 And welcome back to tomorrow now before we get started with our interview segment I didn't want to give a huge shout out to all of the patrons of tomorrow who've done to make this specific segment of this episode Happened these are people who've contributed ten dollars or more to this specific episode and we've also got our tomorrow Producers these are people who've contributed five dollars or more to this specific episode to find out how you can help crowdfund the Shows of tomorrow head on over to patreon.com Slash TMRO alright, this is gonna be an exciting one We were talking before the show, but how we're having generation orbit on and not a whole lot of people even in the tomorrow Studios really know who generation of orbit is so we've got AJ Pippica the COO the chief operating officer of generation orbit AJ Welcome to tomorrow Hey, Ben. Thanks for having me on so Who is generation orbit? What are you guys doing? So we're building small air launch systems for small payloads right now We're working primarily on a vehicle called go launcher one It's a single-stage liquid rocket that's launched from a Gulf Stream 3 aircraft and it's primarily designed for hypersonic flight testing We're also operating a small Lear jet With a pod underneath the wing that we call the go flight experiment test bed and we utilize this for some Testing of air launch subsystems as well as a platform for STEM education. So every flight that we have Of the the go FET We like to have a student group basically put together a small CubeSat that they fly and then operate as though it were in flight So you guys have been around for a little while now How did you guys get started doing some of these small sets and small launchers? Sure. So yeah, go has been around for about five years. We're a city area of spaceworks enterprises You may be familiar with spaceworks as the company that puts together a small set market forecast every year So as you can imagine we had a our eye on the small set launch market for quite some time even before we started the company But we saw a real opportunity to put together The kind of two skill sets one being knowledge of the small set launch market and then the other being Experience in a number of air launch systems over the past maybe 15 years or so So we saw a real niche where we thought air launch could be a really good Good application for overall small set launch vehicles Yeah, I think that the key thing here is you're doing this today, right? So the go flight experiments the go FET is is launching right now today. So if I wanted to send something up on that today, I could Yeah, absolutely. So we've flown it three times most recent flight was in December of last year and Yeah, we do that for commercial customers as well as some of our own internal R&D efforts and then again with bringing in students as much as we can as well And then moving forward you've got additional plans above and beyond the go flight experiments testbed You've also got like you mentioned go launch your one. What what does go want your one look like? How is it different than what you've got today? Sure, so go one it will be the first actual vehicle that we've designed and built in-house that we're flying The go FET is a is an old electronic countermeasures pod that we've basically gutted the internals of But go one will be our first rocket system and we'll be using it to fly in the atmosphere at Mach numbers up to about six or eight. So We're flying a rocket the way you would normally fly a scramjet And the reason for that is because we don't have very many operating scramjet vehicles to fly in these kinds of flight conditions So, you know, this is I kind of liken it back to what x-15 did back in the 50s Using a rocket vehicle as a testbed for hypersonics technology. So primarily focused on Yeah flying high Mach number high dynamic pressure flight conditions and both of these are air launch systems and in the chat room Someone basically asked what's the advantage of doing an air launch as opposed to a ground launch? Sure, so you got a couple of things one obviously flexible basing so you can take your if it's designed correctly you can take your entire launch Infrastructure out to any licensed spaceport around the globe and that's helpful Whether you're flying a suborbital mission or even orbital Getting at the different launch as miss and so forth Obviously, there's a performance advantage in launching above much of the appreciable atmosphere So you can put a larger expansion ratio on your booster engine. So you get a little high performance ISP and thrust from that vehicle or from that system and I Think at a small scale when we're talking about rockets that weigh, you know, less than 10,000 pounds or so There's there's a wide range of aircraft that that can carry those kinds of weights So, you know, we have a number of Gulfstream threes that are available to us to go fly the kind of missions that we need to do today And you kind of just you you glossed over it pretty quickly But you know one of the advantages is of course, you're higher up in the atmosphere And so you're you're essentially a two-stage launch system You look at a traditional rocket at stages and the engine on the second stage is actually designed slightly differently than the sea level engines to Compensate for the lack of Pressure and atmosphere, but you don't necessarily have to have an entire rocket engine on the first stage You're using the airplane to get to that point Yep, exactly. So yeah, you can certainly consider the aircraft as the first stage or stage zero of the system So, you know turban based We take the aircraft up to 35 to 40,000 feet and then we do a launch maneuver Where we bring the flight path angle on the system up to about 35 or 40 degrees And then release the rocket. So it's actually at about 40 degrees a flight path angle when when the vehicle is released And that's actually a big driver, especially when you're looking at Delta V's to orbit that initial flight path angle because Ideally wants to be somewhere up around 55 or 60 degrees But as much as you can get really helps you you don't have to turn as much with the rocket So Pegasus for example launched pretty close to zero So you'll see a pretty pretty steep pull-up that the vehicle has to do so using the aircraft for as much as we can We have big wings we use them. So talking about Delta V for a moment or the change in velocity NeuroPilot asks, what's the Delta V benefit of a larger Gulfstream subsonic versus a supersonic MiG-21? Oh, well, I don't know if I have the numbers off the top of my head But you you do end up launching at a higher dynamic pressure generally as you go supersonic So the drag losses can be increased even though you're starting at a higher velocity so Yeah, I don't know if I have a number off the top of my head, but Yeah, it should be a minimal benefit A couple more questions from the chat room Lance asked what kind of cargo mass can you do and to what orbits? Okay, so go-lusher one is just a single-stage suborbital vehicle. So it doesn't actually go to orbit But it's designed for payloads of 300 to 1,000 pounds The future orbital systems that we're looking at there's a number of them Go-to has been in our roadmap for quite some time and that was sized for about 45 kilograms or 100 pounds to lower the orbit And then what kind of orbital planes can you do? Is it just a pure low-earth orbit? Could you do any sort of polar launches? Yeah, so that's yeah one of the flexibilities of air launches that you could hit almost any azimuth Both from the East Coast or the West Coast Hawaii is actually a very interesting place to launch from Because you can go pretty much any direction pretty close to the equator But yeah, you know, we don't have to go build up launch sites in different parts of the globe to get to different inclinations Which is helpful and you mentioned I think you had six flights already. Those weren't just test flights You've actually the Space Vogels asking have you actually launched payload thus far? Oh No, no nothing yet. So the first rocket-powered flights of the go one will be About toward the end of next year early 2018. So I've got still a good deal of development to do We are in the process of a couple Ground demonstration programs right now So about around this time next year. We will have completed a ground demonstration of the fully integrated stage We will have also completed a captive carry and release flight testing of a mock-up test article So it matches the mass properties and and aerodynamic properties, and then we'll put those two together And fly the real vehicle toward the end of next year now That's go one but the flight experiments test bed that has flown customers or that only been it has yep Yep. Yeah, so we've had three of those. We just don't it's just a fully captive Test bed doesn't launch anything from the aircraft and what do you go from here? Is are you eventually going to do a suborbital and orbital air launch systems? Or is that what's your kind of path forward from after go one? Yeah, so there's a couple different paths that we can take obviously we're keeping a close eye on the small sat market It's gonna be very interesting to see how that develops both on the supply and demand side in the coming years I think we're gonna be in a good spot to join the fight there Once go one is complete. We have a number of designs Ready to go for larger air launch systems that you'll see on our website But then you know with with go one being a hypersonic platform We're also going to be in a unique position to push the boundaries of atmospheric flight So we're very interested in looking at high-speed point-to-point transportation of cargo and people once once we Kind of develop the technology that we need to get there So I think you know come come around 2018. I think you'll see both orbital and high-speed point-to-point Vehicles in our future. Is this is this an example? I think this is the go next vehicle. Is that even further in the future? No, that's that's what a one option for what a high-speed point-to-point vehicle would look like this one uses a combined cycle Propulsion system so it uses turbines as well as scramjet propulsion to basically cruise Mach 6 or so to fly in the atmosphere altitude range, you know from 90 90 to 100,000 feet or so Troubles ask why not use like a quadcopter or air balloon just go up as really high as you can and then release the rocket Sure, so what you don't get with With a balloon launch is Velocity or a fly path angle, so you got a good deal of altitude you also can't control the The launch point as well as you can with an aircraft you can you can pretty much hit a Small box or window that you need to be in without being able to kind of Just you know get rid of disturbances from wind and turbulence and so forth that you it's a little bit more difficult to do with The balloon quadcopters. I think you're pretty limited in terms of the altitude that you can hit with those Dada if we go back to the image of the go launcher one, you can actually see it's sitting underneath the the wing there's only one underneath the wing and Someone asked in the chat room. I'm sorry. I apologize. I forgot. I've missed their name space Mike has asked would you ever launch with one under each wing? Would you ever only launch one at a time? Okay, so this guy is the is the go FET so that one stays captive all the time the The actual vehicles that were flying are from the center line Hardpoint so there's only what yeah exactly right there So it's only one at a time There are other carrier aircraft options besides the Gulf streams that we're currently working towards and it's certainly possible For different applications to launch multiple vehicles from a single flight actually We don't have the images ready on at least for the show But if you go to the website you can look at them But as you look at the images basically each launcher gets bigger and bigger as does the carrying cap the carrying airplane itself Is there I assume that's just you know size of payload changing depending upon what you need it will increase the size of the aircraft Yeah, exactly. So with an air launch system you have an additional gross weight limit So ground launch rockets have a gross weight limit that's based on the thrust of the engines So we have that as well, but we also have the carriage capacity of the aircraft to deal with so as you Want to grow the size of your rocket and grow the size of your payload to orbit? You need both more thrust and the ability to carry more weight on an aircraft I'm going to combine two questions from one person the chat room from trebles Which is which customers have shown the biggest interest is a government military education and have you had any interest from other countries as well? Yeah, I think all of those so I think the the primary interest from for the go one Has come from the Air Force and NASA here in the States We've had some interest from Japan and also some commercial interest in that vehicle from a couple different companies who are Looking at other hypersonic systems that they're developing For the orbital systems. We've had interest from all over the world We had 10 others 10 letters of intent signed for go-to Which is an orbital the orbital system that we mentioned that I think half of those are Domestic and half of those are international. So we're seeing a good deal of support from all over the world Peter asks looking into the future. Are you gonna have cubes set to the moon capability or you kind of focusing really on low Earth orbit? It depends on what the customer wants to do if we've got the Delta V to take their their particular payload mass On a particular trajectory would be happy to do it for them. Whether it's to the moon to an asteroid Or anywhere else in the solar system assuming we have the Performance to hit the trajectories that they need a destruction 1701 has an interesting question and a topic that comes up more often than we Like here in the US which is have you encountered any issues with itar the international trade arms regulations? Do you anticipate any showstoppers showstoppers from a regulation standpoint? No, I mean we deal with itar on a regular basis just managing info from a information management standpoint But as far as it being a hindrance to us, I don't think I don't think we've had to deal with it in that regard All of our suppliers are domestic here in the US Now when it comes to operating an air launch system outside of the United States We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, but Yeah, for the most part so far everything's been fine. So now the big questions which boils down to money To wicked asks you have big plans. Do you also have the funding to support them? That's a big thing in new spaces. We all have a lot of really big ideas But finding them securing the money to actually execute on them is actually much harder than sometimes the idea itself Absolutely, so you know for us, it's important to have a big vision. That's why we got into this business And that's why most people do I think But we're also very realistic in terms of our you know the goals that we set in the near term So the the steps that we put forward on go one are all funded And you know what like I said the epi-tee is is operational and can fly whatever we needed to So that's why you know, I'm not too Kind of grandiose about the particular things we had coming in the future because I mean they're there a number of years down the road And the funding isn't there to back them up yet But we're very pleased with where we're going on go one right now We have a number of milestones to hit in the next year We're ready to do it and yeah, now we just have to execute so similar on the financials Daman asks how much does it cost and now that was kind of an open-ended question So I'm gonna say if we wanted to fly payload tomorrow, how much would it cost for a different size payloads? Well tomorrow So the go epi-tee Tends to cost about 20k a flight So pretty low cost now that's again flying around in a captive carry pod underneath a lear jet But for the kinds of things that we need to do it works pretty well for us the go one The cost point there is about two million dollars per flight Which is about half of kind of the current next best system that's available available for accessing These kinds of flight conditions that the go one is capable of So you're looking kind of at that small say there's a huge we've talked about this a lot huge explosion Smallsat launcher market is that really where you're gonna be focusing you talked a little bit about cargo and possibly a crew in the future But right now is that is that it? Is it the small sat market that you're really trying to target? So for us with go one, it's it's hypersonic flight test. You know QSAT is So I think something that's still still growing and we'll come next for us once we get the go one flying You know for us it go one is a pretty interesting business case on its own But it also serves as a risk reduction platform for basically demonstrating the technologies that we need for larger Air launch systems capable of getting to orbit whether it be cryogenic propellant management overall operations Propulsion development all those things we're able to work out with go one And pave the way for the next step Interstellar asks where your launch site is although, you know, you're an air launch system So your launch sites anywhere you have a runway, right? Potentially potentially so we do we do like to launch from places that have FAA launch licenses or excuse me spaceport licenses So our baseline base of operations will be Cecil field or Cecil spaceport down in Jacksonville, Florida They've had their FAA launch or excuse me again spaceport license for a number of years now So we actually flew one of the go FET flights out of Cecil the first one So it gave them a chance to essentially exercise some of their launch procedures on the ground and in the air So scheduling airspace Running out all the the safety equipment and so forth So it's a good opportunity to test things that they've done on paper, but never really done in real life I bet spaceport America is willing to give you a really good deal right now if you wanted to as well All right, just a couple more here a couple more questions before we head back into break One of his is Heldas asks what kind of customer base did you identify when you're first building up the business plan versus What is the customer base actually look like now that you're actually starting to I know you're only doing a captive carry stuff But you know as you're getting closer to go one Sure, so the customer base originally I think you saw the first growth in small sets and cube sets for the most part coming out of academia and government and I think maybe three or four years ago We really started to see a massive switch to commercial customers Whether it be earth observation satellites, which I think have been the real kind of first treaders in terms of commercially viable small set constellations Whether it's planet or other companies doing different types of earth observation not just remote sensing And then I think you're going to see now going forward We've already started to see this a little bit as well Is it transition that so much a transition but a growth toward other segments of the small set market mainly for communications? So I think you're starting to see a lot more IoT applications and the in-space communications being being developed for small set Constellations and cube sets in some cases and then of course you have the big SpaceX and one-web Internet constellations that are in development. So I think a lot of that has continued to drive Demand for launch services across the spectrum of payload ranges from five kilograms up to you know 150 or 200 or so as you mentioned you're designing go one and they're asking as you're designing that are you designing the engines yourself And if so what fuels will be using that was from Lance Sure, that's a great question. So the fuels are kerosene and liquid oxygen so Pretty standard booster type fuels our engine is being developed right now a small company in Denver called Ursa major technologies Few few folks from Blue Origin Started that company a couple years ago and they're developing The first ox-rich stage combustion engine in quite some time. It's called Hadley So that's the that's the engine for go one. It's about five thousand pounds thrust So it sounds like go one is pretty far along in the in the in the chain at this point From there, we saw you know, we saw kind of go one But then we also saw that space plane concept the the go next again That was just conceptual drawing of what it may look like. What are the steps to get from go one to something like that space plane? Sure, so the first thing is learning to fly in the kinds of environments that are necessary to operate Those types of high-speed point-to-point systems and that means high Mach number high dynamic pressure So I mock number in the atmosphere and demonstrating Scramjet propulsion or dual-bode propulsion whether it's ramjet scramjet And also getting to those to the to the Mach numbers where you can start operating those systems There's obviously turbans and and rockets as different ways to get there. So being able to demonstrate a fully integrated system that's capable of you know going from New York to London in Minutes instead of hours That's that's really the next step for us after go one is doing a small demo. I think That encompasses the demonstration of technologies is necessary to build the commercially viable Systems like that. It also looks awesome that the mock-up. It just it looks really cool It looks like the future on the screen, right? That was the future. We were promised in the 60s and 70s It's it's really awesome looking. So yeah, all right. Go ahead. No go go ahead. I Was gonna say our background, you know from space works space works There's a lot of conceptual design and we've been working hypersonic systems for You know 10 or 15 years And it's it's you know being able to actually be a part of building Vehicles and flying them that are actually going to make these types of future vehicles that we've had on our walls for years A reality is really really exciting. Where can people go for more information on what you guys are doing? Sure, so you can check out our website at generation orbit comm our Twitter feed is usually a little bit more Up-to-date than our website. So you can find us at generation orbit And if you if you ever have any questions or want to ask questions about what we do or come see us in Atlanta I just feel free to send an email to info at generation orbit.com. That's pretty awesome stuff Thank you so much for taking time out of your Saturday to come on the show It's gonna be fun to kind of watch a progress of go on and then up to go next and see how things are going for you Thanks, man. It's been a pleasure