Venus Aerospace is a start-up aerospace company founded in 2020 and based in Houston, Texas. Focused on the future of hypersonic flight, it builds the Stargazer aircraft which aims to make one-hour travel from one side of the world to the other more cost-effective.
You have a history of launching high-tech startups. What was the gap in the market that led you to co-found Venus Aerospace in 2020?
The origin of Venus began when my husband and I were deployed to Japan. As a PhD rocket scientist and an engineer with an MBA, we worked for Virgin Orbit, Richard Branson's company launching rockets off 747s. One Sunday afternoon in 2018, we were on our balcony overlooking Tokyo Bay, talking about plans to return home for my grandmother's birthday via a 13-hour flight. Andrew mentioned that if a new rocket engine is proven, we could theoretically be home within an hour.
At the time, I thought this was science fiction, but six years later, that's exactly what we are doing.
For high-speed travel to exist, a new type of engine is needed. Jet turbines can only reach certain speeds before temperature issues arise. Our premise is to use a rocket engine instead, and we are commercializing the world's most efficient rocket engine, which can make San Francisco to Tokyo possible in under an hour.
Given that the industry has made huge strides in technological innovation, why is 2024 such a pivotal moment for the space economy and industry?
It's taken several advances in technology; additive manufacturing, or 3D printing, has enabled the creation of geometries that standard machining couldn't achieve. The big challenge with rocket engines is heat, similar to lighting a fire in a wax fireplace without melting it. Engines that SpaceX uses are almost identical to those used for Apollo missions because earlier manufacturing processes were slow, taking almost a year to build a new rocket engine.
With additive manufacturing, you can 3D print complex geometries quickly. The engine we're using was theorized in the 80s, but it wasn't until 2019 that academia proved its viability. This new engine, a rotating detonation rocket engine, puts out more thrust than regular engines. Most rockets are 90% propellant and 10% payload. Our engine is so efficient that it reduces propellant to about 67%, allowing more payload. We are leveraging this to create a rocket-powered plane, making high-speed travel possible. We have the technology that we need now. For the last four years, we've been pulling this engine technology out of academia. With external investment, we've been able to build and test it. We moved to the Houston Spaceport to build and fire the engine which we do daily now. It's about packaging the engine and wrapping a vehicle around it to make high-speed global travel a reality.
You recently secured investment from Airbus Ventures. How has the investment appetite progressed since you launched in 2020?
The markets have changed drastically since we started. We quit our jobs in June 2020, and capital was flowing well then, but since COVID, fundraising has become more challenging. Deep tech companies need patient investors who understand the market. Airbus Ventures has been great because they understand aerospace and the $200 billion per year market we're targeting. It's taken time to find investors who fit our niche, but now we have some of the best investors helping make this a reality.
Previous market studies didn't believe it could happen by 2030 due to the lack of the right engine. For example, in Top Gun Maverick, Tom Cruise tries to hit Mach 10, but the jet starts melting due to heat. High-speed jets face material challenges because they fly low enough in the atmosphere to get oxygen, causing overheating. Our rocket engine carries its own oxidizer, allowing us to fly higher in the cooler atmosphere, avoiding those challenges.
Venus aircraft would be flying at high speeds across globally shared airspaces. Are regulators and legislation supportive and encouraging of this kind of technology?
Regulatory issues are our biggest challenge. We had three main asks from the FAA reauthorization: recognizing the coming high-speed travel, finding places to test high-speed vehicles, and determining the altitude at which there wouldn't be a speed limit over land. We know from space shuttle data that a sonic boom can be heard and not heard. Ideally, we could take off from Los Angeles, create a sonic boom over the Pacific, and fly across the US without noise issues, landing in Washington DC in 45 minutes.
Our conversations with the FAA have been great. They are excited about the future of aviation. We're starting with drone applications to prove our engine's safety before moving to human transport, similar to how the space industry tests cargo first. By reducing risk through smaller-scale applications, we aim to pave the way for commercial flight.
Do you have plans to account for and mitigate Venus Aerospace’s environmental impact on the planet?
The Stargazer uses 50% less jet fuel, offering a sustainability aspect. We aim to use sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) once production scales up. Increases in transportation speed historically bring increases in peace and prosperity. By making the world more connected, like reducing travel time from the US to Australia to four hours, we hope to foster economic partnerships and a more peaceful world.
The main barrier to the adoption of SAF fuel is production scale so adoption on a large scale is currently out of reach due to these limitations.. One airline could use all the SavFuel produced in a single day so we need larger production to support the global aerospace system.
