The Vertical Space

In this episode you'll hear from Scott Drennan, an accomplished aerospace innovator and executive. We discuss the DC-3 and Model T "moments" for advanced air mobility, the challenges and opportunities for the industry to manufacture at automotive speed, best practices for leveraging advanced manufacturing and digital engineering, and much more. As we always do in this podcast, you'll hear Scott's advice to entrepreneurs looking to start a business in this new chapter of aviation.

The conversation that follows is with Justin Steinke, Senior Vice President of Commercial Business at Spright. As a senior executive of one of the more sophisticated drone operators in the market, Justin knows the drone industry inside and out. He is just as comfortable discussing macro industry trends as he is getting into the weeds of enabling technologies. Needless to say, we did both. We start with a long discussion on the state of the commercial drone market: the remaining unaddres...

Today’s discussion is with Mykel Kochenderfer, Associate Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford University. He is the director of the Stanford Intelligent Systems Laboratory (SISL), conducting research on advanced algorithms and analytical methods for the design of robust decision making systems. When one of our previous guests recommended we speak with Mykel, he said that Mykel led the ACAS-X effort (a very successful and recent airborne collision avoidance system for our list...

In this episode, we have the great pleasure of talking to Dennis Muilenburg. Dennis needs no introduction, but let’s highlight a few of his accomplishments – before his current role as CEO and Chairman of the Board of New Vista Acquisition Corporation, a Special Purpose Acquisition Company – or SPAC – Dennis was CEO and Chairman of the board of Directors at The Boeing Company, where he started as an engineering intern in 1985. In his close to 40 years of experience in aerospace and defe...

In this episode we speak with Lorenzo Murzilli, CEO of Murzilli Consulting. We discuss the state of the drone market in Europe, including the rate of commercial drone adoption, differences between EU and US, remaining gaps, and EASA regulations. Listen to Lorenzo’s continuous emphasis on and importance of being aware of the hurdles in starting and running a drone business - and to embrace and not avoid these hurdles! To that end, you’ll really enjoy our start-u...