A Revolution in Speed & Space

Can a supersonic fighter jet replace a rocket’s first stage? Starfighters Space (AMEX:FJET) CEO Tim Franta explains the Star Launch plan and the catalysts ahead.

Ricki:

What if the first stage of a rocket launch wasn’t a rocket at all, but a fighter jet traveling at twice the speed of sound? Hello, I’m Ricky Lee, and this is the Capital Compass. Today, we’re looking at Starfighters Space, a commercial aerospace company operating from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The company operates the world’s only commercial fleet of fight-ready F-104 Starfighters, seven supersonic aircraft capable of sustained speeds above Mach 2. And Starfighters has a pretty ambitious plan for them. Through its Star Launch program, the F-104 is designed to act as a reusable first stage, carrying payloads to around forty-five thousand feet before launching them towards space.

But that’s not the only opportunity. The aircraft are already being used as platforms for aerospace research and high-speed testing with customers and relationships, including Lockheed Martin, GE, Space Florida, and the US Air Force Research Laboratory. Joining me now to explain how it all works and where Starfighters goes from here, is CEO and director, Tim Franta. Tim, welcome to the Capital Compass.

This article is disseminated in partnership with Starfighters Space, Inc. It is intended to inform investors and should not be taken as a recommendation or financial advice. 

Tim:

Glad to be here. The only direction to go is up.

Ricki:

Indeed. So Tim, this is a pretty unique business. Let’s start with the aircraft themselves. How do you take a fleet of F-104 Starfighters and turn them into a commercial platform for space launch, hypersonic testing, and aerospace research?

Tim:

Sure. That is the question, and that is what we do, so basically, the reason there is even a need is because aircraft payloads defense technologies are going higher and faster, and so they need access to high speed, high altitude on a regular basis while this aircraft is older, it still holds all the world records.

It holds high altitude record, the high-altitude speed record, the high altitude assisted record, and the low altitude speed record, and the fastest rate of climb. We can climb faster than any jet in Russia, China, or the United States. And so that makes it very applicable to the first minute of a rocket launch or something that needs that is for hypersonics going at high speed, high altitude. So we can fly both this way and that way.

Ricki:

So let’s dig into Star Launch then. Instead of launching entirely from the ground, your F-104 effectively becomes the reusable first stage, carrying a payload of up to forty-five thousand feet before launch. What advantages does this model offer in terms of cost, flexibility, and launch cadence and what still needs to happen before you can begin commercial launches?

Tim:

So there’s three main benefits. first, the higher and the faster you can go, the smaller your rocket can be. So since we can go Mach 2, that’s pretty fast, the rocket can get smaller.

The other thing from the business point of view, our reasonable first stage is a jet. We know our costs. We understand our costs. We know how much jet fuel costs. We know how much it costs to maintain the plane. We know how much our insurance is. So our first stage as first stage of rocket is extremely well understood. So I know my cost for my first stage.

And the last benefit is that a jet is a movable feast. From the Kennedy Space Center we can fly about one hundred and twenty degrees any direction, to launch from to get to where we want to go, but we can also fly out. So if we need to launch seventy-five miles out at sea, we can launch seventy-five miles out. If we need to launch twenty miles out to sea, we can launch twenty miles out to sea. And if we need to be somewhere else like at White Sands Test Range, then we could move the whole show somewhere. So, by being a jet, we’re a movable feast.

Ricki:

And you’re not starting from scratch when it comes to commercial demand either. Your customer base has included names such as Lockheed Martin, GE, US Air Force Research Lab.

What are customers like Lockheed Martin actually using the platform for, and what does working with organizations of that caliber tell you about the demand for your capabilities?

Tim:

Well, some things I can’t tell you what they’re doing. I can tell you what GE did last summer because it appeared in Aviation Week. A company like GE wanted to test their igniters for their hypersonic rocket. And so that would normally happen around Mach 2. So, we flew, and we’re the first ones in the world to do it, hence why it was in Aviation Week. We lit the igniters going at Mach 2.0 in the airflow under wing. So, we actually test how they’re going to ignite their rocket.

So it’s things like that. Most customers fall into about four categories, four or five categories, where they want to test avionics, things that guide the aircraft, where they want to test communications, where they want to test cameras and things like that, and then they actually want to test the airflow. So, lots of people fly in the same category or same mission type.

Ricki:

And beyond launching payloads, you’re also developing the F-104 as what you call a wind tunnel in the sky for real world Mach 2+ testing. How significant could hypersonic and high-speed testing become as a standalone business alongside Star Launch?

Tim:

It’s probably paying the rent for the next ten years. Primarily because of two reasons. One is hypersonics, which is the ability to go faster than Mach 5. So about Eight years ago, the United States was number one in the world for hypersonics, and we have fallen behind to Russia and China. Russia has used several hypersonic weapons against Ukraine. The first missile fired actually was a hypersonic rocket to take out the Ukrainian spare parts depot for their air force. And China has flown a hypersonic rocket around the world to prove they could do it and also to scare us.

And so the reason why hypersonic testing becomes important is because if a country or someone somewhere uses old radars that spin around, the rocket will fly so fast by it, the radars won’t even have time to come around. If you have the modern radars, there’s even another problem. Like when the shuttle returned to Earth, there’s an ionic cloud around the space shuttle, all the plasma builds up around it. So you appear on the modern radars as a fuzzy ball. So it’s hard to attack a fuzzy ball.

The other thing about that is that they’re flying. They can actually move where they are. I don’t want to say it’s pretty easy to track a ballistic missile, but it’s much easier to track a ballistic missile and where you know it’s going to be than it is a hypersonic missile that can change direction. So we test many of those components. and we could also be used for someone’s new system to track us because we can fly in at any angle at Mach 2 and see if they can detect us. We have a very short profile, low profile when we’re coming head-on. There’s only about a meter surface area. So we’re actually very hard to detect if we’re coming straight to a radar or something.

Ricki:

If only I knew that’s all I had to do to get my rent paid for a year. but finally, you already have the aircraft, proven propulsion technology, and operations at Kennedy Space Center while the company is working through the FAA launch licensing process, what are the major catalysts investors should be watching now, and what does Starfighters Space look like if you successfully scale this model?

Tim:

So, a couple of things. One, they should be looking for our steady stairsteps to get done. It’s very iterative with the FAA and with development and for safety reasons. So we have a drop test coming up in the not too distant future where we don’t ignite a rocket, but we have a mass simulator which is the same mass as the rocket, and we drop it. We’ll drop one subsonically to make sure it separates cleanly from the aircraft, and then we’ll drop one at closer to probably 1.6 the first time to see how it separates at Mach speed.

We then take all that data and apply for the next thing we need to do. So it’s very stairsteps to get a launch license. So, that’s what we tend to do, things like that. The other thing about scaling, I’m glad you mentioned it, is we are not designing a pathfinder vehicle. We are designing an operational vehicle. We have seen too many people in the past design a pathfinder vehicle, and they can never make their vehicle operational. So, one of the reasons we’re designing for operations, and so once we have three successful launches, I’ll be able to order them in groups of 6 or 12 to get economies of scale. So that’s one of the things they should be looking for after we have three successful launches is ordering rockets at scale, and we get savings and all sorts of benefits.

Ricki:

Well, Tim, thank you so much for joining us today and giving us a closer look at Starfighters Space story.

Tim:

Thank you very much. It’s been a pleasure.

Ricki:

For more information, you can visit starfightersspace.com. I’m Ricky Lee, and this has been the Capital Compass. Thank you for watching, and we’ll see you again next time.

This article is disseminated in partnership with Starfighters Space, Inc. It is intended to inform investors and should not be taken as a recommendation or financial advice. 

At the end:

Sponsored Article: InvestorsHub.com Inc. dba The Market Link has been compensated CASH: $1,056 by Starfighters Space, Inc. (AMEX:FJET) for the publication and distribution of this content. This is not independent editorial content. For full compensation disclosure visit investorshub.advfn.com/boards/disclaimer.aspx