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Outbound’s demonstrator plane, code-named STeVE, takes off from a runway at Pendleton UAS Range in Oregon. (Outbound Aerospace Photo)
Things are looking up for Outbound Aerospace’s quest to build a new kind of passenger airplane. The Seattle startup has raised $1.15 million in pre-seed funding so far, and last weekend it sent a small-scale prototype into the skies over Oregon for its first-ever flight test.
“Over the last month, everything came together, and we went out there and got the plane up in the air, and proved that it flies,” said Jake Armenta, the former Boeing engineer who serves as Outbound’s chief technology officer and co-founder. “So, it’s been a really exciting month or two.”
The demonstrator aircraft — which is code-named STeVE (for Scaled Test Vehicle) — is a remote-controlled plane that weighs 300 pounds and has a 22-foot wingspan. That’s only one-eighth of the planned wingspan for the Olympic airliner that Outbound eventually aims to build. What’s more, Saturday’s flight at the Pendleton UAS Range in eastern Oregon lasted just 16 seconds. Nevertheless, the test proved that Outbound’s fabrication process could turn out a flyable carbon-fiber aircraft.
“We flew this demonstrator because I got a lot of questions,” Armenta said. “People were really pessimistic about us. I got literally laughed out of investors’ rooms here in Seattle because I told people, ‘We’re building an airplane.’ And they were like, ‘You can’t do this. No one can.’”
Despite the skepticism, Outbound has been able to bring in enough investment to support what’s now a full-time staff of five, plus “about half a dozen contractors who have helped us in various ways,” Armenta said. Over the past year, Armenta and his fellow co-founder, CEO Ian Lee, have raised $500,000 from Blue Collective, a matching amount from Antler, and another $150,000 from private investors.
Artwork shows Outbound’s blended-wing Olympic airliner in flight. (Outbound Aerospace Illustration)
As testing continues, Outbound’s engineers are drawing up plans for the next test aircraft, which will double the wingspan of the STeVe demonstrator. STeVe is electric-powered, but Armenta said the next plane will be a turboprop that could serve as a prototype for a 19-seat business jet.
“We have a really good concept for a bizjet, and I think we can build a lot of excitement for that,” he said.
STeVe was fabricated in the Dallas area, where Lee is based, and then integrated and ground-tested in Arlington, Wash. In contrast, the next plane is likely to be built completely in the Seattle area, Armenta said. “This last plane took us nine months to do,” he said. “The next one is twice the wingspan, and we’re looking at 18 months.”
Outbound’s ultimate goal is to build a blended-wing airplane with a wingspan of 171 feet that could carry in the range of 200 to 250 passengers. That would put the Olympic airliner in the same class as a Boeing 757.
Those are the sorts of ambitions that might well have drawn a laugh from prospective investors — but Armenta insisted that Outbound’s fabrication technology can bring those ambitions within reach.
“We invented three different ways of building carbon fiber with this aircraft, and two of those ways are very scalable processes,” he said. “It’s based around the idea of using large, 3D-printed molds and jigs and tools to build the aircraft. By doing that, we were able to cut down our lead times, cut down our production times and make sure that we build the plane as fast as possible.”
Armenta paid a four-letter tribute to his Outbound teammates. “I’m a dorky kid from the Midwest, and I grew up being told to never brag about yourself … so I’m more humble than I should be,” he said. “But I’m so f—ing excited about my team.”
If things work out the way Armenta, Lee and their teammates hope, skeptics won’t be laughing at Outbound for long.
“Our manufacturing technology is awesome, and our ability to repeatedly produce really big carbon fiber structures is something that I don’t think anyone else in the industry can do the way we can,” Armenta said. “Now we’re going to show that it works for the next scale-up, and then go from there — above and beyond.”
