Seattle startup bets rapid iteration is key to clean sheet aircraft design

Deep Dive

by Yves Le Marquand

5 September 2024

Outbound Aerospace, a Seattle-based startup, is leveraging advances in 3D printing technology to accelerate development of its aircraft programme.

Partly emerged from stealth mode and with half an eye on eventually disrupting the duopoly that has dominated commercial aviation for decades, Outbound’s founders want to build a blended-wing body (BWB) “passenger-centric” airliner. In doing so, the firm joins a growing cohort of BWB aircraft programmes including JetZero, Bombardier and Airbus.

The aircraft Outbound co-founders Jake Armenta (pictured below left) and Ian Lee (pictured below right) envision, dubbed Olympic, will compete with Boeing and Airbus wide-body aircraft. But to reach that 5,500nm commercial aviation goal, the team is starting smaller – with a business jet – and they’ve raised just over $500,000 so far.

Success, according to Armenta and Lee, will be judged by how well they can execute their rapid iteration plan.

The framework they’ve devised sees the pair, who met as engineering students at Missouri University of Science and Technology, double aircraft size every two years or so until an anticipated entry into service of a commercial BWB airliner in the 2030s. Starting smaller should make the barrier to entry more manageable on both the capital and regulatory demands, the founders tell us.

Advances in 3D printing – new polymers and other materials, faster print speeds, better software and hardware etc. – are playing a leading role in Outbound’s rapid iteration blueprint. The startup is currently working through the patent process for its production methods.

Last week, the Outbound team completed a case study focused on wing spar construction for its first 1:8 scale prototype. Traditional tooling involving an aluminium frame in which the carbon fibre part is laid costs about $13,000 to build and takes about 11 days to produce a part.

“But if we 3D print the tooling it takes us about 21 hours to print it and costs us about $28 for materials,” Armenta tells us. “The important point is not specifically the time or money saved, it is the iteration. We can build 12 iterations of the wing spar in about the same time as it would take us to build one traditionally.

“That changes the way we evaluate our processes. We build one, see how it works. Two days later, we can build a second with a different mould. The ability to test and evaluate like that is key to successful programme development in aerospace.”

Armenta, a former Boeing engineer who worked on projects including the Starliner space taxi and 777X jetliner, was inspired to adopt this pattern of rapid iteration after working at American rocket maker Relativity Space where he took rockets “from the mousepad to the launchpad”.

“Everyday I would see something else, whether it is the 3D printing tooling, the designing of parts or data infrastructure-based testing, all of it applied strongly to aviation. And did so in a way that legacy players just cannot implement because they are too stratified and spread out within the company.

“If you can build a company where these things are integrated from the start this helps move maybe as much as 10 times faster than a lot of other people.”

Lee and Armenta plan to emerge fully from stealth mode within the next two months. “Right now we are building up our capability, building up evidence for this fall to launch and raise for a larger round to begin our business jet programme,” Lee tells us. That aircraft will be similar to a Gulfstream G700 in size and will certify under Part 23. In developing and certifying that aircraft, Armenta expects to develop software and systems such as the flight computer which can be used on future iterations, meaning one less job.

Another cost saving initiative employed by the Outbound founders will be remote piloted testing. “One of the reasons the rocket industry moves so fast is there is never anyone in the prototype rocket,” says Armenta. “If it blows up, it is bad, but you can still learn from that. If you look at the testing specifics there are so many areas you can cut down costs especially if you don’t have a pilot in the cockpit. That is something we are beginning with our 1/8 scale.”

The startup is VC funded so far, having received pre-seed funding from Antler USA, and Lee expects that to continue through its seed round. He also revealed Outbound has begun integrating with government. Whilst the aim is to build for the commercial market, aircraft are dual use by nature, he says.

Armenta adds: “What we’ve seen is deep tech capital markets are very willing to invest in things like space stations, rockets and orbit launch vehicles. In the past five years, VC has begun to realise big expensive programmes can and do offer huge returns. I think that is why we see an explosion in things like satellite and heavy robotics startups. We fit right into the same category and frankly we are cheaper than an AI startup, because we don’t need four million GPUs.”

The team will be in Dallas, Texas for the remainder of the summer building out its iteration capability. By summer next, who knows? They might have a prototype business jet ready to test fly.

Quick take – Outbound Aerospace