Talyn Air brings in advisory board members and secures additional US Air Force contracts for its eVTOL aircraft

Sub­mit­ted by Dawn Zol­di (Colonel, USAF Ret.)

Talyn Air has kicked off the new year by announc­ing two new advi­so­ry board mem­bers who will be inte­gral in con­tin­u­ing its upward jour­ney.

The com­pa­ny is cre­at­ing a unique eVTOL air­craft inspired by the 2‑stage rock­et design, with plans to fly car­go and pas­sen­gers door-to-door between cities in half the time as tra­di­tion­al trans­porta­tion.

Talyn scored big wins with the US Air Force (USAF) in 2021 and has fol­lowed these up by con­firm­ing Blake Scholl, founder and CEO of Den­ver-based Boom Super­son­ic, the com­pa­ny build­ing the Mach 1.7 Over­ture super­son­ic air­lin­er, and Mark ‘Forg­er’ Stucky, who will pro­vide addi­tion­al exper­tise to Talyn.

Co-found­ed by Jamie Gull and Evan Mucasey, for­mer SpaceX engi­neers who spent over a decade com­bined devel­op­ing the Fal­con 9 rock­et and Drag­on space­craft, Talyn’s two-vehi­cle 100 per cent elec­tric sys­tem involves a Lift vehi­cle, which car­ries a Cruise vehi­cle to alti­tude on the front end and then pairs up to descend on the back end.

The team is devel­op­ing air­craft that will haul 1,000 lbs of pay­load 350 miles at speeds over 200 miles per hour. Even­tu­al­ly, up to five pas­sen­gers will be able to zip between region­al hubs at the same speeds and with­out the has­sles asso­ci­at­ed with air­ports.

Under Scholl’s lead­er­ship, Boom has raised more than $300 mil­lion in ven­ture cap­i­tal, attract­ed orders and pre-orders from major air­lines, and is on track to car­ry pas­sen­gers using 100% sus­tain­able avi­a­tion fuel by 2029.

Com­ment­ing on work­ing with Talyn, Scholl said: “I believe in remov­ing bar­ri­ers to trav­el, and Talyn’s inno­v­a­tive approach to accel­er­at­ing region­al trans­porta­tion promis­es to offer sig­nif­i­cant­ly improved door-to-door trav­el times—empowering peo­ple to con­nect and expe­ri­ence more of what Earth has to offer.” 

Stucky is a com­mer­cial astro­naut and test pilot, with a long list of accom­plish­ments includ­ing sub­stan­tial time as a Marine Corps fight­er and test pilot, Air Force test pilot, NASA research pilot, Unit­ed Air­lines pilot, engi­neer­ing test pilot for Scaled Com­pos­ites and Direc­tor of Flight Test and Lead Test Pilot for Vir­gin Galac­tic. At Scaled, he test pilot­ed the Space­ShipT­wo, WhiteKnightTwo, Pro­teus, and mul­ti­ple oth­er air­craft.

Stucky is excit­ed to work with Talyn on addi­tion­al test­ing of their pro­to­types. He believes the road to the Jet­son-like future that we’ve dreamt of for years depends on eVTOL tech­nolo­gies, say­ing: “While oth­er eVTOL air­craft promise intracity trans­porta­tion, Talyn’s patent­ed approach is a game-chang­er that enables intrastate eVTOL trans­porta­tion to your des­ti­na­tion! I am thrilled to be advis­ing such an august team.”

In Decem­ber 2021, Gull and Mucasey led the com­pa­ny to accom­plish a major mile­stone towards prov­ing out run­way-free mil­i­tary oper­a­tions for the U.S. Depart­ment of Defense. As part of a $1 mil­lion USAF AFWERX Direct to Phase II Small Busi­ness Inno­va­tion Research (SBIR) 2‑year con­tract award, they suc­cess­ful­ly demon­strat­ed in-flight deploy­ment of a mil-spec pro­to­type, through which they aim to rev­o­lu­tion­ize bat­tle­field logis­tics.

Now, Talyn con­tin­ues to make sig­nif­i­cant moves with its air­craft in both civ­il and mil­i­tary sec­tors, with the expert input assis­tance of addi­tion­al advi­sors.

The team is build­ing full-scale pro­to­types while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, cre­at­ing a Rapid Air­craft Design Devel­op­ment Tool & Dig­i­tal Twin as part of an award­ed Direct to Phase II USAF con­tract. Dig­i­tal twins are vir­tu­al 3D rep­re­sen­ta­tions that can be used to run accu­rate sim­u­la­tions allow­ing Talyn to iter­ate on their high­ly com­plex sys­tems.

This tool serves many pur­pos­es. Among oth­er things, it will be valu­able to the USAF to expe­dite the pace of suc­cess­ful test­ing flights by which Talyn’s vehi­cles will achieve air­wor­thi­ness cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.