The Greatest Risk Hypersonic Missiles Pose with Iain Boyd, Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder

(Intro Narrator at 00:00:03) Hello, my friends. Today, we're talking to Ian, professor of aerospace engineering sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder, and we discuss the Sputnik moment of hypersonics, how hypersonics play a role in defense initiatives around the world, and NASA's role in supporting the private space industry. All of this right here, right now, on the Modern CTO podcast.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:34) This is the Modern CTO podcast. Basically, my team showed me the topic, and I was like, this is awesome. I'm a big nerd. Right? So I was hoping you could share with me, like, what is this technology?

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:00:54) Well, hypersonics. Yeah, it means that it's a vehicle that's flying and is flying very, very fast. Hypersonic means the speed is much greater than the speed of sound, which is a little bit of an abstract idea. So, for example, the slowest hypersonic vehicle flies at something like 3,500 miles per hour. So that's, like, you know, 50 times faster than you should be driving down the freeway. Right?

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:01:23) It's like a mile a second. If you can imagine an airplane flying a mile a second, that's pretty awesome. Right? So that's what hypersonics is: really, really fast flying vehicles. They're used for a lot of different things.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:01:37) So some of it is like space exploration. Some of it is national security, sort of defense things. We don't have it today, but in the future might be passenger flight, you know, getting from, I don't know, LA to Japan in a couple of hours instead of whatever it takes right now. So it's a really cool and exciting technology.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:58) To go a mile, to go that fast. Right? Can you do that at, like, 14,000 feet? Do you have to be at a specific altitude?

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:02:08) Yeah. So, you know, flight, air flight, is almost always about not having too much what we call drag force, the force that slows you down. And so, yeah, you tend to fly pretty high, higher than you and I would fly normally, to keep that, to keep the drag force down so that it's economic, so that you wouldn't have to burn a huge amount of fuel to keep yourself going. So tends to be high up in the atmosphere. You know, if you're coming back from space, so like when people come back from the International Space Station, that's an example of a hypersonic situation.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:02:44) So you're in space. Right? That's really high. But even if you wanted to have a passenger aircraft, you'll be flying much higher in the atmosphere than we do today. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:54) I actually got to talk, I think like three weeks ago, with one of the astronauts that came back from Elon Musk, the SpaceX first ISS mission. And, boy, was that cool, man. That guy was just, like, next level type of person. So I was taking notes. It's like, how do I be like this guy?

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:03:13) Yeah. I mean, that's gotta be an exceptional experience. Right? And it's exceptional people that, in general, you know, end up doing that kind of stuff.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:22) So does The United States have this hypersonic technology?

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:03:27) Well, one of the sort of confusing things about hypersonics is it is several different things. And so, you know, coming back from orbit, like you were talking there with the astronaut, that's one kind of hypersonics for space exploration. So, yes, we have that. Right? You were just talking to someone who's experienced hypersonic flight in that environment.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:03:48) For sort of the defense applications, that's kind of, you know, so that means hypersonic missiles. It means, you know, weapons that are flying very fast. I would say there's almost like an arms race going on right now between maybe China and Russia and The US in that space. So US is working hard to develop these kinds of things. And I would say that, like, China and Russia already have hypersonic weapons in their arsenal.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:04:15) So it's an area of, you know, active research and development around the world.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:20) If you go up to, like, low Earth orbit, how quickly does the world spin? If you're in the International Space Station and the Earth, how many minutes for a full rotation?

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:04:30) I think it's about an hour and a half, something like that. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:33) So they can get, like, a hypersonic missile up there and basically put it down wherever they want it.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:04:37) Yeah. That's right. So last year, I think in the fall, or actually, no, earlier this year, there was a report that China had launched a missile that had gone all the way around the world. And basically, the message was they could reach out and touch anywhere with that system.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:04:53) So that was almost like a Sputnik moment. I don't think it's quite the same, but it certainly got the attention of a lot of people whose job it is to protect our country.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:03) Right. Yeah. I think the difference between that and the Sputnik is, well, I mean, they deny the claim. Right? Doesn't China deny it, that they didn't do it?

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:05:10) Yeah. Right. But I think there's enough, you know, there's no smoke without fire. Right? So I think there was enough reports that probably something happened.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:20) Do you ever get into the defense side of things?

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:05:23) I do. I do. So I've had a lot of interaction with the Air Force and other parts, Space Force these days. And, you know, I work in a university and do research most of the time. But, you know, what we research also has an impact in the end on these kinds of things.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:05:37) And, actually, I mean, there's a lot of common overlap between the space exploration hypersonics and national security hypersonics. In the end, you're flying very fast. You need special kind of materials to build the vehicles out of. And so from a science point of view, it's the same science. Right?

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:05:57) Or similar science. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:59) It's interesting to watch these fields develop. Like, when the private space companies started happening, there's a really small pool of people that you could even potentially hire for that. But then as more private space companies get older and then there's more people involved and there's new expertise, and then, you know, an early member of SpaceX goes and founds their company, and it just makes more people. Are we in, like, super early stages of hypersonic?

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:06:24) Yeah. I would say so. I mean, I think that, you know, when in my job I talk to people in the government and industry, big companies all the time. And they're interested in university research, but they're probably, you know, more interested in the people, right, in the human product of doing research in a university environment. There is a shortage of people. You know, the space economy is growing, right, like crazy.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:06:49) And just in general, of course, The US has kind of a shortage of STEM, you know, educated workforce. And this is, you know, maybe one of the newest examples. Yeah. So, I mean, for me, I'm an aerospace engineering sort of professor. I mean, my students all get great jobs right away.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:07:07) So that's good. We just need more of them.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:11) So do you do research, like, within the context of the university, or is that something separate you do? How does your job work?

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:07:19) Oh, yeah. So it's mostly done through the university. So, you know, I write proposals to government agencies and industry with, you know, new ideas of stuff to research, and some of them get funded. And so then that funding is used to support, usually, graduate students who do the research. And, you know, it's really a powerful way to do this kind of business because we're educating people while they're also, you know, pushing forward the frontiers of science and engineering through their research.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:07:52) And so it's kind of a win-win. It's a good paradigm, I think.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:56) What's the propulsion system of a hypersonic, what do you call it? Do you call it a hypersonic device? How do you refer to it with a sense of ambiguity?

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:08:03) Vehicle. Yeah. A vehicle. Vehicle. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:05) What's the propulsion system or, like, the fuel for a hypersonic vehicle?

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:08:10) Yeah. Again, it, you know, partly depends on the application. So for the military stuff, the way, what happens is you launch a vehicle on a big old rocket. And then the vehicle would separate from the rocket and then, you know, sort of fly in the atmosphere.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:08:25) And when it's flying in the atmosphere, it may or may not have a propulsion system. So if it does, it's a special thing called a scramjet, which is a supersonic combustion ramjet, but it's basically very interesting technology too. So it's an engine in which you're bringing in air, just like a jet engine you see on an airplane, and you're mixing in some propellant, some fuel, and burning it. But you're doing all of that at incredibly high speeds, not the 3,500 miles per hour, but maybe a thousand miles per hour. So you're having to get all this burning and combustion done at very high speed.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:09:04) So some hypersonic vehicles have these scramjets that allow them to kind of cruise through the atmosphere. And then other systems, you just launch them on a big rocket, and they basically glide down to wherever they're going.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:17) So they often don't have propulsion systems on them. You have this other rocket. What's the fuel of the rocket that they're attached to?

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:09:25) Yeah. The fuel is usually some kind of solid propellant is what it's called. And, I mean, there's different forms of that, but that's the technology that's been around forever. I mean, almost all the rockets that are launched use solid propellants. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:40) So they use that tried and true system to get it up to speed and get it up to where it needs to be. And then often, when they don't have, like, a scramjet, they're just, you know, using the airflow to guide the missile?

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:09:52) Exactly. That's right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:53) Or the vehicle. Sorry. The vehicle.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:09:54) Yeah. No. That's okay. Yeah. The vehicle's good. Yeah.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:09:56) You know, so another, I mean, I hadn't mentioned this before, you know, another type of hypersonic vehicle, but it is a weapon, are these things called intercontinental ballistic missiles. Now those things have been around. Right? The Cold War ICBMs. Back to the fifties. ICBMs. Right?

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:10:14) So ICBMs are hypersonic too. They get launched on an even bigger rocket, and they go up outside of the atmosphere into space and then come back down again. Okay? So now these new hypersonic vehicles, one of the things that's different about them is they don't go all the way out into space. They fly in the atmosphere, and then they're what we call maneuverable.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:10:34) They can move around and go a lot of different places. And this makes them very difficult to defend against. You know, an ICBM, it kind of follows Newton's laws of motion, that is, you know, if you pick it up, it's gonna follow just like a cannonball. Right? It's gonna follow a very predictable path.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:10:54) These new systems don't follow any kind of predictable path because they can maneuver all over the place. And so that means you have to track them all the way through their flight. You know, if you're trying to defend against one, you have to track it all the way, and it's flying in a region of the atmosphere that we're not used to looking in. It's not in space. It's not where aircraft fly.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:11:16) It's somewhere in between. And that turns out to be a gap that we're not used to, you know, kind of monitoring.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:23) So, yeah, let's talk about that. You would have to have a certain amount of satellites in orbit positioned correctly because you couldn't wait for an hour and a half rotation. Right? You would have to be able to see the complete canvas all the time. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:37) And then monitor things as they move across. Do we have that technology today?

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:11:41) Well, we may have the technology, but we don't have, you know, the system. Right? So this is what people in The US are talking about for defending against hypersonic weapons of other countries is some kind of space-based surveillance network. Starlink. Like I said, well, right.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:12:00) Yeah. Let's ask Elon to, you know, to help us out here. So we have the techno, I mean, I think we have the technology in terms of sensors and linking it all up into a system. But to actually put all that stuff up in space, you know, it's gonna cost a lot of money. It's gonna take a few years for sure.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:12:16) You know, it's an interesting question. If someone you're worried about, another country, has a weapon that's difficult to defend against and is gonna be incredibly expensive to defend against, I mean, you do have to ask the question, should, you know, should I go ahead and defend against it or find other ways to get around it? And that's, you know, I'm sure people in the Pentagon and so on are having those conversations.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:41) We should just take from, like, the cosmetics budget.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:12:46) Yeah. Right. Wherever, you know, wherever we can get it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:49) So how does The United States currently defend against this threat?

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:12:53) Well, we don't really have, you know, an effective defense against it. There's a part of the Department of Defense called the Missile Defense Agency, MDA. That's their mission. Their mission is to defend against all, you know, defend the country against all types of missiles. And they have very effective means for slower weapons.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:13:14) And so the first line of defense would be, you know, if somebody fired one today, the first line of defense would be to use what we have, right? Obviously. And it's not very clear how effective that would be.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:13:27) You know, it's been reported that Russia has fired some hypersonic weapons in the Ukraine conflict, and so there's maybe opportunities to learn what's involved by, you know, we're obviously monitoring all of that activity pretty carefully, I would expect. That's kind of a hand-waving reply to your question there. I mean, people are very concerned that we do not have an effective defense against these systems today.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:55) I'm actually incredibly surprised that we don't have 24/7 real-time monitoring of every square inch of the surface of the Earth.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:14:04) Yeah, we, you know, we monitor a lot of things. But in the end, I mean, there's the surface of the Earth, but then there's all the layers of the atmosphere as well, right? But, you know, if you're in space, I mean, an individual missile might be, oh, I don't know, 10 feet long, 15 feet long.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:14:23) It's not tremendously big. And like I said, it's not just that you pick it up once. You have to be continuously tracking it. And, you know, even if we had some systems that could track some missiles, if there was an all-out war, non-nuclear, with a peer nation, you know, hypersonic weapons would be one element of just a big mixture of all different kinds of things that they would be throwing at us and we'd be throwing at them. I mean, you know, if it hopefully never gets to that, obviously.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:14:58) But if it does, it's gonna be really messy.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:01) I was listening to Ray Dalio this morning, and I follow this guy for the past three or four years. And he's always been fairly relaxed when he talks about the world cycles and the different attributes that drive behavior and debt cycles and such. And I just heard an interview this morning of him from a couple days ago, and he's now just like, "Yeah, this is happening." And he explains it very clearly and provides historical evidence. This is not the first time this type of thing has happened. And it's less about if it'll happen, but how it will play out, right? And I'm curious because, you know, I've been in technology my whole life. And all you need to do is take out a power station or, you know, you don't have to do a whole lot to cause chaos.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:50) Right? Especially in the cities where there's a lot of people and every resource is shipped in and brought in. So for me, I mean, can you just imagine what would happen if we didn't have the internet for 72 hours?

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:16:02) Yeah. No, I mean, absolutely. And it's the same kind of thing with space-based assets. Like, if we didn't have GPS, right, GPS went down.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:11) Right? That's another good one. Yeah. I don't want to tempt fate, but, you know, in some ways, it's kind of surprising there hasn't been an event of some kind.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:16:20) Yeah. Well, if you look historically on the time period of the time between large wars, we're about due for one.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:20) Yeah. Right. I don't want to sound dark or anything, but that's just historical, right? So, well, you know, I think you and I stay positive. And discourse, conversations, I think that that's the key to understanding other people and, ultimately, the key to cooperation.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:16:45) Yeah. I, you know, technology is also an opportunity for collaboration. I mean, obviously, relations with Russia are strained right now and have never been particularly good. But the International Space Station is a really great example of where, you know, a lot of the international community did come together—

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:03) Yeah.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:17:03) For a common purpose, right, for science and research. And so I think that, yeah, I agree with you 100% that finding different ways to engage with folks around the world or even in your own country that you don't necessarily agree with, right? Understanding, you know, common areas where you can collaborate and work together is super important.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:25) It's almost kind of beautiful how the increase of technology, it empowers us to kill each other faster and more efficiently. At the same time, though, it brings us together. So it's like, is it a weapon, or does it save your life? Like, it's really kind of interesting because now, you know, we can be talking and you can be in Europe.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:17:44) Yeah. And everything's cool. Light's just bouncing around the world, and we're just having a conversation.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:44) And it enables businesses like mine. I do 90% of my interviews like this, and I think that that's, uh, I'm really grateful for technology. And to talk more, I'm curious. Do you know about different technologies that NASA has given the private sector?

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:18:06) Well, that's a good question. You know, I mean, I think there's kind of an analogy of how the space industry is evolving right now to the way the aviation industry evolved back in the '40s and '50s. Way back then, NASA was not doing any space work at all. It was only, you know, researching airplanes and airfoils and engines. And, you know, part of NASA's role, a very important part of NASA's role, is to support U.S. industry, is to do the high-risk, you know, break the frontiers of research and technology, and then give what they learn to U.S. industry, right?

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:18:49) It's supposed to build it up. And so that was very, very effective. It made Boeing, you know, aircraft company, the leading producer in the world of airplanes for a long time. And so that's what's been happening more recently in space. I know, for example, NASA has helped companies with special materials needed to protect, again, in the hypersonic regime, protect capsules when they come back from space, like the Dragon for SpaceX and so on. And so companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin and so on are benefiting, have benefited from, you know, all the expertise that NASA has built up over the years.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:19:30) And sometimes people, you know, kind of see that as some kind of competition between NASA and the U.S. companies, but it's absolutely not. It's truly a partnership. And I think what we'll see NASA evolve into is, again, finding those areas that are too risky, too expensive today for companies to take on and to make progress with them and develop and mature whatever the technologies are and then pass them on to commercial companies to make profit and make products and so on. So I think it's a really great example of what NASA was set up to do is what we're seeing play out.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:12) How are the Space Force and NASA different?

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:20:17) Well, so I mean, NASA's main missions, like I just said, you know, some of it is technology development. Some of it is space science, going to Mars and exploring the solar system and so on, right? So they're developing capabilities for industry, and they're doing science and research. Space Force, you know, so it's one of the questions I often get asked is what's the difference between Space Force and Space Command?

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:47) Oh.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:20:47) That's a trickier question to answer. But what Space Force is supposed to do, of course, is protect American assets in space, right? And so whether that might be their own satellites, Space Force operates satellites. It might be NASA science satellites. It might be commercial satellites like Starlink and so on. So that's their job. You know, so it's very much just like the other armed forces, right?

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:21:16) The Navy protects American interests and assets on the seas, right? Space Force does it, yeah. Right?

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:21:25) I mean, if you put it that way, it's relatively simple to understand. I mean, how they do it, of course, is different from the Navy, but that's their basic mission.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:34) Yeah. I don't know if it's because I watch movies, obviously, right? And then I get to talk to smart people, and sometimes they mix together. Do we have missiles in space that can shoot down, or is there something like we're not allowed to have missiles in space? How does that go?

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:21:48) Right. So there's something called the Outer Space Treaty. It sounds kind of like sci-fi, but the Outer Space Treaty basically says that space should only be used for peaceful purposes and basically bans what we would call the weaponization of space, having weapons in space. And so there's more than 100 countries have signed up to that treaty. It was formulated in the late '60s.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:22:15) There was a lot of talk about that's way out of date, and everything's changed since then, and we need to, you know, revisit it. It's true that it needs to be revisited, but I think it's very complicated. So the official policy of the U.S. government is not to put weapons in space because of the Outer Space Treaty. You know, there's been reports again of several countries destroying satellites, usually their own satellites, but not from space, rather, you know, from launching something from the surface of the Earth and shooting down one of their own satellites, which on the one hand is a great demonstration of what they can do. But, of course, it creates a tremendous amount of space debris, orbital debris and messes everything up.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:22:57) So I hope there won't be too many more of those tests. But, you know, I think people are becoming concerned about the weaponization, the militarization of space. You know, the usual peer nations are all capable of putting stuff up there.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:23:17) And, you know, a spacecraft is a very, very flimsy thing. It doesn't have armor on it. I mean, you could smash a satellite to pieces with a hammer. You know? Right?

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:23:29) They're not hardened, and so they are very vulnerable. So, again, lots of conversations, I'm sure, going on about how to protect U.S. assets in space. It's hard to do.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:44) And I respect that that's the policy, but I don't think there's anything anyone could tell me that, like, even if the highest-ranking general was in a private room with me, I wouldn't believe him if he told me that countries who can access space easily don't have weapons there. Like, it just, to me, I just know it's a human nature thing, and I would argue that all day. But I obviously want peace and whatnot, and we do this thing as humans, right? But—

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:24:13) Well, and it's, you know, it's a continuation of the Cold War, right, where basically it's just, you know, one side has something, the other side counteracts it, maybe goes above it, and then it's a never-ending, you know, escalation. And so one of the things I always think looking back on the Cold War is it's amazing how well actually it worked. I mean, a lot of money was spent.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:35) Yeah.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:24:35) But it did work. There was enough communication between the two sides that we got close a couple of times, but nothing bad actually did happen. And I think part of the concern today is that the U.S. doesn't have those same kinds of, you know, like the hotline that used to be between Washington and Moscow. You know, the president could call the hotline at any time to talk to the premier of the Soviet Union.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:03) Text.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:25:07) Well, yeah. Now they just troll each other, right? Just like everybody else. Yeah.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:25:12) It's not quite the same, right? No. And, again, I think the Ukraine situation kind of shows, right, that we're in an unstable point right now. So going back to your point, I think the more communication and discussion and finding of common points is super important.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:31) Yeah. No text-based communication because the amount text gets interpreted so incorrectly. You know, you see that a lot with companies that work online. Like, we are a remote company, so we are really good about telling everybody, "Hey, you know, when you read text, you're applying often your own mood to it."

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:49) Right? Because you're in that context. So we're very aware at the company and talk about it a lot about text communication. And if there's ever anyone feeling rude or incorrect or something, just pick up the phone and call them or do a video call or something. So, yeah, definitely don't want text communication between world leaders.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:26:05) Well, and even more so when it's not your native language, right? When you're putting text into—I mean, again, that's an extra layer of opportunity for misunderstanding, right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:17) Google Translate causes World War III.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:26:20) Right. We're laughing. I just hope that's—I know. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:25) I think, though, my thoughts against a large global war would be that life is pretty good, you know, as far as the advancements we have and the creature comforts that we have as—

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:26:45) Yin and yang of globalization, right? That in the end, almost everybody has too much to lose.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:51) Absolutely. So what else am I not—what am I not asking about hypersonic technology that I should be asking?

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:26:59) Well, I think it's, you know, it's a very exciting area for those of us who work on the research because sometimes you have to go all the way down to looking at what individual molecules and atoms are doing. So it's really a lot of basic physics and chemistry that feed into the kind of engineering and design of vehicles. So it's just a very rich field in terms of, like I said, research depth and technical challenges. I think another exciting aspect of it is what we've talked about, which is the kind of interplay between space exploration and national defense. And so some of my projects, you know, are funded by NASA, and we're thinking about flying hypersonic vehicles to, you know, one of the moons of Saturn.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:27:45) And some of my projects are funded by the Department of Defense when we're thinking about how does radio blackout occur on hypersonic vehicles, and how can we prevent it? So it's a really broad and deep kind of technology area. I'm gonna say it's a lot of fun to work on. It's just intellectually challenging and stimulating. It's a lot of very cool stuff.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:12) When they're at hypersonic speeds, is it radio blackout? Is that the default? Can it not communicate?

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:28:18) So it does depend. If you're coming back from the space station, for example, you would definitely have a period of radio blackout there. So what happens in that case is that the air that's around the vehicle gets heated up to very high temperatures. So that's kind of the unique part of hypersonics is that the air flowing around a regular airplane just more or less stays at regular temperatures. But in hypersonics, it could get to be many thousands of degrees.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:28:49) So it's the same temperature as the surface of the sun, which is crazy, right? So you have, and sometimes in the movies and things, you just kind of see all this fire around, right?

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:28:59) So that's real. And so what happens when air gets heated up to these super high temperatures is the molecules break apart, the atoms break apart, and you get this situation called a plasma, which is just like air, but it's got electrons in it. It's got charged particles in it. And so it's the electrons in the end that cause radio blackout. So you're coming back from the space station. You know there's gonna be 30 seconds of radio blackout. I don't know what it is, but something like that. 30 seconds of radio blackout. Everybody's cool about it. It's expected.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:29:32) It happens, and then you come out the other side, and everything's fine. Again, going back to the national security aspect, well, if you have a missile, right, and it's flying hypersonic speed and you cannot communicate with it, that's an untenable position. Because let's say you decide to recall a vehicle or self-destruct it, right? It turns out these people aren't our enemies and you've got to be able to communicate with it, and it's all done with radio waves, right? So it's very important to understand when that happens, and if it does happen, how to get around it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:08) So you work on defense. You work on this hypersonic technology. What else do you do?

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:30:13) So I'm a professor here at University of Colorado and work with a bunch of grad students on hypersonics and also on space propulsion systems. So that's another interesting area where I mentioned plasma just a little while ago. So plasma-based engines are being used, developed for more efficient space exploration and transportation. And at university, I guess I have two roles. I have all that research part, and then I'm the director of a center looking at different aspects of national security technology development. So that's across a broad range of things.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:51) And I definitely want to ask you a series of questions about leadership and that, but you said something that intrigued me. What is plasma? I know what it is in a movie sense or whatnot, but what is plasma actually?

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:31:03) Well, plasma is like a gas, right? And so, I don't know. If you think of at least in my high school chemistry, you would see like bromine gas or something, right? So think of a gas. And usually, gases are just made up of molecules and atoms. And then what a plasma is, is that there are electrons and ions in there. So if you have an atom, if you have a hydrogen atom, it has one electron going around it.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:31:32) So if you somehow were able to pull that electron off of the atom, completely detach it, then what would be left is the ion, and you've taken away an electron. And so a plasma is a gas that has these ions and electrons in it. So that's what it is. It's very interesting because you can manipulate plasmas using electric fields. You can kind of push them around. You can do things to plasmas that you can't do to gases because of the charges. And so plasma comes into a lot of different technologies because as humans and engineers, we can manipulate it more easily than just a regular gas.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:11) What's the core elements that we need to manufacture it?

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:32:15) Well, there are a variety of different ways, but heat will do it. If you just heat the gas up to high enough temperatures, like the thousands of degrees I was talking about for hypersonics, then the atoms and the ions, the atoms and the molecules just get so energized that an electron can pop off one of the molecules and it becomes an ion, then you have a plasma. So that's the main way in the technologies that I work in.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:41) So the base material that you're heating up is what?

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:32:44) Well, a gas of different kinds.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:46) Oh, so you can use the—

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:32:48) So you start with a gas. Yeah, exactly. Directly from a gas. Yeah. So it's interesting for, I was talking about space plasma propulsion there. So most of those systems use xenon gas. Yep.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:33:00) It just turns out that it's relatively easy to remove the electrons from xenon atoms.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:06) Doesn't it start with an X? And that's kind of cool, right?

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:33:09) Starts with an X, right? It couldn't be any cooler than that. It's X-rated technology.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:33:15) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:16) There you go. Oh, that was good. All right. Leadership stuff. Where did you get your leadership skills? You're obviously very experienced, and you're running a department. You're a professor, and you're shaping the next generation of engineers and scientists and whatnot. Where did you acquire your leadership skills?

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:33:31) I think that was mainly through interaction with a part of the Air Force. The Air Force has something called a Scientific Advisory Board. And so it's like a group of, it's a big group of like 50 people. Very, very smart people from industry, other parts of government, and universities. And so I was a member of that body for a few years, and I had the opportunity to lead what they call studies. So one of the main things that board does is study different topics for the Secretary of the Air Force.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:34:03) So I had the opportunity to lead a couple of those studies, and I was the vice chair of the overall board. I learned a lot in that process by talking to retired military people, like retired four-star generals who obviously get a lot of leadership training for their particular brand of leadership. But then there was also industry leaders, and vice presidents and presidents. I mean, it was that kind of level of people. And it was just the mixing for me coming from a university, talking to military leadership, talking to industry leadership just gave me really a lot of mentoring and an opportunity to think about what I think is important in the end for—I mean, leadership is all about getting people to do stuff for you, right?

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:34:44) And there's many different ways to do that in different environments. So I think that's, if I have anything, that's where I got it from.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:52) Immersion. You were just surrounded by it.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:34:55) Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You know, I was learning stuff without even knowing it, but reflecting on it afterwards and thinking, you know, that was interesting how that person took that approach.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:05) If you could go back in time and give yourself a piece of advice at specifically the moment you graduated undergrad, what would it be?

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:35:14) Oh, that's a great question. I mean, I think it would be to interact with people more. Almost any conversation, you can learn something from, right? Almost any person, you can learn something from. And it's about being open to listening to them, and it's about asking the right kinds of questions and taking an interest in them. So I think I didn't appreciate the power of people, right, in the end, kind of one-to-one just like this. And then taking that and then applying it to whatever you're, you know, different things you're trying to do. Yeah. So my undergrad degree was in math.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:35:48) It's a very introverted field. I think, you know, if I'd realized earlier the power of talking to people, that's the advice I would have given.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:58) I 100% back that. I was an introverted software engineer. I mean, I was a quiet leader, and I'd say the one thing that changed my life the most was after I got to like 100, 120 conversations. It's hard to even express, but getting to know someone and having a detailed conversation for an hour with like 100 different people is actually something super rare. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:23) You know, most people will say, yeah, I talk to a lot of people, but I'm not talking about the interaction of somebody like a store clerk. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about detailed conversation about something you both have a shared interest in because then you learn how people work better, and it's fascinating.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:36:40) Well, if you don't do it your way, I think it's got to be pretty hard to do, right? You've got to really, you know, how do you motivate 100 people to come talk to you in depth, right? I'm not saying it cannot be done, right? But it takes a lot of work. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:55) Well, the answer is simple. You have to have something of value to bring them.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:36:58) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:59) Right?

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:36:59) Yep. Absolutely.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:00) So early on, before I published the book, I had these conversations, and then those turned into the podcast, right? But what I found was people that were responding to me were often people that were farther along in their career, and they were interested in sharing their experience and giving back. And so I realized, oh, that's a category. That's an area of humanity that you can tap into in order to get information from people. It's just something humans do. So we focused a lot of our early episodes on, you know, doing that really well, getting people to come on. It's like, I'm no expert. I bring smart people on, and I ask them questions, and then the cycle goes on, right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:36) It's great.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:37:37) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:37) And I get to meet awesome people like you. Dude, you are fantastic.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:37:40) Well, I'm enjoying the conversation with you, obviously, so this is great.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:43) What haven't we covered that you want to get out there to the world?

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:37:46) I mean, I think that sometimes when I talk about hypersonics and it's on the national defense side, it sounds a little bit, you know, doom and gloom. And I think that what I would want to emphasize again is, you know, what we often call the dual use or the multipurpose that, yes, there's a lot of activity right now in hypersonics on the national defense side, and a lot of that is driven by what other countries are doing, right? They, you know, the other person always gets to vote in what you have to do. But that there will be important spinoffs for nonmilitary applications allowing us to do more in-depth space exploration as well as commercializing space.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:38:32) And really, you know, one of the reasons why space has not become commercialized in the sense of building products in space is that it's so expensive and difficult to bring stuff back again, right? I mean, it's great that you've got zero gravity up there and you can build something, but the cost of bringing it back and the difficulty in that has kind of precluded companies really making, sort of closing the cycle, the budget cycle on producing stuff in space. Again, hypersonics, as we make progress with that and bring down the cost of materials and things, will enable things like that. So there's a lot of positive aspects to hypersonics that will benefit all of us.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:14) Harvard's known for law. Berklee College of Music, amazing musicians. What's the college known for space?

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:39:23) Yeah. Well, I would say it's the University of Colorado. I mean, I think—

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:26) That's the answer.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:39:27) Yeah. Yeah. That's the easy answer. Yeah. Yeah.

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:39:30) So the reason for saying that is we get more funding from NASA than any other public university in the country, and almost all of that has to do with space. And in Colorado, the aerospace sector is the second largest in the nation by state. So anyway, we're up there near the top for sure.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:49) Yeah. Well, that's, first of all, a completely valid measure. I can't think of one that'd be more valid, right? That's a really solid one. And secondly, what part of Colorado specifically?

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:39:59) So I'm in Boulder, so it's just a little ways away from Denver and near the mountain. It's beautiful here. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:06) Nice. Well, man, this is great. We made a podcast. How do you feel?

(Ian (Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder) at 00:40:09) I feel awesome. Yeah. It's been a great conversation. Thank you so much for all the great questions.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:14) Thank you so much for listening. And if you found this episode useful, please share it with a friend or colleague who you think would get value from it. And if you have topics that you would like to hear discussed on the podcast, either add me on LinkedIn or send me an email, [email protected]. Every time I get an email or LinkedIn message, it absolutely makes my day and inspires me to keep going.