The Hermeus Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Live from Spaceport: The Road to First Flight Feb 25, 2026

Show notes

The Hermeus Podcast is BACK with a special Spaceport Edition, filmed outside the hangar at Spaceport America in New Mexico.

In the middle of our ground testing campaign for Quarterhorse Mk 2.1, AJ Piplica and Zach Shore sit down with members of the crew team to reflect on the road to first flight, what’s changed since the company's last flight, and what it takes to bring a high-speed aircraft from concept to flight line — in less than a year.

Joined by Mike Gilliland, Marcus Spanolios, and Andrew Neal, the team shares an inside look at the rigor, complexity, and teamwork required to build, test and ultimately fly a high-Mach aircraft.

Hermeus in LA Oct 08, 2024

Show notes

Our LA office is growing! It’s home to a lot of our hardcore engineering work as well as smaller, highly complex component and subassembly builds. Listen in as Daniel Budenstein, Neel Dutta, Francis Moscal, and Tatum Hardy discuss what it's like to work at our LA office and how it compares to HQ back in Atlanta. 00:00 - 03:10 - Welcome to the LA Office 03:10 - 08:01 - LA office vs. Atlanta office: key differences 08:01 - 09:28 - A Day in the LA Office 09:28 - 21:40 - Hermeus vs. other aerospace companies: what sets Hermeus apart 21:40 - 34:16 - Segment: This or That? 34:16 - Hermeus frequently asked questions

Special Guest: Art 'Turbo' Tomassetti Apr 09, 2024

Show notes

Test pilot Art "Turbo" Tomassetti was one of only a handful of pilots to fly the X-35 – which was of course, the precursor to the F-35. Famously, he flew "Mission X" which consisted of a short takeoff, level supersonic flight, and a vertical landing, which had not been accomplished before in a single flight. Turbo shares this story and more with members of the Hermeus Flight Test team. 00:00 – Introductions 02:47 – Difference between test pilots and pilots 08:17 – The allure of X-planes and first flights 14:49 – The F-35 "Hat Trick" and "Mission X" flights 22:36 – Preparation for a flight test mission 30:00 – The X-35 vs the X-32 34:37 – The challenges Hermeus is tackling 39:04 – Autonomous flight and pilots 43:58 – What is an aircraft you wished you has flown? 48:43 – Turbo, what are you up to today?

Airplanes and Hot Takes Dec 28, 2023

Show notes

The Hermeus Flight Test team hops on the podcast to judge, drool over, and poke fun at famous aircraft. We've got an Air Force test pilot, a Navy test pilot, and a flight test engineer from the Royal Air Force – their knowledge runs deep and their opinions are strong! PODCAST GUESTS AJ Piplica – Founder, CEO Don "Krash" Kaderbek – VP of Test Pat "Vanna" Svatek – Director of Propulsion Test Mick "Ramjet" Mansfield – Director of Flight Test The Flight Test team is hiring! https://www.hermeus.com/careers

Special Guests from 'Real Engineering' Sep 20, 2023

Show notes

Real Engineering is probably our favorite channel on YouTube. They unpack some of the world's most epic engineering challenges with clarity and depth. It was a pleasure to have the channel's creator Brian McManus and his colleague Graham Haerther on the podcast to chat about the art of science communication and the future of YouTube and digital media. And yes, there just might be a forthcoming Real Engineering video about hypersonic flight...

The Dream Team Assembles! Aug 21, 2023

Show notes

From Skunk Works, Blue Origin, and the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency – our board of advisors create a dream team of aerospace wisdom. In this episode we're joined by members of our Board of Advisors to chat about the Hermeus early days and the progress we've made. Rob Meyerson, Rob Weiss, and Keith Masback were some of Hermeus earliest supporters. They bring together a wealth of knowledge from the aerospace world and we are privileged to have them as our advisors.

Defense Tech, Startups, and More with John Coogan Jul 19, 2023

Show notes

Thrilled to host special guest John Coogan on the podcast. John's working on a video about us and took an hour to hop on the pod to chat about running startups, starting a YouTube Channel, and of course, fast airplanes! 00:04 – President for a day? Bring back the SR-71 01:47 – Technical recruiting in the early days of a startup 02:50 – John's background: Soylent and Lucy 06:40 – Lessons learned from building two companies 10:18 – Defense Tech and Founders Fund 15:15 – Is there a key indicator for startup success? 17:44 – Authenticity, communications, brand, and social media 28:02 – Different types of "risks" in venture-backed startups 36:55 – Skunk Works – what made them so special? 41:54 – John's impressions of Hermeus

Startups 🤝 DoD (Special Guest Lt. Gen. Clint Hinote) – The Hermeus Podcast 19 Jun 20, 2023

Show notes

Lieutenant General Clint Hinote's 35-year career in the Air Force has taken him from inside the cockpit of an F-117 to inside the Pentagon. He has most recently been focused on how to best leverage innovative technology to fortify national security. Freshly retired, we were honored to have him join us for a chat about how startups and the Department of Defense can better work together. 00:51 – Lt. Gen. Clint “Q” Hinote introduction 09:14 – The Future Force 17:11 – What startups wanting to work with the DoD should know 27:23 – Relationship with Venture Capital, entrepreneurs, and the DoD 29:27 – How can the DoD signal to Venture Capital what they need? 38:25 – aligning timelines between the startup, the VCs, and the customer 41:27 – Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution 44:33 – The Defense Department is not a market, it’s a customer 47:37 – Building relationships and trust while working with the government 50:12 – Learning, iterating, risk-taking 54:55 – NASA getting contracting right with COTS program 01:07:18 – Balancing what we’re asking the military to do now and what we’re asking them to do in the future 01:11:07 – “Purple thinking”: branches of the military working together

Hypersonic Fever! With Chris Combs and Alex Hollings May 25, 2023

Show notes

Oh do we have a treat for you! We're joined by a couple hypersonic "influencers", Dr. Chris Combs of the University of Texas at San Antonio and Alex Hollings, the Editor in Chief of Sandboxx News, for a thrilling, engaging, and occasionally controversial conversation about the state of hypersonics in the world today. 00:00 - Intros 03:06 - What is hypersonics? What is hype and what is reality? 08:58 - Hypersonic planes vs hypersonic weapons 13:07 - What are the most interesting problems in hypersonics? 18:50 - Airplanes are objectively cool 22:00 - Airplane development timelines 24:57 - Testing and developing complex air and spacecraft 37:43 - NASA vs SpaceX development approach 55:27 - Assessing risk and how failure breeds success 58:02 - Perceptions vs reality 01:00:15 - Scramjet, boost-glide, and ramjet hypersonic flight 01:01:42 - Highly coupled systems 01:03:43 - The hardest thing about hypersonics: people 01:10:02 - Alex Hollings on Hermeus and Defense reporting 01:14:41 - Wrap up and where to find Chris and Alex

Hermeus in the Cloud (the AWS cloud that is) May 12, 2023

Show notes

In this episode of the podcast we bring on a couple all-stars from our Amazon Web Services team to discuss how we approach software development, high performance compute, data storage, and security. Naturally, the conversation gets into some AI and ML speculation and sci-fi movie talk.

PODCAST GUESTS:

Nandu Shah: VP of Information, Hermeus

Jay Naves: Sr. Solutions Architect, AWS

Scott Dieckhaus: Aerospace World Wide Solutions Leader, AWS

Scott McCutchen: Senior DevOps Engineer, Hermeus

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