The average age of engineers in mission control when Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon was 28

We’re excited to announce details around our new hypersonic engine and flight test facility in Jacksonville, FL! Named HEAT (High Enthalpy Air-Breathing Test Facility), this facility will be our largest and most technologically advanced test site to date and become a national asset for hypersonic testing.

Later this year @hermeuscorp is aiming to take their first subsonic flight with the goal of hitting Mach 2.5 next year. For Episode 43 of S³ we got an inside look at how they're building 1 plane a year to pull it off.

Time to bring back hyper intelligent youth to government 🔥

We’re thrilled to welcome Ken Venner as our Chief Operating Officer! Ken was the former SpaceX, Sierra Space, & Broadcom CIO and brings decades of deep tech leadership to our rapidly growing team. Full press release here: hermeus.com/press-release-ke…

startups national security 🤝 American innovation Latest podcast looks into how to accelerate public-private partnerships: piped.video/5fiUZMOgAuk.

We’re also thrilled to share details on the next iteration of Quarterhorse – Mk 2 – which will feature the Pratt & Whitney F100 engine and fly at supersonic speeds next year.

Raptor v1 // Raptor v3 “the best part is no part”

Ground testing of our first fully-integrated vehicle, Quarterhorse Mk 0, is complete. The vehicle was designed and built within six months, and all test objectives were completed in just 37 days of deployed testing. Next up, flight testing of Quarterhorse Mk 1.

204 days in 72 seconds

Shipping our first airplane @hermeuscorp - Quarterhorse Mk 1 is out the door to begin taxi testing Design-build-integration: 204 days Integrated testing: 69 days Let's go 🇺🇸🇺🇸

I’ll never forget this season 🥹

Very kindly announcing a contract after 5 pm on a Friday... U.S. Army awards Lockheed Martin $756 million contract to deliver hypersonic weapon system.

Our march towards first flight continues. Quarterhorse Mk 1 just completed engine testing which included runs at max afterburner. Not too much to see due to the daylight sun, but turn on audio to hear the engine roar 🔊

After thousands of private requests we are 🙏 Full Lux letter - Q3 2021 "An excess of excesses" (PDF) drive.google.com/file/d/1L-U…

Selling into the Government/DoD is incredibly difficult. CTO of Palantir, @ssankar, delivered insightful nuggets on @twentyminutevc with @HarryStebbings: "The government's traditional model of procurement is a labor model... They pay you by the hour to build it, which is pretty communist for a country whose entire economy has been powered by capitalism." "The DoD is a little uncomfortable with picking winners... There's an aesthetic towards fair, socialist returns, like spreading out the money across all participants." "Why would you ever invest in innovation when, to the extent the government wants you to innovate, they actually pay you the money to do the R&D?" "The pathing of aligning requirements, resources, and contracts in DoD is specific to every opportunity you're going after. It's a Byzantine process." "The government expects software R&D costs to decrease over time, which is not how it works. Software R&D costs only increase." "We've bred a Marketplace in defense that's driven towards conformity, where everyone has the same business model and no one wants to take risks." "We need to pick a few winners in defense tech and go after it with scale. These companies will become large, which then allows funds to bring more money and innovation into our ecosystem." "In order to constrain the variance in outcomes, we have constrained ourselves to mediocrity. The amount of process in place just ensures mediocrity." "The decision-making in government contracts often involves committees. It's closer to committees than single points or panels."

The legendary lakebeds of Edwards Air Force Base

Love the spicy candor. If Tara @GoviniNews got one wish: "I would shut down every FFRDC that competes with commercial companies. Instead of turning a blind eye for the fact that that happens everything single day even though it is against the law and not within their mission space. I don't think people like to talk about it in our industry but I don't think you can find anybody who would tell you it doesn't happen."

The next @hermeuscorp milestone to watch? Flight. 🚀 @AJ_Piplica & @Zsshore sit down with @MorganLBrennan to discuss the company's highly iterative, hardware-rich approach to delivering hypersonic aircraft on @CNBCOvertime. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas…

We’re out here making our official debut at the @Stanford Tech & National Security conference!

We’ve begun testing our precooler technology with the @prattandwhitney F100 engine.    The precooler increases the max speed of the turbine engine by lowering the temperature of incoming air and is part of our larger turbine-based combined cycle (TBCC) engine architecture.

Thank you @AviationWeek for the award in recognition of our full-scale precooler testing with the @prattandwhitney F100 engine! These tests were a major propulsion milestone for our next aircraft, Quarterhorse Mk 2, and pave the way for our full-range, air-breathing hypersonic engine which combines a turbine with a ramjet.

So not only does the US Navy not have reloads on hand for its missile silos, it doesn't have yard capacity to repair battle-damaged warships. In any Second Pacific War with the Chinese, we are going to find ourselves in the position of the Japanese in the first one - entering combat with a fleet we don't have the yard capacity to replace, enlarge, or even repair, and facing an industrial colossus that will relentlessly bury us in warship tonnage. Red flag over Pearl Harbor? It's really quite plausible at this point should we not get our act together.

Never forget that this was Ja Morant’s recruiting profile @JaMorant 0 star recruit. Never let someone else determine your worth...

Just finished my latest rebranding job, pretty happy with it

Morning. Here are our guest call-ins today: - @altcap (Altimeter Capital) - @AJ_Piplica + @Zsshore (Hermeus) - @zebulgar + @EnduroSat (Founders Fund) Thiel Fellow lightning round (@thielfellowship): - @CarloWKobe (Fizz) - @thewildstevenp (Orbit) - @Eliasfiz (Canopy Labs) - @jacksondenka (Azura) - @hoomanrenezhad (Solcoa Industries) - @FerdiDabitz (Ivy) - @RealJPGE (Phase) - @Jlindig0 (AUG Tx) - @WarnerTeddy (Intempus) - @0xSigil (Extraordinary) - @aidanmantine (Innerphases) - @koki_mashita (Aeolus) - Colton Ed-Habr (Orbit) See you on the stream.

Would people buy an Anduril Pager in our merch store?

BREAKING 🚨 NASA has just now announced @SpaceX and its Crew Dragon spacecraft are tasked to retrieve Boeing Starliner astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams from the International Space Station and ferry them safely back to Earth.

The HEAT is on! We have officially brought our new High Enthalpy Air-Breathing Test Facility (HEAT) online with a series of successful tests of the @prattandwhitney F100 engine. HEAT will serve as an asset for military and commercial engine testing, boosting the efficiency and affordability of supersonic and hypersonic test infrastructure.

Never forget what they took from us.

Palantir and @ssankar were highlighted in a recent @Heritage Foundation report titled, A Strategy to Revitalize the Defense Industrial Base for the 21st Century 🇺🇸 Increase Use of Fixed-Price Contracting 🚀 "As Palantir executive Shyam Sankar explains, although cost-plus contracting is meant to limit costs for the government and does reduce risk for contractors, it ends up driving costs up and causing delays that hurt the taxpayer. For example, taxpayer-reimbursed R&D is extremely inefficient because companies are not incentivized to spend money efficiently: They are spending taxpayers’ money, not risking their own capital.63 In a fixed-price system, the purchase price of a product includes the company’s R&D costs, so the company is incentivized to keep those costs as low as possible to maximize the amount of net profit." Increase Competition🚀 "Since the end of the Cold War, the defense industrial base has consolidated to the point where there now are only eight major defense producers. Consolidation originally occurred because of a reduction in defense spending, but bureaucratic barriers have increased the relative burden of compliance costs, which in turn discourages new market entrants. Contracting with the Department of Defense is a cumbersome multi-phase process that takes years. This prevents timely returns on investments, creating capital flow challenges, especially when paired with procurement uncertainty. Furthermore, the difference in business models between many new market entrants and the existing primes exacerbates systemic barriers to entry. Many smaller DIB producers, such as Palantir and Anduril, conduct their own research and development and then shop their product to the government instead of waiting for an R&D contract awarded by DOD. This increases their initial costs but allows them to move from idea to production more rapidly than established firms can. However, the Pentagon is not used to working with contractors who use such business models and therefore struggles to leverage this model’s ability to move fast."

excited to share what we've been up to soon!

I interviewed the @hermeuscorp team and cut together this 25 minute video. It covers: - How @AJ_Piplica got into aviation - The highs and lows of early attempts - Raising money for a hard-tech co - Building, testing, and selling hypersonic tech - The hypersonic arms race!

This is the type of disruption that traditional American industry needs

Quarterhorse Mk 2 will be the world’s first high-Mach autonomous aircraft. About the size of an F-16, it features a variable inlet, delta wing, and is powered by a pre-cooled @prattandwhitney F100 engine. Coming Summer 2025. One aircraft per year.

One thing I was told by a mentor that I think of every day: No one can tell you, you are not good enough. Only you can do that. And even then, you will always underestimate yourself. Think bolder, be brave. 👍

When I see an MBA student who wants to work at a startup in a “strategy” role, I interpret that to mean “I want to be in the room where important decisions are made, but not do any real work myself”

Heat seeking missile tracking a cigarette

Bad news bros, you've been worrying about the wrong Chinese drones and balloons They've got drones and balloons that are airdropping hypersonic drones

Jensen Huang: "Greatness does not come from intelligence. Greatness comes from character, and character isn't isn't formed out of smart people: it's formed out of people who have suffered."

Harvard Law School voted anonymously to support a BDS resolution. When Jewish students raised concerns, Maha Husseini stated “brats are upset they didn’t get their way”. Soulaina El Mekkaoui Micah Herskind Maham Kashif Zainab Kahloon Aashna Avachat Anne DeLong all applauded.

Who knew that Enchilada Surfboard gear was the hottest swag of the season? enchiladassurfboards.com/

The mission @AJ_Piplica and his team at @hermeuscorp are on is ambitious: to build autonomous Mach 5 aircraft for national defense and Mach 5 commercial flight to shrink the world. AJ's strategy for getting his company to the victory condition hinges on the concept of asymmetry: an outsized, unmatched, decisive advantage in the context of a specific game. In defense, it allows a country to deter conflict, and, when it must fight, win quickly. In tech and business, it allows insurgent startups to leverage their natural advantages to disrupt incumbents, create revolutionary products, and build massively valuable companies along the way, even when the odds are massively stacked against them. Today, exclusive for Pirate Wires, AJ lays out tactics for creating asymmetry, and explains why, at the end of the day, having an advantage over the competition isn’t enough: winning means relentlessly innovating even after you’re miles ahead of everyone else. Essential reading for founders and startup leaders. Check it out today on our site. 👇

Defense Startups Risk Becoming ‘Failed Experiment’ Without More Pentagon Dollars • VCs have poured $100B in defense tech startups since 2021. • VC backed companies awarded <1% of $411B in DoD contracts in FY23 “If there is not a shift in the concentration of contracts still going to the top defense primes toward these new vendors, this VC investment will dry up.” Michael Brown “If these companies don’t win contracts at a size and volume greater than what they are getting, they are in trouble. We risk venture looking at the defense market as a failed experiment.” Tara Murphy Dougherty “If a startup’s product isn’t part of the budget plan, it is like the Field of Dreams at that point. That is probably one too many miracles to bet on.” @traestephens wsj.com/tech/defense-startup…

⚠️ Warning: This photo might make you feel very old. Time really flies, doesn't it?

$PLTR CTO @ssankar at #AUSA2024 🔮 Shyam: “No plan survives first contact. Plans are useless, planning is invaluable. “The process is useful, but maintaining the agility to be responsive, that’s what transformation in contact actually looks like.

SpaceX raised $10B. NASA spent $450B. Only one is reliably sending humans to orbit. I was bored this weekend so did some digging on where NASA’s $450B went since 2002 🧵:

Sun sets on another day of test as we march towards first flight

Sports are a poor proxy for who wins in a positive-sum game. Time-bounded contests rely heavily on skill and luck, coin flips, minor mistakes. All of that matters too, but it’s not the decisive factor. The people who win big in positive-sum games always have one thing in common: they want to win more than any one else. Most importantly, they want it so badly they don’t *stop* wanting to win even after they’ve won an unreasonable number of times. The truly great athletes who dominate for decades are all like this too, but it’s even more true in business and creative fields. And it’s not the rational, human reaction to achieving extraordinary success.

Truth.

Honored to host retired USAF Lt. Gen. Clint Hinote at Hermeus. His 35-year career took him from inside the cockpit of an F-117 to inside the Pentagon. After the visit, Clint joined @AJ_Piplica and @Zsshore on our podcast for a wide-ranging discussion about how startups and the DoD can better work together. Full conversation here: piped.video/XcOErqxaNSw

“Came across my sons first letter home from Bootcamp"

So many people focus on being very thoughtful and strategic in everything they do. From 0-1. Fuck it. You need activity. Activity drives outcomes, serendipity and learning. The more you do, the more data you get. Speed of learning is biggest determinant of PMF or not.

We’re getting a lot of reps in taxi testing Quarterhorse Mk 1. These repeated runs allow us to gather data on all integrated systems – from the Flight Deck, to the vehicle, to ground support equipment, and air traffic coordination. Medium and high speed taxi runs up next, then first flight!

HEARTBREAKING IDF Spokesperson: Attached is documentation found by IDF forces in the Gaza Strip. The footage shows Ella Alkaim, 8 years old, in Gaza, a few days after she was kidnapped from her home in Nahal Oz on October 7th: In the photo, Ella Alkaim is with her sister, Daphna Alkaim, 15 years old, who was kidnapped with her: The materials were filmed by Hxmas terrorists in Gaza.