Jeff Thornburg

One of the most exciting projects I got was when I was a young engineer with the Air Force Research Lab, and I got to develop a brand new type of rocket engine called a full-flow stage combustion engine.

That's a fancy name for saying the highest performing rocket engine ever made.

It's a federal, it's a government lab.

There are contractors like Aerospace that support in an FFRDC way.

What does that mean, please?

FFRDC.

No business case, no profit margin.

Okay.

so i got to work on that that rocket engine program and it formed a kernel of several kernels of technology that seeded the propulsion industry for years to come so i got to work on that program between 1999 and 2004 and then that seeded engine programs like j2x that were part of the aries rocket program it seeded things like what stoke is doing with their full flow engine

It seeded what I did with Raptor later on at SpaceX because I developed and architected the Raptor engine system for Starship.

I don't know that I ever got the full, full story.

This is a true story, is that Elon called me at home in Huntsville and said, I got a project I think you might be interested in.

I think so, yeah.

So shortly after I left NASA in Huntsville and went to SpaceX.

I love your question because what I've been watching happening in the quote new space industry is,

Venture capital and businesses chase things that add value or add to the stock price or add to profit.

The government and the FFRDCs focus on necessary technology that there's no business case for.

So I feel that FFRDC should definitely be seeding new technologies like the ones we're developing at Portal for this rapid movement because no one else is going to do it.

So NASA and the Air Force have done a great job over the years of developing technology that then they later put next to the Ark of the Covenant in the warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

And I've been fortunate enough on a few different occasions to go back into the warehouse and pull some of these things that the government has developed.