THOUGHT LEADERSHIP: Industry insights from Blueshift President Tim Burbey

In an era defined by tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion, geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions, and a glob­al shift towards sus­tain­abil­i­ty, the aero­space and defense (A&D) mar­ket stands as a piv­otal are­na dri­ving ground­break­ing advance­ment and strate­gic invest­ment. 

The A&D mar­ket wit­nessed sig­nif­i­cant growth, expand­ing by 7.7% from $856.3 bil­lion in 2022 to $922.2 bil­lion in 2023. Addi­tion­al­ly, merg­ers and acqui­si­tions in the North Amer­i­can A&D mar­ket surged after the recov­ery from Covid-relat­ed down­turns. Height­ened geopo­lit­i­cal chal­lenges includ­ing Russia’s inva­sion of Ukraine, the Israel-Hamas con­flict, and ten­sions in Tai­wan, are spurring invest­ments in weapons and next-gen­er­a­tion defense capa­bil­i­ties. 

Fur­ther­more, the glob­al push towards decar­boniz­ing air trav­el is fuel­ing inno­va­tions, such as ful­ly elec­tric vehi­cles, hybrid sys­tems using hydro­gen and bat­ter­ies, and advance­ments in tra­di­tion­al com­bus­tion designs, all con­tribut­ing to trans­for­ma­tion­al effi­cien­cy improve­ments (Cas­ca­dia Aero­space and Defense Indus­try Report, 2024). 

A few inter­est­ing data points to con­sid­er: · 

eVTOLs have reached an 18,000-unit back­log, val­ued at $111 Bil­lion*

Elec­tri­fy­ing all flights under two hours could reduce avi­a­tion CO2 emis­sions by 28%* · 

Satel­lite con­stel­la­tions are up 1,000% in 4 years* · 

VC invest­ments in space star­tups up near­ly 3,500% in the last decade* · 

Defense focused VC is increas­ing at a rate of 30% / yr. in response to glob­al con­flicts* 

*(UP Part­ners, 2024) 

These mega­trends ampli­fy the needs for trans­for­ma­tion­al advance­ments in mate­r­i­al sci­ence, includ­ing lighter and more robust ther­mal pro­tec­tion sys­tems (TPS). Ther­mal pro­tec­tion became a house­hold top­ic on Jan­u­ary 28th , 1986, at 11:39 am EST when Thiokol’s (now Northrop Grum­man) O‑ring seals on the engine boost­ers proved faulty in cold con­di­tions. 

Many Amer­i­can school kids, myself includ­ed, watched the events unfold on live TV with class­mates and teach­ers. It was a par­tic­u­lar­ly pro­mot­ed event at schools because Christa McAu­li­ffe, the first school teacher in Space, was one of the crew mem­bers. 

Besides high­light­ing the impor­tance of TPS, the dis­as­ter also put a pause on gov­ern­ment invest­ing in space explo­ration. Har­vard Busi­ness School pub­lished an enlight­en­ing case study for those that want to learn more: Group Process in the Chal­lenger Launch Deci­sion. More recent­ly, Tom Cruise did his part to high­light the impor­tance of TPS in Top Gun Mav­er­ick, as he pushed the Dark­star to Mach 10 to keep his pro­grams fund­ing (spoil­er alert… Mav­er­ick pulls it off). 

This is where Blueshift comes in. Blueshift is a tech­nol­o­gy leader in ther­mal and RF mate­ri­als, as well as the trust­ed ther­mal mate­r­i­al spe­cial­ist in our field. Our cus­tomers trust us to pro­duce high-per­form­ing, easy-to-apply ther­mal pro­tec­tion sys­tems that are dis­tinct due to our core technology’s 85% air struc­ture. 

All our prod­ucts are pro­duced in scal­able roll-to-roll for­mats that can be eas­i­ly con­vert­ed into com­plex shapes and parts with­in our cam­pus, an AS9100D cer­ti­fied fab­ri­ca­tion facil­i­ty in Spencer, Mass­a­chu­setts. Our mate­r­i­al exper­tise expands fur­ther through our abil­i­ty to pro­vide ther­mal mod­els and sim­u­late design sys­tems, ulti­mate­ly opti­miz­ing solu­tions for our cus­tomers. Blueshift aims to estab­lish last­ing part­ner­ships focused on devel­op­ing new tech­nol­o­gy and fos­ter­ing inno­v­a­tive ideas in tan­dem with our cus­tomers. 

Iden­ti­fy­ing a gap in the mar­ket 

Blueshift began in 2013 when we rec­og­nized a sig­nif­i­cant gap with­in efforts to light­weight designs in the Aero­space indus­try. We were dri­ven by a pas­sion for improv­ing the effi­cien­cy of air and space trav­el and aimed to assist prod­uct design­ers in address­ing their emerg­ing, com­plex issues, par­tic­u­lar­ly in ther­mal man­age­ment. 

Dur­ing this peri­od, there was con­sid­er­able excite­ment sur­round­ing invest­ments in pri­vate space com­pa­nies, such as SpaceX, Blue Ori­gin and Vir­gin Galac­tic. At this time, fast-mov­ing inno­va­tors with­out bil­lion­aire-back­ing, such as Rock­et Lab, also emerged to chal­lenge the sta­tus quo. (For a great read on this era check out “When the Heav­ens Went on Sale: The Mis­fits and Genius­es….”). Until then, aero­space com­pa­nies had relied on lega­cy solu­tions like cork and spe­cial­ty paints, which had seen lit­tle inno­va­tion for decades. Rec­og­niz­ing this tech­no­log­i­cal stag­na­tion, we saw an oppor­tu­ni­ty for dis­rup­tion. Thus, we cre­at­ed our flag­ship tech­nol­o­gy, AeroZe­ro®. 

Ther­mal Pro­tec­tion vs Insu­la­tion

Ther­mal Pro­tec­tion dif­fers sig­nif­i­cant­ly from insu­la­tion, a cru­cial dis­tinc­tion that took us time to ful­ly grasp. Tra­di­tion­al insu­la­tion pri­mar­i­ly address­es steady state, con­tin­u­ous tem­per­a­tures – think of the famil­iar pink insu­la­tion at Home Depot, mea­sured by its R‑value. 

How­ev­er, when design­ing TPS for our cus­tomers, we avoid dis­cus­sions cen­tered on R‑value. Instead. we focus on man­ag­ing short­er-dura­tion extreme tem­per­a­ture cycles and spikes. This involves ana­lyz­ing fac­tors such as the heat source respon­si­ble for the ther­mal event, its dura­tion, tem­per­a­ture dis­tri­b­u­tion, prox­im­i­ty to the pro­tect­ed area, required tem­per­a­ture dif­fer­en­tial need­ed, and more. Each ther­mal event type–whether its aero­heat­ing, direct or indi­rect flame expo­sure, radi­ant heat, direct con­tact, con­duc­tion, or convection–requires nuanced per­for­mance attrib­ut­es. Terms such as emis­siv­i­ty, absorp­tion, cryo­gen­ics, dif­fu­siv­i­ty, and con­duc­tiv­i­ty form part of our lex­i­con at Blueshift.

What is so spe­cial about Air?

Prod­uct design­ers appre­ci­ate two won­der­ful attrib­ut­es of air: ther­mal con­duc­tiv­i­ty and RF trans­paren­cy. His­tor­i­cal­ly, design­ers engi­neered air gaps to aid in ther­mal man­age­ment. 

Blueshift now offers design­ers an easy-to-use, low-pro­file, and flex­i­ble method to cre­ate these air gaps. With an esti­mat­ed 300 tril­lion air pock­ets in a stan­dard 165-micron A4 size sheet, and com­pris­ing over 85% air, our AeroZe­ro® tech­nol­o­gy effec­tive­ly mim­ics struc­tured air. 

The mate­r­i­al inher­its most of its prop­er­ties of air itself—such as low den­si­ty, low ther­mal con­duc­tiv­i­ty, and extreme­ly low dielec­tric prop­er­ties, while show­cas­ing impres­sive gram for gram mechan­i­cal strength. Most of our prod­ucts are a sand­wich of AeroZe­ro with sub­strates and super­strates to cre­ate mul­ti-lay­er mul­ti-func­tion­al prod­ucts. For exam­ple, graphite, alu­minum, and flame bar­ri­ers serve as func­tion­al mate­ri­als in our Ther­mal Pro­tec­tion Sys­tems with AeroZe­ro act­ing as the “Intel on the inside”. 

Our pro­pri­etary ther­mal pro­tec­tion sys­tems pro­tect crit­i­cal light­weight struc­tures and com­po­nents in air and space vehi­cles from tran­sient flame and ther­mal events, with tem­per­a­tures rang­ing from minus 200 °C to over 2,000 °C. Our cus­tomers are using our prod­uct in var­i­ous appli­ca­tions, includ­ing lead­ing edges, bat­tery com­part­ments, hydro­gen fuel tanks, air­craft skins, tubes, engine areas, bus­bars, cables, com­pos­ite hous­ings, met­als, and struc­tur­al bar­ri­ers. Our sys­tems also help to mit­i­gate fire prop­a­ga­tion from ther­mal run­away in pow­er-dense bat­ter­ies. 

CFOs love our solu­tions too 

It’s crit­i­cal that our solu­tions save our cus­tomers mon­ey. Hav­ing the best solu­tion isn’t suf­fi­cient; Blueshift must pro­vide excel­lent val­ue and scal­a­bil­i­ty. Sav­ing weight and space on an air­craft is a pret­ty straight­for­ward cal­cu­la­tion. 

Addi­tion­al­ly, we reduce inte­gra­tion time com­pared to tra­di­tion­al options. Some cus­tomers report need­ing 1,000s of man-hours for glu­ing and cur­ing with oth­er options, while AeroZe­ro® TPS is as sim­ple as peel and stick. We also enable cus­tomers to use low­er-tem­per­a­ture base mate­ri­als, such as a off-the-shelf car­bon fiber resin sys­tems, rather than hav­ing to invest in high­er-temp, and more expen­sive resin sys­tems. 

Reflect­ing on the Chal­lenger dis­as­ter, the finan­cial ben­e­fits of advanced mate­r­i­al sci­ence tech­nol­o­gy weren’t a major focus when NASA was only build­ing a few vehi­cles annu­al­ly. How­ev­er, the vast scale of diverse planned build sched­ules cre­ates high­ly favor­able eco­nom­ics. As the num­ber of vehi­cles being built reach­es the thou­sands, CFOs appre­ci­ate the finan­cial advan­tages. 

Look­ing to the Future

For those of us that watched the Chal­lenge dis­as­ter live, it’s hard to believe it was 40 years ago. That mile­stone also helps us to under­stand why there was a sig­nif­i­cant lull in mate­r­i­al sci­ence advance­ments in TPS. Air­craft and Space­craft are close­ly relat­ed, and the rev­o­lu­tion hap­pen­ing in air­craft in the 2020s mir­rors the advance­ments in space­craft dur­ing the 2010s.

Boe­ing first pitched the con­cept of the 737 in 1964, which is still a flag­ship air­craft mod­el in 2024, high­light­ing their piv­otal role along­side Air­bus in air­craft design, sim­i­lar to NASA’s role in space­craft design. 

Now it’s time to hold onto our hats and enjoy the ride. Bil­lions are being invest­ed to fun­da­men­tal­ly change air mobil­i­ty. The vision of an inte­grat­ed ter­res­tri­al and non-ter­res­tri­al ecosys­tem is tak­ing shape, neces­si­tat­ing new forms of mobil­i­ty link­ing Low Earth Orbit and the ground. Look­ing ahead, the indus­try’s land­scape promis­es ground­break­ing advance­ments in advanced air mobil­i­ty, sus­tain­able air trav­el, satel­lite con­stel­la­tions, and defense capa­bil­i­ties. 

The Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety counts over 900 entrants in the AAM indus­try, with new ones added on a week­ly basis (Index, Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty Real­i­ty). Col­lab­o­ra­tive ini­tia­tives among indus­try lead­ers, star­tups, and investors are fuel­ing inno­va­tion and reshap­ing the aero­space fron­tier. For an illu­mi­nat­ing pod­cast on this sub­ject check out Mot­ley Fools’ fea­tur­ing Sier­ra Space’s CEO, Tom Vice: (“To LEO and Beyond — Mot­ley Fool Mon­ey.”).

The aero­space and defense sec­tor is under­go­ing a pro­found trans­for­ma­tion fueled by tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ments and glob­al shifts, par­tic­u­lar­ly the resur­gence of glob­al inter­est in space explo­ration and geopo­lit­i­cal con­flict. This renewed focus has spurred the devel­op­ment of inno­v­a­tive solu­tions across the indus­try. 

Our AeroZe­ro® tech­nol­o­gy stands as a tes­ta­ment to this evo­lu­tion, redefin­ing ther­mal pro­tec­tion sys­tems crit­i­cal for mod­ern avi­a­tion and space mis­sions. Our com­mit­ment extends beyond pro­vid­ing cut­ting-edge solu­tions; we strive to inspire con­fi­dence in our cus­tomers regard­ing their ther­mal needs, enabling them to cre­ate air­craft that are not only effi­cient but also safe. 

Our ded­i­ca­tion aligns with the mis­sion to decar­bonize air trav­el and enhance over­all struc­tur­al effi­cien­cy and safe­ty. Reach out to Blueshift with any ques­tions and join us in devel­op­ing the next era of ther­mal tech­nolo­gies! 

Ref­er­ences: 

Group Process in the Chal­lenger Launch Deci­sion (A) — Case — Fac­ul­ty & Research — Har­vard Busi­ness School. https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=29356. Accessed 16 Apr. 2024. 

Index, Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty Real­i­ty. “Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty Real­i­ty Index.” Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty Real­i­ty Index, https://aamrealityindex.com/aam-reality-index. Accessed 16 Apr. 2024. 

Cas­ca­dia Aero­space and Defense Indus­try Report. Cas­ca­dia Cap­i­tal, 2024, p. 66. “To LEO and Beyond — Mot­ley Fool Mon­ey.” The Mot­ley Fool, https://www.fool.com/podcasts/motley-fool-money/2024–03-30-to-leo-and-beyond/. Accessed 16 Apr. 2024. 

UP Part­ners. The Mov­ing World Report 2024. 2024, p. 147. “When the Heav­ens Went on Sale: The Mis­fits and Genius­es….” Goodreads, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62050244-when-the-heavens-went-on-sale. Accessed 16 Apr. 2024