Podcast: Advanced Air Mobility & eVTOLs

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Transcript

Lucas: Welcome to the B.Innovative – Economic Impact Interview podcast. I am Lucas, the author and designer of B.Innovative. Here with us today we also have Dr. Jeff King, currently working as the head of the engineering department at Bob Jones University.

Thank you, Dr. King, for joining us today.

To start things off, Dr. King, will you please briefly share about yourself and your career up to this point?

Dr. King: I graduated on my bachelor’s degree from the Naval Academy in 1993 in aerospace engineering. I flew helicopters for the Navy for about eight years. And then I transitioned to aerospace engineering duty officer where we built satellites and aircraft. We were responsible for designing and building and managing the contractors who built aircraft, both next generation and upgrades and then spacecraft. So, I did that for almost fifteen years. Then I became a permanent military professor at the Naval Academy and I ran their department of aerospace engineering for about seven years before I retired. So I retired in ’21 after 28 years of service.

I will say this. All of my comments are my personal opinions.

Lucas: So, what do you see as the most promising commercial technologies being developed right now?

Dr. King: When you’re talking about space, right, or aerospace? So, there’s two worlds that that lives in space and aero. My first question back to you is, well, are you talking about airplanes or are you talking about spacecraft?

Lucas: I think it could go either way.

Dr. King: Okay, which would you rather go?

Lucas: I would rather look at your area of expertise, which would be spacecraft.

Dr. King: Okay. I can do that. That makes me more comfortable. So spacecraft.

Spacecraft technology development is really about trying to figure out the unknown unknowns. We don’t even know what we don’t know yet.

So a couple that come to mind are SpaceX.

They are obviously big in the news. But, I would say SpaceX has done two things that are radically changing the entire landscape of, of space innovation. Right? The first one is commercialization. Ten years ago, you would not have been sitting here talking to me about commercial space. Right? It just didn’t exist or if it existed it was these tiny little companies that built little piece parts for the big government systems. Um, but now, you’re having a discussion about commercial only space. Right? It means like, wow! Um, I mean, there were people out there like Boeing that built XM radio satellites and direct TV satellites. Those were commercial space.

But you know what? All the technology that they have came from government contracts that they built for the government and then they said, oh wait, we can use that technology as well. So, at some level, I don’t consider that pure commercial. That was the government contract. They built it.

I mean it frankly, it’s the same A2100 bus that they used on government contracts that they just turned right around and put commercial products on it, and then launched it using the French or the somebody else to launch it into geosynchronous orbit.

SpaceX changed everything. Like, they said, “No, we’re doing it all ourselves.” And you know, yes at some level, they have government contracts. Absolutely. Because frankly, the commercial industry doesn’t have the money to spend on developing, you know, big, gigantic rockets. But, the difference is SpaceX showed up to the plate ready to go and said, “Okay, now you want to pay us?” Everybody else prior to that has showed up with an idea that says, “You pay me, and I’ll develop it.” Totally different mindset. And I think that changes a lot of where we go. Where we go, I don’t know, right? Is there another SpaceX around the corner? I think SpaceX is unique in the sense that Elon Musk had the money himself to do – sort of flip his nose at people and say, “I don’t care what you think I’m going to do it my way.” You know, “I’m going to launch my Roadster out into space. Why? Because I can.”

The other thing that I think would be a really interesting development that we’re going to look back on ten years from now and say there, “There was it,” is reusability. SpaceX did what ten years ago I would have told you you couldn’t do. And that was take and land a rocket body back where you wanted it, and then reuse it in less than a few weeks, I mean, or months even. Like we’re so used to throwing those away. They fall into the ocean and sink can become a reef. Or they stay in space and becomes space junk. Right? I mean, so, the idea that that he put forth, frankly was incredibly audacious, that if I’m going to land my rocket after it does its job, I’m going to land it where I want.

So I think if you were to ask me, those are the two that I came up with that sort of are in the precipice of changing the possibility.

Now there’s one more. And I’m going to give it to you. It’s very, very, very new. It is so revolutionary that there’s a lot of people that are saying it’s never going to work.

It’s a company called IVO. And they have designed what they are saying is a quantum-based momentum exchange device, which means – right now a, a satellite for instance, uses Newton’s third law, that says, if I want to move to the right, I have to move something to the left cause I’m going to get an equal and opposite reaction.

So, we have little wheels, sometimes big wheels, inside the spacecraft, that will spin to the left. And then the spacecraft has to spin to the right because there’s nothing to push back on. Well, all of those things require moving parts.

Or, we have a thruster that takes jet and spits it out the end of a thruster. Well then that requires the spacecraft to move in the opposite direction. They claim they have created something that requires no expulsion of any matter and no moving parts. It uses quantum theory and quantum technology. They were on a spacecraft that was launched this month. And so they’re going to spend the next six months trying to move that spacecraft in an orbit to another orbit. If they can move the spacecraft up using their thrusters, they will have proven that technology works. If that happens, that will be the most groundbreaking technological jump in my lifetime.

Lucas: So, of those technologies that you listed, which one do you think will have the greatest positive economic impact?

Dr. King: So, if it works, IVO will by far be the one that blows everything out of the water because now you have the ability to move spacecraft without moving parts.

Lucas: So why do you think it is important to care about the carbon footprint of the space industry?

Dr. King: That’s a great question. I’m not sure I do. I will say that is a loaded question. Do I care about the amount of toxic chemicals that we produce in the space industry? Yes. The more toxic chemicals, we produce, the, the more damage we do to our environment as a whole. I think that’s really important. Do I care about the carbon footprint? Frankly, no. And the reason I don’t is because I don’t believe the – a lot of the carbon footprint/global warming, which is where that comes from – um, I don’t think that’s really based in science. It’s not carbon that creates global warming. It’s humidity; it’s water. Water is ten times more effective at warming the surface of the Earth than carbon.

But the answer to your question is, do I care about the carbon footprint? No, I don’t know that I care about the carbon footprint. I would say a more relevant concern would be what kind of toxic chemicals do you produce in the processes? And I will tell you, there’s lots of toxic chemicals and their byproducts. So I think that’s a huge problem.

In terms of carbon, the problem that you’re going to run into – and this is, I’m going to say this is true for fuel. Show me a fuel that doesn’t have carbon. I mean it’s hydrogen. That’s generally the the, the base of all of our fuels are hydrogen. You can find, uh, fuels that don’t have carbon, but the fact the matter is you’re creating super-hot hydrogen. It’s going to interact with the Earth’s atmosphere, and it’s going to potentially create carbon dioxide or carbon monoxide. And so you have to figure that out. Well, can we create fuels that create less carbon? Yeah, maybe. But are they more expensive, and are they less effective? And that’s my experience. And so then I end up having to have more fuel to get to the same performance. And I’m not sure that I don’t just completely wash away the benefit of using a lower toxic or lower carbon footprint fuel in the first place cause I have to have more of it to begin with. So I think that’s how I would answer that question.

So we’re just exploring the world that God created and trying to exercise dominion over it. Now, that exercising dominion requires responsibility. Right? And so now I’m back to the carbon question. What I’m not saying is we should be flippant about the pollution that we create. What I am saying is, I’m not convinced carbon is a pollutant.

Lucas: Well, thank you. That wraps that our discussion of the economic impact of emerging space technologies.

Again, thank you, Dr. King, for taking of your time to be on this episode.

Let’s continue to invest in and develop these new technologies that lower our economic impact. Join us as we push the limits and make the future reality!

Thank you for your time and have a great week!