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Radical raises $4.5M for stratospheric solar drones

Radical demonstration airplane seen from above during test flight
Radical's demonstration airplane takes a long-duration test flight. (Radical Photo)

Seattle-based Radical says it has raised $4.5 million to support the development of solar-powered, autonomous airplanes that can beam down connectivity and imagery during long-duration, high-altitude flights.

The seed funding round was led by Scout Ventures, with additional funding from other investors including Inflection Mercury Fund and Y Combinator. According to Pitchbook, Radical previously received $500,000 in pre-seed funding from Y Combinator.

Radical’s co-founders are CEO James Thomas and chief technology officer Cyriel Notteboom. Both founders are veterans of Prime Air, Amazon’s effort to field a fleet of delivery drones. They left Amazon in mid-2022 to found Radical — and the aerospace startup is just now coming out of stealth.

Thomas told me that Radical will use the fresh investment to expand its team, which currently amounts to four people. “We’re still a small team, but we’re growing very quickly,” he said. “We’re currently hiring. Those positions are up on our website, with more to come.”

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NASA awards millions to small businesses for space tech

Illustration: New Frontier's Bifrost orbital transfer spacecraft
Artwork shows two views of the Bifröst orbital transfer spacecraft. (New Frontier Aerospace Illustration)

Two Washington state aerospace companies — Tukwila-based New Frontier Aerospace and Spanaway-based HyBird Space Systems — are among 95 ventures that have won project development funding from NASA through its Small Business Innovation Research program.

The Phase II SBIR grants are valued at up to $850,000 each. These grants follow up on earlier Phase I funding for the projects, and will be distributed over a 24-month contract period.

Each small business was also eligible to apply for up to $50,000 in funding from NASA’s Technical and Business Assistance program to help the companies identify new market opportunities and work on their commercialization strategies.

The total outlay for 107 projects comes to $93.5 million, NASA said.

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Amazon drones advance in Arizona, retreat in California

Amazon MK30 drone
Amazon says its next-generation MK30 drone will start making deliveries later this year. (Amazon Photo)

Amazon says it’s gearing up to add a community in Arizona to its list of Prime Air drone delivery zones.

Later this year, customers in the West Valley region of the Phoenix metro area will be able to get their purchases via drones dispatched from Amazon’s Same-Day Delivery site in Tolleson, Ariz., the company said today.

The West Valley region joins College Station in Texas as an Amazon drone delivery site. Last year, Prime Air began free prescription deliveries in 60 minutes or less to customers in College Station, in partnership with Amazon Pharmacy.

For the past two years, Amazon has also been offering drone deliveries in Lockeford, Calif. — but today the company said it would be closing down that delivery site, citing the need to “prioritize our resources to continue growing the program.”

“We’ll offer all current employees opportunities at other sites, and will continue to serve customers in Lockeford with other delivery methods,” Amazon said.

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Cosmic Space

Halo Space reveals design for stratospheric tour capsule

Cutaway view of Halo Space Aurora capsule
A cutaway illustration shows the layout of Halo Space's Aurora capsule, with a toilet in the center. (Frank Stephenson Design)

If and when passengers climb into Halo Space’s capsule for a ballooning trip to the stratosphere, they’ll find cushy seats, fold-down receptacles for food and drinks, floor-to-ceiling windows that provide an astronaut’s-eye view of the curving Earth below — and a snug toilet to get them through the hours-long flight.

The interior design for Halo’s capsule, dubbed “The Aurora,” was unveiled on April 11 in London by Halo Space CEO Carlos Mira and famed automotive designer Frank Stephenson.

“Passengers will spend up to six hours inside our spaceship, and we want every minute to be unforgettable,” Mira said in a news release. “Frank and his team have created a capsule to enhance our flight experience, utilizing unique resources, design and technology.”

Halo Space is aiming to begin commercial service by 2026 with ticket prices starting at $164,000. It’s one of several companies targeting the stratospheric tourism market, a lineup that also includes World View, Space Perspective, Zero 2 Infinity and Zephalto.

Although these stratospheric tours are typically marketed as spaceflights, they wouldn’t go anywhere near as high as the suborbital rocket ships built by Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic — 20 to 25 miles for Halo Space, as opposed to 50 miles for Virgin Galactic. On the plus side, the trips would be much less expensive, and arguably less risky.

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Cosmic Tech

Boom Supersonic gives its test plane a subsonic debut

Boom XB-1 jet takes off
Boom's XB-1 demonstrator jet takes off for the first time. (Credit: Boom Supersonic)

After a decade of development, Boom Supersonic’s XB-1 demonstrator jet took to the air today for the first in a series of test flights that will eventually lead beyond the sound barrier.

The flight at California’s Mojave Air and Space Port achieved a top altitude of 7,120 feet and a top speed of 238 knots (273 mph), Boom said in a news release. That’s nowhere near the speed of sound, but going supersonic wasn’t the goal. Instead, the aim was to start gathering data on the XB-1’s performance from takeoff to landing.

“Today, XB-1 took flight in the same hallowed airspace where the Bell X-1 first broke the sound barrier in 1947,” said Boom’s CEO and founder, Blake Scholl. “I’ve been looking forward to this flight since founding Boom in 2014, and it marks the most significant milestone yet on our path to bring supersonic travel to passengers worldwide.”

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Stratolaunch’s prototype rocket plane goes supersonic

Stratolaunch carrier airplane deploys TA-1 test vehicle for air launch
Stratolaunch’s carrier airplane releases the TA-1 test vehicle for launch. (Stratolaunch via Vimeo)

Chalk up another milestone for Stratolaunch, the air-launch venture created by the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen: The company’s mammoth airplane deployed a winged test vehicle for its first rocket-powered flight.

Stratolaunch’s single-use TA-1 test vehicle blazed a trail for future reusable hypersonic test vehicles that are expected to help the U.S. military catch up on one of the frontiers of aerial combat. TA-1 went supersonic, according to Zachary Krevor, Stratolaunch’s president and CEO — but based on his comments, it may not have quite hit the hypersonic standard of five times the speed of sound.

“While I can’t share the specific altitude and speed TA-1 reached due to proprietary agreements with our customers, we are pleased to share that in addition to meeting all primary and customer objectives of the flight, we reached high supersonic speeds approaching Mach 5 and collected a great amount of data at an incredible value to our customers,” Krevor said today in a news release.

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Cosmic Tech

XPRIZE contest offers $5 million for quantum applications

Cryostat at IBM quantum computing exhibit
Components for IBM’s quantum computer are on display at a conference in Switzerland. (Credit: Alan Boyle)

Twenty years after staging its first competition for technological innovations, XPRIZE is offering $5 million to expand one of today’s hottest tech frontiers: quantum computing.

The XPRIZE Quantum Applications competition is aimed at stimulating the development of quantum algorithms that can outdo classical computers when it comes to solving real-world challenges.

It’s a field that’s facing its own set of challenges — for example, the hardware systems that would make use of such algorithms are still under development. And that’s not the only uncertainty factor: Unlike the first XPRIZE, which set up clear guidelines for awarding a $10 million prize for private-sector spaceflight, the goals for the quantum competition have the trademark fuzziness of quantum mechanics.

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Computer scientist goes from stunt flying to a startup

Cecilia Aragon
Computer scientist Cecilia Aragon tells her life story at the Women’s Leadership Conference. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

BELLEVUE, Wash. — Three decades ago, Cecilia Aragon made aviation history as the first Latina to earn a place on the U.S. Unlimited Aerobatic Team.

She went on to write a book about it, titled “Flying Free.”

Today, she’s still flying free, as a professor and data scientist in the University of Washington — and as the co-founder of a Seattle startup that aims to commercialize her research.

Aragon recounted her personal journey today during a talk at the Women’s Leadership Conference, presented by the Bellevue Chamber. The conference brought nearly 400 attendees to Bellevue’s Meydenbauer Center to hear about topics ranging from financial literacy to sports management.

Aragon’s aerobatic days began in 1985, when she accepted an invitation from a co-worker to take a ride in his flying club’s Piper Cherokee airplane. “The first thing I thought was, ‘I’m the person who’s scared of climbing a stepladder. I’m scared of going in an elevator,’” she recalled.

But then she thought of her Chilean-born father. “I heard my father’s voice, saying, ‘What is stopping you from doing whatever you want?” she said. She swallowed her fears, climbed into the plane, and was instantly hooked.

“It’s so gorgeous to fly out into the water and see the sun glinting up on the water, like a million gold coins,” she said. “And when we got down to the ground, I said, ‘I want to take flying lessons. I want to be the pilot of my own life.’”

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First Mode’s clean-tech factory uses smart tech as well

Ribbon-cutting ceremony at First Mode factory
First Mode CEO Julian Soles wields a giant scissors at a factory ribbon-cutting ceremony with Washington Gov. Jay Inslee to the right and Albert Gore, executive director of the Zero Emission Transportation Association, to the left. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

There’s not much that’s bolted down the floor of the 40,000-square-foot factory in Seattle’s SoDo district where First Mode plans to build powertrain conversion kits for mining trucks — and that’s by design.

“The factory itself represents the latest in smart manufacturing,” First Mode CEO Julian Soles said during today’s ribbon-cutting ceremony, with Washington Gov. Jay Inslee in attendance. “It’s ‘software-defined’ rather than a hard-point-constrained facility. Nearly every components shelf and assembly sequence is digitized for maximum speed and data management.”

If the production requirements change, the floor plan can change accordingly. First Mode is also taking advantage of digital tools for tracking the supply chain.

“Every workstation, every inventory location, every product that moves through the facility is equipped with a bar code and has a digital twin,” Philipp Nonnast, senior global supply manager for First Mode, explained during a factory tour.

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IonQ opens the doors to its quantum computer factory

Facade of IonQ's quantum computer factory in Bothell, Wash.
IonQ says its 100,000-square-foot Bothell factory is the first dedicated quantum computer manufacturing facility in the U.S. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

BOTHELL, Wash. — IonQ’s quantum computer factory is still ramping up to full operation, but the company is already expanding its footprint by tens of thousands of square feet.

A year ago, when IonQ revealed its plans to create a new kind of research and manufacturing facility in the Seattle area, the idea was to use roughly 65,000 square feet of space on two floors of a three-story building in Bothell that once housed offices for AT&T Wireless.

“We’re happy to announce today we’ve taken the third floor, so we have the entire building now,” IonQ CEO Peter Chapman said during a ribbon-cutting ceremony. “So, a 50% increase in our footprint in one year. … Now we’re up to about 100,000 square feet in the building.”

IonQ considers its Bothell facility to be the first dedicated quantum computer manufacturing facility in the United States. The building will house the company’s research and development team — and also serve as IonQ’s second quantum data center, following in the footsteps of its Maryland HQ.

Chapman said it cost about $20 million to upgrade the building’s infrastructure for IonQ’s purposes.

“We now have, in the Seattle area, about 80 people at IonQ,” he said. “A year ago, we had something less than that — a handful. So, we’re growing quickly in the Seattle area. And I expect that in this next year, we will invest probably somewhere close to $80 million in the Seattle area, which will go to our promise of investing a billion dollars over the next 10 years.”

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