E6 - Hypersonic Airplanes

Hermeus CEO AJ Piplica joins us to talk about the hypersonic airplanes they’re building, breaking the SR-71 speed record, their go-to-market strategy, the parallels to Top Gun Maverick, and a ton of other stuff.

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* Hermeus Twitter https://twitter.com/HermeusCorp

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Show Notes

(00:57) intro

(5:45) AJ’s origin story

(7:25) how old were you?

(8:24) not a space person

(10:11) sequestration

(10:48) missiles to aircraft

(12:41) Monospony the board game

(13:12) Raising money the right way

(15:04) the name?

(16:42) how Hermeus was funded

(18:33) AJ loves our ChatGPT rap song

(19:16) AJ's spicy take on defense profits

(22:06) climbing the food chain

(23:14) using a T-38 engine to go Mach 4

(24:08) Top Gun Maverick

(25:52) Quarterhorse

(28:52) breaking the SR-71 speed record

(31:04) Darkhorse

(33:41) avoiding the Valley of Death

(40:09) lobbying is the price of entry

(41:22) AJ's Christmas Tree

(46:05) why do it at all?

(49:00) Hermeus has one competitor

(51:28) Halcyon

(55:51) how the Pentagon prices things

(59:52) outro