Fly Another Day: The Daring, Thrilling, and Misguided Life of a Test Pilot

Mojave has been and will always be at the heart of flight test. Not just Mojave, but this valley, right? I mean, it's just historically, it's the place to be. However, the two things about this most recent revolution or series of revolutions within aerospace that are significant is that number one, the vehicles have gotten a lot smaller. And number two, that startup culture and the availability of startup cash has allowed you to think about starting your own company, right? Rather than being forced to go to the experts and ask them to build you a thing.

All right.

If you have been on the Substack or the YouTube this week, you have noticed it is the Mojave week for Core Memory. We've been exploring all things aerospace. And today's show fits right in. We've got Elliott Seguin. He is a test pilot who lives out in the Mojave. He's, uh, come to being a test pilot in a really unusual way. He's an unusual character. He's just a great dude that I always hang out with when I'm, when I'm in the Mojave. And I think you're gonna love this episode. As ever, please go find Core Memory wherever you like to get your podcasts, and I hope you enjoy the show.

So we're here at the moment in Mojave with a special man, Elliott Seguin. We've known each other for a few years now.

Getting near 10 years, I bet.

Yeah. And I think I had been told of the legend of you, you know, from, from friends. I think I would do what I usually do, which is I'm going somewhere and I ask my friends who's interesting in the place I'm going. And I know we're I'm sure I was coming down here for a story and people kept pointing me in your direction and it turned out it was true. You are a very interesting man. If you had to begin by just telling people what your job, your life is, how would you describe it?

Yeah, I mean, test pilot. On my best day, that's what I'd like to call myself. But test pilot can mean a lot of different things in a lot of different communities. So in my case, coming from the engineering ranks, coming from Reno Air Racing and performance testing, power plant testing, it's a different background than say like the movie, you know, Top Gun, where he's coming from a military background. So instead of, you know, the old joke is what is test pilot school or why is test pilot school so expensive? And in most cases, you're taking a fighter pilot and you're teaching them engineering. And guys like me, you're taking someone who's been designing and building systems and you're teaching them, you know, making sure they're ready for the flying portion because they know how to test the system. They understand that part of the flight, but you're making sure they're qualified for the rest of it. So that's been my path to flight test.

Yeah. So I always tell people you're a test pilot and you were just describing obviously this different— how many people are like you versus the traditional vision of a test pilot?

It's lower than 100 to 1.

Well, lower.

So in the United States, we don't have a test pilot rating, which is, of course, like everything, it's a good thing and a bad thing. When I was— when we met, you know, and I was trying to get into the industry, it's a great thing, right? Because it means I can just charge way less and take way more risk and I get to do cool stuff. As you get later in your career, it becomes— now you have to deal with all those whippersnappers that show up. But because there is not a rating for it, it becomes, you know, how do you make yourself stand out in that market? So a guy that's grown up in F-16s, he just has to show the picture of him sitting in front of an F-16.

They all kind of look the same.

There's a look.

There's a look.

And I would argue that they, the way they fly is different. But the, the other side for a guy like me, it's really about just leveraging what I can bring to the table, what I could bring to the table back then, which was I was willing to build stuff. I knew how to build stuff. I knew how to design stuff. And so I'd be willing to do that in exchange for the opportunity to fly on the backside. So we could fill in the resume and start to put the big pieces together.

How many test pilot jobs would there even be?

That's, that's the other side of it, right? So again, comes down to what your definition of test pilot is. But the, the Society of Flight Test or Society of Experimental Test Pilots, which is what is the only way to determine what a pilot is in the test pilots in the United States because there's no rating, there's roughly like 2,000 members, I think something like that. But that goes all the way from like beginning guys that aren't really doing a whole lot to like late career guys that are sort of in a more administrative role. And, you know, probably that many sort of full-time guys. But there's lots of different kinds of flying. So the kinds of flying that I'm typically attracted to, you know, you're talking about tens of guys in the country. So it's very, very competitive and has been for a long time.

Yeah, it seems brutal. And then you, some of these test pilot campaigns can go on for a while. And so the idea is you get attached to a craft and hopefully you can, this is an ongoing thing. So you don't have to hop from job to job to job all the time.

Yeah.

The joke is that the pilot is the only part of the aircraft that self-installs. So test pilots become very replaceable. The other side is that the person that's making the decision about what makes a good test pilot today typically is pretty far away from the hardware. You're typically talking about a manager-level HR guy, whatever. And so they don't, you know, making sure that that person understands why you're valuable can sometimes be a challenge. The last piece is that test pilot in general is a quality control function, right? Like, you know, you as the engineer come in and you lay your design on the table. So this is a solution, right? And then that person builds that thing and they lay that on the table, right? And then And it's the test pilot's job either to say, no, we're not ready to fly yet, right? The risks of the vehicle, risk to this personnel is too high, or I flew it and it's not— unfortunately, it's not what you want it to be, right? And so because it's a quality control function and you self-install, you become very replaceable.

Okay.

And so the whole game becomes managing political capital. So any moment that you can make sure people know that you're a cool guy and that you're working hard and that you're trying, you obviously want to do that. The next thing is, my dad always used to joke about, what do you call it, schedule poker or schedule chicken, right? So if say we're all sitting at a table with, you know, management, management comes in and says, why aren't we flying today? You know, we're looking out the window. I know we're not going to fly for the wind or the weather or the snow or whatever. But if I position myself in the room, right, I get him to ask you first, and then you're going to admit that it's the motor. So we don't have to have a conversation about whether or not Elliott wants to fly in the rain. Instead, we're going to have a conversation about whether or not the motor's ready. And I don't have to use that card immediately and burn that political capital and risk, you know, them finding another self-installing pilot to take my ride. But as a result, it's very, very competitive. And then because there's no standard in the United States for what is a test pilot, literally it comes all the way down to a 250-hour guy that just got his commercial ticket, right? And is willing to sit in the seat.

Wow.

And so you take, right? And so you take, especially in a moment like what's happening right now where you have dramatic constriction within the startup community and within the alternative energy community, everybody's out of money, everybody's out of time, and we need that flight to happen. And so how do you make sure that you're not the reason, you're not wearing the hat, the dunce cap of the person that smoked the program?

Yeah. So you, so people are willing to take a little more risk, um, to keep, keep being part of something.

And then the other side is like, um, the, the number of guys that want to do this stuff every year, you know, that, that number stays constant. So if the number of startups goes down, right, and we, for instance, determine that as a world we're going into World War III instead of going into developing new urban air mobility vehicles, we're going to World War III, it's going to be unmanned. At least that's where the bulk of the work is going to be. And so guys like myself that have really tried to hang on to sitting in a cockpit, there's less and less opportunities for us. And then it becomes who's going to charge the least and be willing to accept the most risk and be willing to show up on Monday. Right. And so it gets very competitive.

Well, I obviously want to get into your background and how you got into this. However, since you just brought up these startups and in that, that world, I would imagine, I would, I would imagine there's, there's boom and bust times in this job field and that During times of conflict, there's probably a little more activity when the DOD is fixated on something interesting and is trying out a lot of crafts. But we have been on the back of— you mentioned it— this electric vertical takeoff landing vehicle, these air taxi type things. We've had a lot of different electric airplanes in general. There's been this era of new crafts, new ideas. So has this been Has this been a relative boom time?

I've never called it this, but there's a lot of people that call it the great aviation renaissance. And I think there's pockets that feel exciting that way. But yeah, I think I would take a step back further. Yes. So first of all, yes, urban air mobility, electric vehicles, electric vertical takeoff has had a tremendous investment. One could argue it soaked up all the investment dollars that were available for aerospace. For the last 5, 10 years, something like that. But it's also been even longer than that since we've had sort of a major correction in the market where some of these sort of more unicorns and rainbows startups have had to sort of hit to the brass tacks and actually create something that's valuable today, directly valuable IP. And as a result, you know, there might be more fluff out there or there might be the constriction that may or may not be coming, might be more dramatic than others. So So to answer your question directly, does the oscillation happen between DOD and civvy? Absolutely. Is it constantly going back and forth and is that predictable all the way back for the history of aerospace? That's a fantastic observation. I would say more than that, it's been not only profitable but also on the civvy side for much longer than usual for this last cycle.

To the extent that Mojave is a central piece of this, lots of people would know the right stuff in the history of test flights that have taken place in this, area of the world. Has that been true for the commercial stuff that's been going on? Because I know a lot of these companies are based in Silicon Valley, or they even test in New Zealand a lot of the time. And, um, although there's companies like Boom that are based in Colorado, but when they want to do their flights, they have to do it out of Mojave. So I didn't know how central Mojave was to this explosion.

Mojave has been and will always be at the heart of flight test, not just Mojave, but this valley, right? I mean, it's just historically, it's the place to be. However, the two things about this most recent revolution or series of revolutions within aerospace that are significant is that number one, the vehicles have gotten a lot smaller. And number two, that startup culture and the availability of startup cash has allowed you to think about starting your own company rather than being forced to go to the experts and ask them to build you a thing.

So you might have gone to Scaled all the time in the past.

Always gone to Scaled.

Yeah.

Or gone to Northrop or gone to, you know, there's been several companies on the airport that sort of do, maybe, you know, Scaled took the sexiest, biggest pieces, right? But there were other, like, you know, I need a little pod program, I need to fly a sensor, I need to, you know, borrow your control room, I just want to use the ramp for a little bit, those kind of things. And Mojave's always been that magical place. But as the size comes down and vertical, I mean, a lot of the initial testing with vertical you can do with a tether. And if you can tether it, like you can get pretty close to like urban environments and now you can take advantage of labor that doesn't wanna be in the desert, which is like a major deal, right? The other one—

So the tether just adds this level of safety that—

Yeah, I mean, a quarter-inch cable can take, you know, whatever, thousands of pounds, right?

So you could put the, for people who have no idea what you're talking about, you're tethering this test aircraft and giving it juice, but you don't have to worry worry about this flying into a person or a building or anything like that, but you can still know how it's performing, right?

Or you can even put it in a hangar and you don't even have to tell anybody that you're flying this thing. Yeah. Uh, and you know, because, uh, for instance, with electric vertical takeoff, that's where you're going to start. You're going to start with a— what is basically a propeller attached to some sort of a propulsor, right? It's going to be tied to the ground. You're going to go, you know, more power, less power, and make sure that it responds the way you— and it doesn't overheat and that it, you know, sucks the right amount of power for the right amount of thrust. All that, that's all static. So the transition from that to like a little hover or like a little thrust in, or we'll put a couple of them together and we'll kind of like, you can't do that if you need 100 knots, right? If you're going to be ripping downrange, then you need a long runway. And then, you know, your scatter pattern, if the thing comes apart, gets big and then you need to be away from houses. But when you're, once you're vertical, um, you mentioned Boom, it's, it's not my place. You know, I, um, I don't work for Boom. I'm not here to talk about it. But the, um, the big thing for Boom is that they need the supersonic corridor. And there's only one. It's here.

Because you're going over this base that allows— that you can get permission to, to, to have a, a sonic boom.

Right. Right. So otherwise you're, you have to go off the coast. Um, like you could, um, I did some, uh, program where we were, the plan was to launch out of Mojave because we couldn't get access to the 2508 complex. We would just run out to Vandenberg and then off the coast. And the thing is like, yeah, it seems like it's a long ways, but when you're going 400 knots, 500 knots, it happens pretty quick. The problem is that, anyways, you would get off the land, off to where you can go supersonic, make your run, and then come back in. But those things are all so thirsty. I mean, you look at the plan for Boom's flight this week and they're not airborne very long. This thing burns a lot of gas when you've opened the throttle that far.

Yeah.

But anyway, so my point being like, what is magical about Mojave? Open spaces, those things are still true. Scaled is still here. The long runways are still here. But the thing that's even more still here and grounds in this location is the access to 2508 and its resources, most directly being the supersonic corridor. But also there's an air refueling corridor that's directly north of here. That's pretty healthy. And the thing that's always been great about Mojave is having all those things, but you're still not in Utah, right? You're still an hour from L.A. And so someone can catch a flight in LAX, they can be here an hour and a half after that, and they can be adding value.

And is that— this is why you live here?

Yeah. So I've dedicated my life to test. And so you got to be in this valley. And for me, Mojave is the center of the valley and it's tough for me to leave.

Yeah.

Even though a lot of the work now is not here. Right. I mean, I have a little airplane. I fly all over the country, all over California, across the Rockies 6 times this year in my little airplane, run into different gigs around the country because these companies aren't here right now.

I was going to ask you too before, is your job Totally US-based, or do you— I know, well, there's foreign people that are pursuing interesting things.

Oh, absolutely.

So I'm sure you're probably not flying in China, but outside of that—

I did a program in China.

Oh, you did?

A long time ago. Yeah, I'm not interested in doing defense work overseas. I'm not interested in building weapons that could be pointed at us 100%. And that line gets a little fuzzy. So I had a program, and I'm trying to figure out how to talk about this, but recently a program came up. I was asked to help on a program., where it was clear that the multinational customer, the immediate customer was not a threat. However, it wasn't clear who was— there were other people in the room that I wasn't positive how they might use it. And the vehicle was just potent enough that it could be pretty— I mean, that, that's the problem. When you take a weapon, you drive it all the way down to the size of a quadcopter, everything's a weapon. And so how do you convince yourself? Um, yeah.

That you're not creating something that's going to be part of like a human drone show, some, some human-sized vehicle. Uh, it's okay, we, we don't have to, we don't have to dig in on that.

So I, I did a program, um, I was helping the, um, foreign air forces with air shows. So absolutely not a weapon. There was really no way to use it as a weapon, but you know, whatever, everything can be used as a weapon, but It was pretty far from being a weapon, but I, um, for that, that gig, I had to travel a lot and I would end up at foreign military bases. And I was at a base in Pakistan, um, during the, the conflict with India. So they're, they've got guys sitting on the line in the ready rooms, the jets are spooled up, ready to go. And so what would happen is they would pick up a flight of Indian aircraft running at the border and then they would be running out after them. And, um, and so I'm in Pakistan and there was a, there was the day I left, they raised it yet again to no Americans should go to Pakistan. If you're going to be in Pakistan, don't be anywhere near a military base. If you're going to be in a military base, no base with flying. I was like, oh cool, that's where I'm going. So I'm in this base and at night you can hear these drones orbiting overhead, right? They're defending the space, which, you know, this was a few years ago, but drones were— but I hadn't experienced that, like a drone that's surveilling. And like, I think it's my drone, but like, I don't know. I had like an armed guard outside of my little— like they gave me captain's quarters. I had like an armed guard outside to make sure that I was safe. Anyway, so the, I'm in a meeting and because of my background, I'm like, you're just sitting across the table. There's like a bunch of cool dudes and we're like hanging out. And this guy's like, do you know anything about Lycoming engines? And I was like, I was like, yeah, I do know about Lycoming engines. And he was like, have you ever had a problem like this? And I was like, show me a picture. And he's like showing me pictures. And I'm thinking about it. I'm thinking like, oh, and like it wasn't, if I hadn't heard the drone the night before, it wouldn't have clicked for me. Like for some reason, because of my background with little airplanes, when I heard Lycoming, I heard like, oh, this guy's building an airplane in his garage. Like it didn't click that like, no, we're talking about a drone. And then I'm in Pakistan, like, like absolutely could be military use. And I was like, eh, maybe we don't need to talk. And I'm like, I want you to email me. We'll talk about it later.

We'll take that offline.

Take that offline. Right. Again, like you wouldn't think of like, you know, was he going to talk about landing gear and brakes and piston engines, 180 horsepower. You go, oh yeah, I guess that is why.

How long ago was this?

So, I mean, you can fact-check me, but it was the shooting match when—

India lobbed a rocket at Pakistan, right?

Pakistan knocked down a MiG-21, an Indian MiG-21. There was a rumor that a Pakistani F-16 got shot down, and there was rumor that a Sukhoi got shot down.

Okay.

And while I was there, they were counting tails on the F-16s because the Pakistanis would admit that there was an F-16 shot down. Uh, and so they, the State Department was trying to determine if that had happened or not. Uh, cause if, if the jet had fallen in Pakistan, they wouldn't have admitted it was the consensus. And then there was like a, a rumor that not only had it fallen in Pakistan, but the pilot had been, uh, thought to be Indian when he landed and that he had been executed by villagers when he hit. So that would be even more embarrassing for Pakistan. Again, I don't mean to say anything or I don't know anything. I'm just, just repeating things I've heard.

So, no, no. Yeah. And I was thinking about a different incident. Um, Would, to get a job like that, or even somebody to reach out, I feel like this must be a very word of mouth business. And, and since the test pilot circle's kind of small, is that how this comes about?

Or is there a job posting board for this? It is an incredibly small community. The reality is most people, most people that are looking for test pilots don't have never looked for a test pilot before. So Um, you know, a lot of the thing I struggle with is the fact that like a movie like Top Gun comes out and so they think, oh, test pilot. And they think, okay, well, I need to go to the fighter pilot community. And the reality is like, unless you're testing F-16s, um, you probably want a guy that's more closely related to the class of aircraft that you're dealing with. And especially if we're dealing with urban air mobility, which is a lot of the work that's happening right now, uh, someone that's spent a lot of time, for instance, with little airplanes at little airports would be valuable, or somebody that spent a lot of time with helicopters would be valuable, you know, as opposed to somebody that's a combat guy that's focused on how to put weapons on targets, you know, bombs on foreheads, or put, you know, shoot other airplanes down out of the sky.

It's really pushing the air taxi to its, uh, right.

So some of the most rewarding work that I've done in the last few years was working on, um, what is acceptable handling qualities for these electric vertical takeoff aircraft, right? Um, it has, it really hasn't been established. Long story short, once you move from a traditional helicopter where you're moving, physically moving objects that have airfoils on them to physically move the aircraft, to interacting with a computer that then moves those things. The way the vehicle responds when you put in a control, like, is almost infinite. It's certainly, you know, it's a lot wider space. So you get to have this conversation about what is good enough or what is desirable as far as the handling quality. So we're sitting in the vehicle and I go like this, you know, and I want to go that way. So I do a thing and then the vehicle does or does not do what I would expect. The reality is that That space right now is just as poorly defined. And the only, the only subject matter experts did the same thing for military helicopters in the context of attack or of delivering, you know, sling loads to Marines or whatever. So, you know, you go grab that standard, it's not an attack helicopter, right? A Joby or whatever is not an attack helicopter. So what is it and what's good enough? And then, and when do you reach the extent of what's just uncomfortable for a pilot but livable? To the point where it's unsafe? And then, and what defines that, right? If you're landing on the top of a building and there's wind hitting the side of the building, it's creating mechanical turbulence that goes over the top of the building. That creates a different handling qualities problem than I just need to be able to hold the vehicle in a 10-knot lateral translation.

Okay.

If that makes sense.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And we, like, when you, okay. Given that you have experience with these vehicles and you just have experience with things in the sky, when, when you hear about people wanting to fill, fill our skies with, with really autonomous air taxis, um, not to mention delivery drones and things like that. Does all this sound reasonable to you? Do you think this is going to happen, or are you sitting there like, these things are never going to be, or they're not going to be autonomous for a long time? I just feel like you would have so much, much more informed perspective on this.

Um, I make my living in the area of hope, right? I make my living in an area of we can do better. This is a new technology, we want it to work. I believe that a lot of things are possible, especially on an infinite timeline with an infinite amount of money. The reality is that it's not me that matters. Like at the end of the day, I like being a part of interesting programs and I, if it's interesting, I'll do it regardless of whether or not it's long-term feasible. I try to remove myself from long-term feasible. The other side though is that you have, the FAA talking about not being able to find a path to certification for an electrically— electrical vertical takeoff aircraft for, you know, and the numbers keep getting bigger, right? And as we just talked about, there's basic handling quality questions that hang out there. Luckily, there's huge pressure to make these things work because people believe they will darken the skies 100%. And then you have a president that just said, you know, drill baby drill. So the electric portion of it, you know, if energy costs are only going to go down, it gets harder to justify the move to solar, electric, blah, blah, blah. So these external pressures are way bigger players. Uh, the one I like to think about is, um, the quadcopter warfare that's happening specifically in Ukraine, but, but both in Ukraine and Israel right now, that the technology that's been developed and the way warfare has changed is hard to really get your head around here. We're so removed from it, right? But a couple months ago when, you know, those attempts were made on Trump's life, if, if instead of it being a conventional rifle, rifle, if it had been a DJI drone, it would have raised the consciousness such to a level. And how would, how would the eVTOL investor market have responded to that if we had to all acknowledge, hey man, there might be a bigger thing to think about right now than urban air mobility, right? And then counterwise, if, um, if we continue to have other conversations like fires in LA that have nothing to do with what's the value of quadcopters, because we need to have a guy flying that scooper because it's just too complicated of a problem. Yeah, I'm just hypothesizing. Then we don't get to have the conversation about quadcopters and the modern warfare. And so we'll continue to think about urban mobility or these other problems. But, but at the end of the day, like with everybody being so connected right now in the way social media, hashtag XYZ, like it can very much slew where that money goes. And at the end of the day, it's going to take money to develop any of these technologies. And if you want to darken the skies, it's just even more money.

Yeah, absolutely. Um, all right, let's go backwards for a second because I, I, I don't think I know the answer to some of these questions, even though we've hung out a bit. Where did you, where'd you grow up?

I grew up in Michigan.

Okay. And were you, I know you said you came to this from the engineering path, but something tells me you were a, you were an airplane geek from the beginning.

Yes. Yeah, I was, my dad was a pilot, so I learned to ride my bicycle at the airport. I spent my summers trying to get my dad to take me flying. There was 5 kids in the family, so who got to go flying? My dad only had a 2-seat airplane, so who got to go flying was absolutely up in the air. And it was something that I feel like I couldn't always get it. And I think sometimes that's important with a kid, like it kind of held it at a little bit of a distance anyway. So it was something I always wanted to do.

He was a commercial pilot?

No, he just did it for fun. Okay. When I was like right at that age, that age being like hormones coming into the picture, so 12 to 14, something like that. He, uh, modified his, you know, it was a standard category airplane called the Globe Swift, but he modified it to an STC for a bigger engine and longer range fuel tanks, and then flew, um, between two places that had never been flown by from, uh, just in the United States, and was the fastest guy to fly between those two points. It's a way to— anybody can set a record at any time, basically. And, uh, he just happened to do it with a bunch of other guys, and it got like a little press. And so he got invited to, uh, Washington, DC, and like 8 dudes stood on a, um, on the platform and then we got a tour backstage of what was now Udvar-Hazy, but it wasn't Udvar-Hazy yet. It was just the back, back area of the Smithsonian. So we got to see the Enola Gay before it was released. And I'm like 12 years old and it was just like a very like pivotal moment where it was like, um, you know, hanging out at the airport. It was like this little thing. It was just me, like me and my dad, like my friends didn't do it. Then I talked to girls about it at school. They didn't get it right now. Like riding my bike and I was like really into it. And then there was this moment where like he reached out and touched something and like he could suddenly we were a part of it. Instead of just going to the air show, we were kind of part of the air show. At least I could see a path. And that was kind of, I think, critical to sort of me getting my head around what I want to do with my life. So then it was just a matter of what does that mean? Does that mean flying? Does that mean working on them, like wrenching? Does that mean building them? Does it like, you know, what does it, what does that mean? Right. And so I've sort of struggled with that ever since.

And you were working to get your pilot's license that whole time when you were growing up?

Yeah. I mean, it was no question it was something I wanted. I just didn't have any money. So I, I got a job one summer doing, um, uh, tearing out the offices at the Michigan State Capitol, uh, which, uh, was not only union pay, but it was also like unlimited hours. So I was like a day laborer, right? Like I'm like breaking down walls and like tearing out furniture. Uh, but I'd work like 70, 80 hours a week and it was union wage. Like Sunday you're making straight double time, right? And I didn't have anything to do, so just stash the money away. And I was able to take that cash and, um, this farmer had been flying a Cessna out of his backyard. Illegally.

And I—

me and my dad, and so he matched my dollar for dollar, and we were able to go in on this Cessna. And, uh, and then I spent a year restoring it and got it flying. Uh, but that was like, uh, the airplane I ended up learning to fly. And so before that, I'd take like a lesson here, lesson there, but I'd run out of money. And now it was like I had this plane. And so, um, I got signed off to solo, and I just flew it every day.

And, and you were saying you've wrestled with this question your whole life, but was there a moment where you're just like, I should just go join the Air Force and become a pilot?

Yeah. So when I say the question, I meant, how do I add, how do I contribute? Right? Like, am I going to fly? Am I going to be an engineer? Do I want to be a mechanic? Do it like, you know, that project of that Cessna is a great example where like I was flying it, but I was also like working on it. My Uncle Burl would come up on the weekends and we would take a squawk list and we'd go through and he was supervising me as an IA so I could do the maintenance. He'd come in and he'd sign it off and then I could go fly again.

So lots of this parts of this were attractive to you and, and, and all I knew is I couldn't get enough.

Like, I always say it doesn't matter. You don't necessarily have to pick a direction or a destination. Just pick a direction. And I knew that like more airplanes. So I was like, well, I don't know, there's another air show. Let's go to the air show and we'll like, we'll learn more. And that's how I end up in Mojave. It's just everything was here.

So. Did you, did you end up with a formal, did you go to university?

Yeah. So I went to engineering school. I got a degree in mechanical engineering. And again, it's this, at Scale, we used to talk about design, build, test. It's the full loop, right? So it's the, the theory that explains how a thing works. And that, you know, so I know that I want to have an airplane that'll do X. What does that look like? Taking that into the physical realm, right? So not only like drawing it, but also like we're going to make it out of composite, we're going to weld, we're going to rivet, we're going to screw, whatever, right? So design, build, and then to get in the aircraft and feel it, right? And have it do the thing underneath you or not that you had intended, that it closes the loop. And that's where you get the return on investment, right? So Um, in a traditional engineering world, uh, especially in aerospace, there's a lot of guys that design a bit and they, especially like in a classified environment, like you may design something 10 times and never see it do the thing you design it for. There was a guy I used to work with who had done 5, uh, tailhooks, um, for classified vehicles. Uh, so if it's going to run off the runway, this tailhook would deploy and you catch the cable at the end of the rope. And he'd never seen the vehicle finished. So just think he could be carrying the same error through everything he'd ever done. Right. And he'd worked a whole career and he would never know. And so the big thing for me was if I pick mechanic, right, then you're that guy that's on the airplane saying, "That engineer made the space too small. Why did he use this size washer?" Right? You know, there's that guy, right? And then, you know, if you're the pilot, you know, you're saying like, "Man, that tone's going off at the wrong time," whatever, right? And then if you're the engineer, you're saying like, "Well, how could I possibly understand what it is to fly this thing 6, 10 hours a day or whatever?" Like everybody's sort of abstract as the problem gets too complex. And so, so picking a space to be, and that's what ended up fascinating me about flight test, is it's the center of the Venn diagram. It's sort of, you have to be able to talk to a scheduler, like we talked about before, it was political capital. Like I need the investment level guys to understand like, no, this is a moment that's above and beyond the risk that we're willing to take in this organization. But you also have to be able to talk to the mechanic and say like, so they're talking about, you know, this thing that's going on, that doesn't really make sense. Can you show me what, what you fixed or what was broken, right? And be able to talk his language. And understand from that perspective. And that's why it's been ultimately the most rewarding work I've ever done.

Yeah. Ah, the passion. I love it. I love it. The, well, how direct would you, you're like, that's how I ended up in Mojave. How direct was your path from that engineering degree to Mojave?

So I went to school in upstate New York. You know, there's like the Embry-Riddles and that kind of stuff. And I didn't, I was wor— honestly, if we're talking turkey, I was worried that if I lived around pilots and wannabe pilots, I would, um, it would put the fire out. So I was trying to like kind of hold it like I'd always had aviation be my thing and I would go to school and it wouldn't. So I wanted to continue that. And I was at a school in upstate New York where all the engineers left and either went to an atomic, uh, laboratory, right, where we lab where we would do atomic testing on the ground, or they would do windmills, uh, for General Electric. And I was like, I, I like, I don't think I can do that. Like I like I like engineering, like I'm passionate about how the pieces fit together and how the math, how the world adds up to the math, adds up to the vehicle. But so I was sort of having an existential moment. I made a list of the coolest things I could think of and, you know, like Spaceship One, right? Reno Air Racing.

Yeah. Like what year is this? How old are you?

So it was— I graduated in '06.

Okay.

Graduate college. Okay. And so, I made a list of the coolest things I could think of. And then it was like, well, I'm going to call them all, right? And I'm like, just this dumb kid. But it was like, it was a big moment. I was, I was, anyway, I wanted, I wasn't going to put up with no answer. You know, the timeline was running out. You run out of school and you got to have a plan of attack. Anyway, so I just, I had, in order to call them or contact them, I had to know where they were. So I like, I had this big spreadsheet, it had 52 lines on it of different organizations that I was interested in. And then the next line would be the address and I'd start putting the address. Like, these guys are all in Mojave. What is Mojave? What is this thing? Right? And so that summer I got in my cruddy old— no, no. Yeah. Anyway, I drove out here and knocked on every door on the airport and said, like, do you guys need help? Like, I can't be here all summer and not make money. I need to feed myself, but I don't need much more. You know, I got this pickup truck and I'd get a crappy apartment figured out. So then I spent that summer, I had a logbook, like a little quarter-page composition notebook. And every day I would write down who I met, what airplanes I saw fly in order to sort of keep log of, because I knew I had just a very limited time here for that summer internship and I had to go back to school. And I knew that I needed to come back here. And so I needed to have a list of people to contact. And then once I got back to New York for my last year of school, I just, I had a schedule. This sounds so dark. I like the look on your face. What?

No, I'm impressed, man. I like this.

On Friday afternoon, the assumption was that Friday afternoon people are in good moods. So with the time difference, because I'm in New York, they're in California, I would call everybody on the list and say, hey man, like just to remind you, we met over the summer and like, I think you're cool and I want to work with you guys. Do you need another copy of my resume? Do you know of any other jobs I can apply for on the organization? Do you know of any other jobs that are available on the field? Like I really want to be out there.

I was not looking at you funny. I actually, I did similar things, um, at least when I was like applying to college. I was trying to get a tennis scholarship because I played tons of tennis and, and, but I was, I was like good but not like that good. So I really had to sell it. And so I put together all these packages with videos and essays, like VHS tapes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Right.

Like I remember putting them all in the envelope and I had my whole counter all lined up, and then I called all the coaches. This was like, email was just, it was available but not prevalent. And so you had to call them all, make sure they got it, see if they saw it.

And, and anyway, I go about and make sure you say the right name because you do 10 in a row.

Like, and I mean, not to go all old man on this podcast, but I'm pretty, I'm sure I am often shocked. I get so many emails of people reaching out I don't know, sometimes they want to work with you or whatever, their kids looking. There's just such a difference between if you get 100 of those, I would say one person follows up and is like really pushing it, pushing it, pushing it. And they stand out so much from the other 99 just, just from following up. It's literally could be one extra email or one extra phone call and it makes a difference.

It's so funny to me., for me, that, that part of this, like having an online personality, um, getting the emails and the whatever, the reachouts and like it gets overwhelming and I can't keep up with it is the most heartbreaking thing of the whole deal. Like it honestly, if there's anything that makes me want to stop putting things on the internet, it's just that like, I can't, I can't keep up with it. Like, uh, like, uh, and it's, I just feel like I'm letting everybody down. I'm like, there's a little guy that I understand out there that needs something and I can't,, but then the other one is like, you know, I get guy, like I said, and my wife is like, why are you, you don't know this guy. Why are you like advocating for him with a stranger? Like it's such a hard, a hard deal, but I hadn't thought about a second email. That's a good, I like that.

No, it's just, you know, it's stupid and trivial, but it is, it's just, you can just always tell the person that follows up from the one that doesn't. And I guess I think a lot of times in my head I was always like, oh, I assume everybody's doing this, but it turns out they really aren't. So. There you go, kids. You can— lesson— that's your lesson for the day.

That's great.

I like that.

So, okay. There's so many other things I just wanted to talk with you and directions to go, but, but, you know, part of how you and I got to know each other also is through— you have your own hangar here at Mojave and you, in addition to test flying other people's crafts, you have your own planes that you're working on. With your friend Justin, and you do races. And tell me about this part of your life. There's gonna be a lot of people listening to this that don't even know this world exists. So describe it.

Yeah, in general, the same attitude that we're talking about, about not wanting to do anything else and being willing to do, you know, all the extra stuff, has sort of carried on all since then. So my T-hanger, my hangars here in Mojave have always been that. So whether that be building a race plane for myself or looking after a race plane for somebody else or modifying a race plane for somebody else or helping a guy finish a project or holding onto a project where somebody goes through a funding problem or whatever, right, has always been a part of what we do. That can be fabrication. So, you know, I think between Justin and I, we built well, I don't know, 4, 5, 6.

Remind me Justin's last name.

Uh, Gillen. Okay. Yeah. So Justin and I've been doing this Wasabi thing for, I don't know, getting on 20 years. But, um, whether it be that building an airplane like from scratch, or whether it be finishing an airplane, or fix an airplane that's broke, or, uh, we just recently had a guy that, um, the big thing with, with building airplanes is like everybody's good at something and not good at other things. And so you tend to kind of go through phases. Typically you're Aircraft starts with like just gathering parts and finding enough space to work. So some guys, you know, they get parts and they can— they never get a garage or a hangar to work in. So that ends up being a spot where you lose guys. And the next step is it's all primary structure, so it's big bolts and, you know, composite structures and like, you know, that kind of stuff. And so some guys just can't transition to that and you lose them. And then you start stuffing systems in, so some guys can't handle wiring and so they drop off there. Or it's hanging the motor and they're just too intimidated by the propulsion system. Or it's like it starts to get into a real airplane now, it doesn't fit in your garage, you have to move it to the hangar. And so having a hangar that, um, has tools in that's close enough to your house, or you have to now— you've spent thousands of hours working in your garage. Now you have to figure out how to work, you know, 20 minutes down the road. So you got to find the right hangar or whatever. But each one of these are sort of jump-off points. And because Justin and I've been through it, we can kind of help somebody through whatever that phase is that they're struggling with. And the payoff has always been that we get access to more projects and more airplanes, which is what Justin and I live for.

So you have people— okay, when you talk about racing airplanes, what does that mean?

Sure. Yeah. So racing can mean a lot of things. I would put it basically in 3 categories. There's like cross-country racing. Um, like the, there's guys that race, you know, from Dayton, Ohio up to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, or they race out in Utah. There'll be like one turn, like take off and fly out to a spot and back. And sometimes it's like time trials where we'll like, somebody takes off every 2 minutes and then we look at elapsed time between two, two points. Or sometimes it's people take off together. It all depends on the structure. So that's cross-country racing. The other one is the sort of the Red Bull racing, which I think people are most familiar with, where it's a sort of a combination of air show and racing, but it's time trial. So one person's flying at a time and they're flying against a stopwatch, and then our times are compared at the end, assuming that everybody flew the course properly.

And there's like, there's like obstacles and things in that, or—

Yeah, yeah, honestly, I don't— I'm not one to speak about Red Bull. I don't— I didn't do it. But yeah, so there's like these pylons that are inflatable, and you fly near them, and some of them you have to slalom between, and some of them you have to fly between two of them, and their altitude's important, and if you run into them, that's bad, and that kind of stuff. I, I'm not big on either of those kinds of racing. For me, it's, uh, pylon racing, uh, so Reno Air Racing was something that, you know, was the coolest thing I could think of since I was just a kid. So Reno Air Racing or Pylon Air Racing, it goes back to pre-World War II, but right after World War II it was in Cleveland and then eventually it was in Reno. There have been races around the rest of the world, etc., or country, etc. But the big one was Reno. And fundamentally it's 8 airplanes in the sky at the same time racing around telephone poles. It's a big oval. If you go below the pylon, you're penalized for being too low. If you go too high, it gets hard for the judges to see you and what you're doing and understand what you're doing. And so other than that, it's like basically a big car track, like, you know, Indianapolis 500. You know, there's no turns, there's no slaloming or anything like that. It's an oval, but it's 8 airplanes in the sky trying to go for one spot for being the fastest guy on a given day.

And how many laps do you do?

It depends. But, you know, we're talking on average, most classes take about a minute per lap to finish. And you're looking at on the order of 6 to 8 laps depending on— we're talking about a lot of different things right now, but So it's like a 10-minute race, something like that. And you're going sort of somewhere between whatever, you know, 60 and 100 miles, something like that.

Is that scary, dangerous?

Um, it's— we were talking earlier about the fighter pilot thing. Um, it was really important for me, uh, to have earned my stripes, right? And this is something that, uh, uh, it's not the safest kind of flying. It's very similar to air combat in some ways. Um, not that I know anything about fighting in a war or whatever, but you're sort of competing against other pilots in sort of an intense environment. It's not— I'm trying to be pragmatic here. The fatality rate was a problem. I would say that that was mostly because the sort of appetite for risk in the United States or in the world has changed over the last— you know, the event went on for 60 years or something like that. And over that time, like the first year I raced during qualifying, the beginning of the week, the lady in the pit next to my airplane disintegrated in the air. And she, she passed and we didn't fill her spot and we kept flying that day. And that was sort of part of the culture, right? The reality was that like, you don't get to do this racing stuff very often and we're not going to shut the whole event down because somebody got hurt. And so like a lot of years nobody would get hurt. Every once in a while several people would get hurt. There'd be several accidents and that was sort of built into it.

Okay. Hopefully, hopefully I'm not committing a HIPAA violation or embarrassing you too much. But I also remember you telling me a story about Wearing a— having a catheter and like a 12-hour flight as part of some race, which— what was that?

Yeah. So we— I set a distance record. Well, a— it was a point-to-point record set between here and Oshkosh, Wisconsin. So we talked earlier about my dad setting these point-to-point records, and that was the first exposure that I had to it. And the reality is that that's sort of an easy, like, early record-setting experience that a person can have to get themselves in the book. Um, I wanted to have those experiences myself, and I thought, well, what can we do one better? And then just picking two random towns. Well, let's pick two towns that are very important, if not to me, to some subgroup. So for me, uh, Mojave, California, which is where, you know, home building in a lot of ways was, you know, came to its own or was built or whatever, and Oshkosh are two magical spots. And so if I draw a line between them, between them, and set a record for that, that distance, then that would be important to me. And then I set another record from Mojave to Reno. Same thing. Those are two places that are important to me. But anyway, I mean, the flight to Wisconsin is— I think I could have done it in 9, but my wife wanted me to— she wanted to watch. The airplane is a race plane, so it doesn't have any— doesn't have electrical system. It doesn't— you can't charge the battery after you take off. I can't put the canopy on after, like, I can't taxi in that configuration. I couldn't really taxi the airplane. Like you basically set it on the runway, start the engine, race, right? And I'm going to fly it across the whole country. So she was nervous about that. So, uh, Justin modified his airplane so he could also make the flight nonstop, and she rode with him, and he had good radios and everything like that. So I could just jump on his wing and he'd kind of drag me over there in the event that I had problems with the iPad I brought.

You flew nonstop from here to Wisconsin, and you're trying to do it just in the fastest time anyone's—

yeah, there was no one had set the record before, so you're going to get the record anyway. So it was a lot more like sort of ceremonial. Um, once Osh— once Oshkosh found out about it, or once EAA found out about the air show, found out about it, they invited us to lay during the air show, which meant there was just almost enough hours in the daylight in the day to do it and only be in daylight. But once they wanted us to land during the air show, it moved us up, which meant we had to take off, uh, earlier here. Uh, so we ended up taking off like 4 o'clock in the morning, 3:30 in the morning, with thunderstorms over Vegas in the dark in an airplane I'd never flown in the dark before. And then you don't fly formation in the dark, so we're kind of all on our own until the sun comes up. And we were just on the east side of Vegas and there was enough light that we could kind of gather back up. And then the last step that happened was, uh, once the rest of the Scaled Mojave community found out what we were doing, they all wanted to be a part of it. It ended up being 6 or 7 airplanes that all flew together.

Oh, what a convoy.

Oh, it was freaking awesome, man.

Yeah.

Like, it's like some great, like, uh, camaraderie, right?

Yeah.

And then there was 3 different, what ended up happening is there's sort of 3 different classes of aircraft, 3 different speeds. So they all took off at different times. And then we all met up sort of as we crossed, uh, was it the Missouri River or whatever? Sort of an hour and a half, 2 hours from the air show. And then we had this massive formation, like descending on the air show. And it was really cool.

That's it. And nobody's peeing this whole time. This is—

well, right, right. So I put a relief tube in my airplane because I was by myself, uh, but, uh, my wife and, uh, Justin were gonna fly together, and the plan had been that they would like put up a discreet curtain and then they would be able to take care of stuff. And it turned out it was just too weird in the cockpit, so they just didn't pee for 12 hours. Or we ended up getting there in like 10 and a half hours, but they made us orbit for an hour because the air show. So, uh, yeah, so Uh, so they really had to go.

But commitment, commitment to the craft.

That's right.

You know, I like it. I like it. How many, how many aircraft? What's like an, I don't know, what's a normal week or month for you in terms of how much you fly? And then how many aircraft have you flown in your, your life?

Sure. So, uh, types of aircraft, um, I'm getting right around 150 types.

Wow.

Um, this last year I flew somewhere like on the order of 1,200 hours. Which is a lot for me. Usually in flight tests you don't get to fly that much because you spend a lot of time on the ground. But I've had a couple gigs in a row where there was a lot of flying and then using my airplane to get around has been a lot of that. But yeah, like in the last 2 weeks I've flown maybe between 6 and 10 different airplanes. In the last year or 2, I've set Couple world records and, um, got like 3 first flights in the last, like, I was thinking on the way over, I probably should have got the logbook out and had answers for this stuff, but yeah.

So, and the first flight is the first person to take a new vehicle up. Okay. I mean, this is the part where I just think you guys are crazy. I cannot imagine what would have to happen to me for me to like get in one of those. For the first time I do it. I mean, obviously if I'd been flying my whole life, it's probably much, much different equation than me, idiot journalist, even thinking about doing this. But do you, do you, every time you do that, do you have the emotions I'm talking about? Do you have fears or no? That's, yeah.

The first, first flight I did, you would have been able to see it right out the window here. It was a little wood and fabric airplane that I found partially built at a museum in Northern California, and I finished building it, and then therefore had the privilege to determine who got to fly it.

Good idea. Good idea.

I decided I should be the guy. I was paralyzed with fear.

Weren't you just like, I should not do this?

I mean— The old joke, right? I'd rather die than look bad, right? So it was not about, fear of getting hurt. It was about fear of embarrassing yourself publicly, right? And that goes all the way back, like with the personality type that does this kind of stuff. So yeah, you just, you know, I was working at Scaled. I wanted to fly the spaceship more than anything else in the world. I wanted to be a test pilot at Scaled more than anything else in the world. This was a path, a part of that path to getting there was this little airplane of my buddies and homies. We were all working together trying to build airplanes to build shits. I was the first one through the gate. Like it would be real easy to be the first one that fell off the table. And so, yeah, I mean, I'm paralyzed. But, you know, looking back, I'm proud of the work that I did building up to it. The reality is the physiological response of being exposed to a new thing is kind of hard to deal with. And now having done, you know, whatever, 20-some first flights, the, the, you have all the skills there, that novelty's gone. Right. And so a lot of the time, like, you know, the first 10 first flights that I did was just figuring out how to get how to get the novelty out of the room. Because at the end of the day, like, um, uh, my job as a tester is if you designed it, I want to bring you into the cockpit as much as possible, right? You know what to do. You're just bringing me in there to be hands and feet. So on one hand, I want to do what you tell me to do, but then after the flight, I need to be able to tell you what happened, right? You need to be able to almost occupy my body. If I'm like, like all wigged out and lizarded out, right, and not, you know, one of the big things that happens is as you get nervous, you're literally, your peripheral vision goes away and you start to tunnel out. Like, my job is to be thinking about traffic, airports, you know, what's happening on the wingtip, the instrument you told me to worry about, all these things at the same time. And as you get nervous, right, and it tunnels down, you start— whatever, you fixate on airspeed, right? Then I'm not doing my job. So a lot of that, those first several flights, was just about figuring out how to take that novelty out of the cockpit, make there not be triggers. So like, um, one thing was I never really flown with like a helmet and a parachute on. So now every time I put on the helmet parachute, I was like, oh man, I'm doing And then it would be just like a physical cue that like, okay, well, we're going to fly with parachute a lot. We're going to fly with the helmet on a lot. I'm going to make sure that that's not a deal, right? Another one was like, you realize as you're taxiing out, you're like, I haven't taxied this thing, right? Like, okay, we're going to taxi a lot before we fly from now on, right? Oh man, like I'm, I'm lizarded out because I'm nervous and I'm looking for the airspeed indicator and you're doing this thing where you're like, where is the airspeed? Oh, well, I can fix that chair flying, right? I can sit in the cockpit for 4 hours before the flight and say, Airspeed indicator, bam, oil pressure, bam, right? And getting yourself ready, right? But all those things were lessons learned that came from going through the circus, right? And so as a result, now I think that that's what I'm selling to a customer is that like you've got somebody that's been through it and they're not, the novelty's not gonna be there.

And so, and you were talking about working at Scaled and Scaled for people who don't know is a lot of people would say, of course you've had military, testing the Mojave out here for a long time, but, but kind of made the Mojave in a lot of ways because it was this, um, fascinating company that was moving fast, making all kinds of new vehicles. It was doing cool stuff and, and breathing life in this place. So you wanted to work there because they had so many new aircraft coming that this is a great opportunity for you to be at the cutting edge, right?

So again, I'm looking back from the college perspective, right? I knew that I wanted to be somewhere in this intersection of maintenance and fabrication and engineering and piloting. Like, I knew I wanted to be in that space. And so, uh, Scaled, or specifically Burt, um, you know, he's one of the most prolific designers of all time. You know, he's what, 30, 40 designs? Yeah, sorry, Burt Rutan. Um, so like, you know, one of the things, if you want to be around that space, it'd be good to be around a lot of not, uh, serial numbers, but, uh, you know, part numbers, right? Like different aircraft, right? And somebody that's going through that cycle as much as possible.. And so then coming out here was when I realized, especially in the complexity of the space program, as a vehicle gets complex, it gets easier and easier to end up way down in a niche. And a lot of the value that Scaled has is that because they've been through the rodeo so many times, they understand that center space where everything intersects. So you may be interested in space because you are really interested in liquid-liquid propulsion rocket motors, right? And you really know a lot about pumps and turbo machinery and way down in a row. But when it comes time to make a vehicle, right, human fingers have to touch a radio and change frequencies, right? The canopy has to be able to be latched. You know, there has to be, it has to be able to operate within the airspace of the United States, right? Like these are much broader things, right? And so having been through that several times, it made Scaled very valuable. And that was, anyway, that's what ended up interesting me about Scaled. And then ultimately interesting me in the sort of the center of the Venn diagram that was flight test is that you, it's the ultimate, right? You need to be able to converse with lots of different subsets of skills and add value.

And the— so you trained yourself to deal with this job, and how does your family deal with this job? You talked about your wife going on that flight and wanting to see you, and I know you've been through some adventures and you're still married, so. I guess. Um, but it's got to be, it's got to be a pretty nerve-wracking, um, position for a spouse.

Yeah, uh, she's an absolute rock star. That's probably the most important thing to say. But the, um, uh, she grew up in an Air Force, uh, family. So her dad was not only, um, he did loadmaster stuff, so he was traveling around the world doing that. So he was an aviator who was around, you know, and had to go somewhere to do aviation stuff over the horizon. But then when she was coming up He was working as an engineer on the C-17 program down in Long Beach. So she was exposed to flight tests and aircraft development through that. She wasn't much interested in it until we started hanging out. But once we started hanging out and then, you know, she's working at Scaled, she quickly went from sort of, and I'm proud of her. So this is me speaking with pride about, you know, a woman I obviously I'm very fond of, but she progressed from sort of an administrative role to, for most of the time that we worked together at Scaled, she was directly supporting flight tests. So she was living in that world a lot, you know, during the day, independent of at night when we were designing and building and flying aircraft. She wasn't a pilot when I met her. Very quickly, she didn't like being in the cockpit, not knowing what was going on. So she went out and got her pilot's license. But as a result, she has sort of an unusual fluency within aviation. And then on top of it, not to go too far down this rabbit hole, but hanging out in Mojave flying RAT experimentals as a pilot, She has a fair number of, you know, I think she's got 6 deadstick landings under her belt. She's had 6 emergency landings, uh, in aircraft. So that's, uh, so she's been there, she's done it, right? Um, and so she knows exactly what it is, for good or for bad.

Wait, okay, so a deadstick landing is the aircraft's not responding?

The joke is deadstick, so the propeller looks like a dead stick on the front of the airplane. It's not, it's not doing the thing it's supposed to do. It's just, it's stuck, right? It's just a dumb stick. The reality is the propeller usually doesn't stop. It's a, it's a windmill. So if you're moving through the air, it'll turn whether or not the engine's making thrust. But yeah, it just means that you, you're in the air and you need to be on the ground.

So that— And she's had 6 of those and walked away from all of them. So you can still guide it down.

Yeah. So, uh, effectively, uh, becomes a glider, uh, once the propulsion system's gone. So unless you're dealing with a more complex failure where you're dealing with, uh, something that might be dealing with structures or you have some sort of a flight control problem or some sort of, uh, crew, you know, cabin problem where it's, you know, smoke in the cockpit or, you know, something is hurting the— like, I was in a situation where I was getting sprayed in the face with methanol and there was a chance of going blind from methanol exposure. That's the engine's running fine, the landing gear is going to go up and down, the flight controls work. It's just whether or not the pilot's going to be there to fight the deal. Most of the time that happened to you. Yeah, several times. It was a separate program, but sounds like a winner. It was one of the most rewarding projects of my life. Right. But yes, there was a lot of methanol stuff. So, but in her case, yeah. So the engine goes off and it becomes a glider, right? Just like when the engine quits in your car, you shift it into neutral and you roll until you hopefully get to a gas station, but at least you get to the side of the road.

Right.

That's the same scenario. So if you're over an airport or you're over someplace, you can put it down. It's not that big a deal.

So, yeah, right. And has there ever been a moment where you were like, that's enough?

There's been a couple. Yeah, there's been a couple.

But obviously you're still doing it.

Yeah, there's, I think there's a lot of people that do what I do that come in with a lot of swagger. I don't think I'm that guy. Like I'm not the guy telling you here that I'm the baddest dude ever. So swagger's a part of it, but it's not like, it's one thing to be in a room like this and tell you I'm the best ever, right? It's another thing to realize that like you're dealing with the unknown. And you have to have some amount of confidence in yourself to handle the problems of the day, or you're not going to get in the airplane, right? So you, so you approach the vehicle with confidence and you believe, I'm the right guy for the job, I'm prepared, right? There's a thing when you're in the airplane and you've got all your bells and whistles out and you're spinning all your plates and you, you're running out of ideas and the things kind of, things are going haywire fast. Uh, I've destroyed 3 airplanes. Um, uh, all were pretty close calls, and in all those cases it was I was kind of down to the threads of ideas, and that's a really unfun place to be. I think the other side is that if we're talking about marketable skills, that's something that hopefully I can provide to a customer is some of that realism about like what we're really dealing with here as far as what it looks like when things go sideways. But the reality is that you're limited to your sort of storytelling to be able to communicate to that, to the owner. And the other side is that in my case, I'm worried about my pink butt. In their case, they're worried about whether or not they're going to make this next funding round or whether they're going to have to go get a real job or whatever. So there's sort of a fundamental base level, but I try not to make it that. We just try to talk about the risk to your vehicle and to your program.

And if you've destroyed 3 craft, does that mean you parachuted out or what's, what's the worst thing that happened to you?

No, I've never had to parachute out. There was twice I was told by ground crew to bail out and I didn't. I don't know if that makes me smart or dumb. I guess since I'm still here, like since I was able to get the thing down, everything's fine. But no, all the cases we're talking about effectively a hard off-airport landing that destroyed the vehicle or totaled the aircraft.

And you walked away.

Yeah. All so far. Yeah.

Yeah.

It's good. We do actually, we have at least like a faux wood. Go with it. And like, is this type of job, because you're dependent on these new programs and it has these ups and downs, do you have to do stuff in the interim between gigs?

Yeah. Yeah. There's always other stuff kicking around. The air show company that I mentioned before, that was, there was a lot less flight testing in that job and a lot more technical sales. The, uh, if we're being honest, uh, right now I've been spending a lot of time moving airplanes for people. Uh, I spent a lot of time as a tester, you're sort of orbiting over the same airport all the time. You know, you're working something in the cockpit. So where you are geographically doesn't matter. So why add any risk? So you stay over there. So I had some time, um, I had a profitable summer and so I taken some time to just move airplanes for people. So like for the last 3, 4 months, I've just been flying around the country moving weird stuff.

Who wants airplanes moved?

Well, it turns out there's a lot of people that need airplanes moved. And the reality is it's not really great paying work. So it typically goes to sort of lower level guys. And so if you come in with a fair amount of experience, I mean, like I said, I've flown a lot of different kinds of airplanes. I got a fair amount of time flying. It becomes easy to insure. At the end of the day, all flying comes down to insurance. It's really nothing to do with the FAA. It just comes down to whether or not you can get insured. So the background I have, I can, I can get a lot of, I can fly a lot of stuff. So there's a lot of opportunity.

Is it like putting a private jet somewhere?

Yeah. Yeah. You know, you bought an airplane,, and it's in Massachusetts and you'd love to go get it, but you, boy, you got to work the next 2 weeks and your wife really wants to see the airplane, or, um, you need airplanes to be moved for paint, or, uh, just coming out of maintenance and you, you know, you builded the maintenance and he's in, you know, there's one right now in, um, uh, with San Jose and he's got, uh, the airplane's been down for 3 years. It's a, it's a racer, you know, fire breather. And, um, he doesn't, he's not really qualified to do the first flight out in the thing. And then, you know, he thinks he wants to ferry it, but he probably won't. And, uh, he needs some dual and somebody get him spooled up when he gets there. And so, you know, I'm an instructor, I've flown the things before, I've dealt with the funky systems. And so it ends up being actually similar to some of the flight test stuff, but you get the payoff of getting to actually go somewhere, which I don't usually get to do, which is fun.

What's like the most lucrative job you could be doing with your skills that you're not doing because you want to keep flying?

Yeah. The unmanned flight test and in general unmanned operation of aircraft is surprisingly profitable.

—so that you're in a, you're in a building, a trailer, guiding something.

Yeah, so that's directly flight test. And if you just look at the, uh, you know, aviation, then, uh, like the bizjet guys, like if you're, um, you know, all the names, uh, in Southern California, you know, Kardashian and Ashton Kutcher and, you know, Musk, they all have like fleets of jets and people that fly them. And these are people that need to be professional and outward-facing. They need to be able to operate the best equipment that's out there in a very professional manner. They need to be able to respond immediately and then disappear for a week because, you know, Musk wants to go Galápagos. Uh, and so it's, you know, associated, the price goes up.

But, and, and it's just, well, you have a family, you got two young kids. I mean, and you have this passion for what you do. I mean, I could see all kinds of reasons you don't want to, but that's, is that, um, did I tick off the major boxes?

Um, I, I think, uh, every time I reach a milestone, we, we tick off a box, uh, and finish a program, you kind of find yourself looking in the mirror being like, is this enough? Like, have I done enough? Can I take myself, take the pressure off myself and throttle back? You mentioned the kids because most of the jobs we're talking about, you're still gone a lot. So like, is there a solution that allows you to do a lot of this stuff and be closer to home? Like, I constantly struggle with it, but the reality is like, I mean, this morning, you know, I woke up at 4 o'clock and I couldn't sleep until now. And what was I thinking about? I was thinking about flight tests and airplanes. I was thinking, you know, that's just Unfortunately, it's— or fortunately, the fire's still pretty.

Um, I've asked you the big questions I want to ask you. I'm going to ask you a couple dumb last questions. Um, so when you watch Top Gun— yeah, have you watched? I have. Okay. Yeah, I mean, are you, are you, uh, are you enjoying it like, like many of the rest of us, or it's just goofy and, and, or annoying? Because these are These are the annoying guys who show up for the, for the jobs with their—

Well, there's that bit, but, um, hopefully I'm mature enough to handle that. On my best days, we'll say I'm mature enough to handle that. No, I think the, um, it was a really, really poignant moment. I saw the movie, like, um, I was on a gig, so I was out of town and I just— the night it came out or whatever, me and some homies went and looked at it and that's fine. Um, and then I came back, I was home for the weekend and I grabbed my boys and we went to a movie theater here in town or nearby. And, um, so this is the new one. This is the new one. Yeah, because I mean, there's— they weren't around, um, and we saw on screen, you know, a dramatic interpretation of something they see me do. And we're sitting in theater seats underneath the supersonic corridor of Edwards, something I didn't even know about when I saw the movie myself. I just thought this stuff was cool. Now they have like all this cool context, and, uh, it was cool, uh, moment of like feeling like I was sharing with them and feeling like, you know, like maybe we did something, you know, I was able to physically get here. I was able to do aviation enough that they saw me do it and now they see it on screen and maybe it helps them sort of see that they could do stuff in the world.

How much beach volleyball happens in the cast?

It's a cornerstone. And honestly, we don't like to talk about it.

That's not how it is in the movie though. Pretty proud. It's something like the, the Right Stuff, the book. Was that a thing for you? Is it—

The Right Stuff is, uh, if there's a movie or like a piece of literature like that's really important, especially out here, The Right Stuff is much bigger deal than Top Gun or Maverick.

Yeah, 100%. Like, like in that, that's something you read growing up or—

Yeah, I mean, those stories are here and that, that's, I mean, those are the, the, um, the totems of this world. Yeah. I mean, uh, Pancho's, uh, the wreckage of Pancho's, uh, rodeo or whatever you want to call her bar is here. And that, you know, do people go there once a year to celebrate it?

Okay, because I remember reading about this bar, and then there's a— there's a bar that's kind of got like, um, Wing and a Prayer is what you're thinking of. Okay, yeah, it's got an airplane stick outside of it. There's one that says something about the, the men who walk through these doors, or, or, um— oh, it's just right here near the airport somewhere.

Um, I mean, there's like—

it looks like a test pilot bar. But now, and now that you're saying that, where's, where's, where's Poncho? Uh, Poncho's—

the, the rubble that was her. So basically what happened was they, they needed to make the base bigger. Okay, I'm not an expert because it's further away.

It's— Poncho's was not in, uh, right here, right?

No, no, it was on the south side of Edwards, my understanding. I don't know anything. No, no, but the fence is now on the other side of it, so you can't get to it without base access. Just south of where the base is, there's another bar that comes and goes, but it has historically been called Wing and a Prayer. And all the testers in the area, there's like patches all over the roof, and there's like, you know, an airplane sticking in the, in the top of it, that kind of stuff. Um, so that— it may or may not be in it active right now, I don't know. And then the other one is the Society of Experimental Test Pilots was founded in a bar that is— but was a hotel at the time, but it's in Roseman, just south of here. And I— it was a strip club for a while, and then I think they're selling weed out of there right now. But that, but it doesn't have anything, you wouldn't know it driving by that has anything to do with aviation, but it's right by the Edwards gate.

Sounds great. The Society of Experimental Pilots. Test pilots. Test pilots. Is that, that's just a group of, uh, yeah.

So back to your kind, we were talking earlier, there's no rating for flight tests. There's no rating to be a test pilot. So, uh, it's a merit-based organization. So you have to prove that you've done enough flight tests and that you've got the credentials and then you're, you know, you get a pin and then you're a member. In the United States, without any other way to say I'm a test pilot, that's the most official thing. And you're in. Yeah. Yeah. So for me, as a civvy, to become a member of the society was a really big deal. And at the time I wasn't flying for Scaled, so I had to get in on my own merit using outside flight tests that I'd done mostly in Reno Racers, which was— I was very— I am very proud of that. It was a hard thing to do.

No, that is cool. That's very cool. Okay. Last thing that you mentioned, getting notes from youngsters and other people, and this is primarily through your YouTube channel. Yeah.

So YouTube, email, Instagram, phone calls.

And this is people watching you do your, your racing and your exploits.

Yeah. So like, I, I think it's not an uncommon career thing that you, you know, graduate engineering school and you go out into the world and you see that, you know, these guys get to do engineering and they get to fly. Like, that seems like a good thing to do. And I've got a pilot's license, like, what's the difference? And so you start reaching out to people that seem to have been able to make the transition. Um, and, and that's what's typically, you know, sort of 22 to 28 male, uh, engineering background, uh, you know, private pilot or early commercial pilot. He's been doing a little bit of acro. He might have flew an RV or something like that. Done a little bit of experimental stuff. Wants to chat about it. All right.

Well, I'm being a jerk cuz we're putting the plug in at the end, but I'll put it in the show notes. But I'll, we, where should people, What, what do they look for to find? Yeah.

So, uh, I'm, it's under Wasabi or under my name. There's plenty of ways to get ahold of me. My phone number's all over the internet. And I mean, um, again, in the earlier conversation, like I, I'm crippled by the fact that I can't respond as much as I do, but like, especially like before I flew everywhere in my little airplane, I used to drive everywhere. I put 120,000 miles on my truck the year before I started flying everywhere. And I would just put on my flying headset. So I'd had a boom mic and I would, these guys, I just talked, you know, whatever, how long you wanna talk? I gotta talk. I gotta drive for 6 hours. Doesn't matter to me. And then, um, and I— the big thing is that the guys I'm able to talk to, and I try as much as I can, um, I say, give me feedback, like, let me know what happened. Like, where'd you end up? What'd you do? Did you, you know, did you decide to go take that biz jet job, or do you stay as an engineer? Were you able to find a flight test gig? Were you able to get a, you know, FTE thing somewhere? Uh, because like, it's a wild world, there's lots going on.

So, well, you make me very jealous. Anytime I've ever been in, not like a fancy private plane, but somebody's plane they have in a hangar. It's— I'm always like, oh, you did life better than I did. You can just go where you want to go when you want to go there. And I wish I had gotten my pilot's license.

It's a cheat code. I mean, you can get it done, you still got time, but it's a cheat code. And especially in an urban area like with a lot of airports like Los Angeles, like, and with all the traffic in Los Angeles, like, um, it takes me, you know, I do a lot of work in, uh, Chino, uh, down in like, um, like Torrance, Long Beach, and then Camarillo, either any of those are 2.5, 3-hour drives. So 30 minutes, every one of those 30 minutes in my— yeah, which means if I need to take a meeting in my truck, it's one meeting a day. If I got the plane, I can do 3 or 4 in a day, and I still get home in time to see the kids. I mean, it's phenomenal.

And the United States is, as far as I know, the only country that's like this with all these.

It's certainly easier here than anywhere else. Yeah, 100%.

Well, I will remain jealous. I don't think I'm going to put in the time to get my license, even though I do— I have— there have been times in my life when I've that quite seriously.

6 months and on the order of 10 grand, you can do it.

Yeah. Um, now that I, you know, I just need to call you.

I'd be happy to take you through. I'm sure you could find something easier than me, but I'm happy to take it.

Well, Elliot, thanks so much. It's always like my favorite thing to hang with you when we come to Mojave, and you're always generous.

I really appreciate you reaching out. Um, it's been a great, great chance to catch up, see All right, man.

All right. Well, safe, safe travels, and we can't wait to see what you do next. And thank you so much.

Core Memory is hosted by me, Ashlee Vance. Today's guest was Elliott Seguin. The show is produced by me and David Nicholson. Our theme music is by James Mercer and Jon Sortland, and the show is Edited by the John Sortland. Have a great week.