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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.
Washington state funding will support the expansion of IonQ's quantum computer factory in Bothell, Wash. (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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Cosmic Tech

GoAERO Prize offers $2M for emergency vehicles that fly

Engineer working on rotorcraft
A scene from the GoAERO Prize introductory video shows an engineer working on a rotorcraft. (GoAERO via YouTube)

A newly announced program called GoAERO is offering more than $2 million in prizes for the development of single-person flying vehicles that are customized for emergency responders — four years after a similar competition ended without awarding its top prize.

The GoAERO Prize program is led by Gwen Lighter, the same woman who was in charge of the earlier GoFly Prize. And as was the case for the GoFly Prize, Boeing is one of the sponsors. Other supporters include NASA, RTX ( the umbrella company for Raytheon, Pratt & Whitney and Collins Aerospace), Iridium and Xwing.

Back in 2017, the GoFly Prize offered $2 million to support the development of personal aerial vehicles — and three years later, the organizers held a fly-off in California to determine the winners.

None of the teams won the $1 million top prize, but a $100,000 prize was awarded to Japan’s teTra Aviation for building a rotor-equipped vehicle that looked like a cross between a motorcycle and an ultralight airplane. At last report, teTra was still developing a commercial version of its vertical-takeoff-and-landing vehicle, or VTOL.

The GoAERO Prize tightens the focus of the competition to concentrate on VTOL aircraft that are optimized for emergency-response applications — for example, to handle search and rescue, medical emergencies, wildfires, natural disasters or humanitarian crises.

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Zeno Power strikes a deal to recycle radioactive material

Aerial view of Oak Ridge National Laboratory
An aerial view shows the main campus of Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. (ORNL Photo)

Zeno Power says it has gained access to radioactive material destined for its first full-scale radioisotope power systems under the terms of a partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy.

The transfer of the material from Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee benefits Zeno as well as the Department of Energy: Zeno — which has offices in Seattle and Washington, D.C. — gets the strontium-90 fuel that it needs for its next-generation RPS. At the same time, the DOE gets an opportunity to put a decades-old RPS to good use instead of putting it through a costly disposal process.

“This transfer highlights another unique approach our team has taken to accelerate environmental cleanup at Oak Ridge,” Jay Mullis, manager of DOE’s Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management, said today in a news release. “This is a win-win scenario that’s removing a significant source of radioactivity at a savings to taxpayers, while also supporting nuclear innovation.”

Radioisotope power systems, also known as radioisotope thermoelectric generators or RTGs, have been used for decades to provide off-grid power for space missions and other applications. Such devices convert the heat generated by radioactive decay into electricity. Plutonium-238 is often used for space applications, but Zeno is working on a system that uses strontium-90 as an alternative heat source.

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Zeno and Westinghouse team up on nuclear batteries

Illustration: Cutaway view of Zeno Power's radioisotope power system
An artist’s conception shows a cutaway view of Zeno’s radioisotope power system. (Zeno Power Illustration)

Zeno Power says it has selected Westinghouse Electric Co. to process the radioisotopes for its heat sources — creating a partnership that adds a key puzzle piece to its plan for a new type of radioisotope power system, or RPS.

“Working with Westinghouse, we will build the nuclear hardware for our RPSs to provide reliable power in the most critical domains of the 21st century — from the depths of the oceans to the surface of the moon,” Zeno co-founder and CEO Tyler Bernstein said today in a news release.

Radioisotope power systems that convert heat into electricity for off-grid power have been used for decades — for example, for space missions ranging from the Apollo moonshots to the Curiosity rover mission to Mars and the New Horizons mission to Pluto. Those systems have typically used plutonium-238, but Zeno is working on systems that make use of other radioisotopes such as strontium-90.

Strontium-90, which is created as a byproduct in nuclear fission reactors, can be an abundant fuel for power-generating systems. Existing strontium-based power systems tend to be bulky, however. Zeno’s design could generate more power with less bulk, opening the way for a wider range of applications.

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First Mode downsizes and revises its clean tech plans

First Mode hybrid diesel-electric truck during test drive
First Mode’s hybrid diesel-electric truck takes on its first tests in Centralia, Wash. (First Mode via LinkedIn)

First Mode says it’s cutting back on its workforce as it adjusts to the market demand for heavy trucks that rely less on fossil fuels.

The workforce in the U.S., which currently amounts to about 240 people, is being immediately reduced by about 20%, First Mode CEO Julian Soles said in an email sent to employees today. Most of those employees are in Washington state — for example, at First Mode’s Seattle HQ and at its proving grounds in Centralia, Wash.

About 125 additional employees work in non-U.S. offices. Soles said operations in Australia, Britain and South Africa “may also possibly experience redundancies,” while operations in Chile are “not currently impacted.”

Despite the cutbacks, First Mode is continuing with plans to retrofit mining trucks to reduce their carbon footprint and address the climate challenge. “This is the year that we deliver commercial products to our customer sites. It is also when we finalise our transformation from an engineering services firm to a global decarbonisation product company,” Soles wrote, using British spellings.

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