will be focused on higher performance aircraft and space vehicles. I’m extremely interested in fully reusable launch architectures, and once we have the tools in our toolbox I’d welcome such an opportunity.
[Bumped]
“Agile Aero intends to bring modern rapid prototyping to complete vehicles, for space launch, for hypersonic air vehicles, and for innovative aircraft.”
Wonder if this is an off-hand reference to 3-D printing among other things?
I’m sure it is, since they were doing that at XCOR. But other things as well.
This sounds like a positive move, allowing them to focus on the orbital RLV while disentangling them from oversight by the XSC investment people.
Rotary Rocket spent millions built some hardware, failed to deliver anything useful.
Xcor spent millions, built some hardware, so far failed to deliver anything useful. Lots of talks at space conferences, lots of breathless press releases, some interesting video, but no real value to ANYBODY yet. The current Lynx is grossly grossly overweight. Close up it looks more like a submarine in construction than an aircraft or spacecraft where every gram counts.
Agile Aero…. TBD, but I think I’m seeing a pattern here….
Spot on, I agree.
The current Lynx is grossly grossly overweight.
I’d be interested in both how you know this and if you can quantify “grossly” in any way.
I read both articles and it’s not clear to me what Agile Aero does. Are they going be producing hardware or consulting? Putting people who need hardware in touch with people who can build hardware. My understanding is the Lynx airframe is largely outsourced. XCOR came up with that Nonburnite composite, but one vendor build the pressure vessel, another vendor built the wings, another vendor built the strakes, etc. I guess they can share their lessons learned as an end user.
If they can make lynx mk2 work then Xcor will have a huge cost advantage over all of the other suborbital rockets.
That’s a big IF watching how many of the big risk items them have retired in the last 6 years makes me doubtful that the IF is something they can do.
The non burnite composite is a neat idea, but none of the composite components of this version of lynx use it. The LOX tank (the only place you would need this composite) is traditional metal.
Every year at space access I asked the same question have you closed the loop on your pump and run the full thermodynamic cycle on a test stand…. I got the “any day now” answer for more than 6 years.
Without the full pump cycle working they have nothing. The only real unique technology Xcor has beyond a number of other rocket companies is their pump and their lox compatible composite. Everything else is either readily available or farmed out to other experts. I don’t believe they have ever built anything beyond test coupons of the nonburinite and they still can’t show their pump pumping lox closed cycle. (I could be wrong about the nonburnite I’m not wrong about the pump) They made a big deal of flying the rocket racer with their fuel pump… there is a big difference between pumping LOX and pumping kerosene. One is a room temperature benign lubricant, the other is cryogenic non lubricating oxidizer where ANY rubbing of metal causes a fire.
An off the shelf aircraft hydraulic pump would have pumped their fuel at half the weight of the pump they did fly.
I remember them talking about some patented design for some sort of ignition interlock that would prevent hard starts, too ?
Over the decades, several companies have developed fast development shops. North American developed and flew the first prototype of the P-51 Mustang in less than 6 months. Lockheed established the legendary Skunk Works to meet specific challenges without the overhead expenses and bureaucracy of a large company. Burt Rutan established Scaled Composites (now owned by Northrop-Grumman as their own Skunk Works) and Boeing has the Phantom Works. It sounds like Agile Aero wants to build on this model.
Thanks for the additional details, Rand… great insight on the drivers behind these move.
This sounds like the sort of development I’d hoped for, though the path forward still represents an enormous challenge.