As CEO of Stratolaunch, aerospace engineering alumnus Zachary Krevor is working to make hypersonic flight cheaper and more accessible so the U.S. can meet the demands of a Mach 5+ future.
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Stratolaunch uses its massive airplane, called Roc, to lift the company’s Talon-A hypersonic vehicle to altitude. (Courtesy: Stratolaunch)
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When you run a company already working at the limits of human capability in flight, it might be hard to think beyond the leading edge. But for Zachary Krevor, opportunity is everywhere.
It might be overstating things to call that idea Krevor’s mantra. However, as CEO of hypersonic flight company Stratolaunch, Krevor is constantly thinking about how to lay the groundwork for his team to make the next advance and deliver the capability his customers need — even if it’s just out of reach.
“I follow that famous Wayne Gretzky hockey quote and make sure our company is always skating to where the puck is going,” Krevor said, “but that takes work and deep thought. We have to piece together a variety of different bits of information like a puzzle, and then develop a concept that’s valuable to our customers. That value is where the puck is going.”
Krevor earned a master’s and Ph.D. in aerospace engineering at Georgia Tech in the early 2000s. At his dad’s urging, he’d studied mechanical engineering as an undergrad at the University of California, Los Angeles. It was a hedge — his father was a chemical engineer who’d worked in aerospace for most of his career and worried about the boom-and-bust cycles he’d experienced in the field. He wanted his son to have as many options as possible.
But the truth was, the younger Krevor had always had his eyes on the sky and the stars. And he couldn’t shake it.
“I gobbled up every single aerospace engineering elective I could,” Krevor said, smiling. “I mean, the bug had gotten me. There was nothing I could do. The passion’s always been in aerospace.”
Krevor hoped to position himself for a career of leadership, and he felt the pull of graduate school so he’d be prepared to lead technically demanding organizations where engineering was at the fore. Of course, aerospace would be the focus this time.
As he started talking to trusted professors and people in the industry, Georgia Tech’s program kept coming up as a clear leader. Krevor had never been to Atlanta or the South. But he applied, and had a phone interview with Dimitri Mavris, now a Regents’ Professor in AE.
“It was during the summer, and at the end of that interview, I was ready to crawl through the phone and start right then,” Krevor said. “I was so excited about what Georgia Tech was doing.”
Krevor joined Mavris’ Aerospace Systems Design Lab that fall, where he worked on design algorithms supporting the GE90 aircraft engine. He loved the work, but his passion had always been spaceflight, and it led him to the Space Systems Design Lab to study with Alan Wilhite and Bobby Braun.
Krevor jumped right into human spaceflight projects after he left Tech, joining Lockheed Martin and working on systems for the Orion capsule and Altair lunar lander craft the company was developing for NASA’s Constellation moon missions. After a few years, he moved to Sierra Nevada to work on their Dream Chaser space plane project. Then he joined Stratolaunch and became vice president of engineering.
At the time, the company was focused on hauling rockets into the air using the largest airplane ever assembled — a dual-fuselage behemoth with six engines and a wingspan longer than the field at Bobby Dodd Stadium. The idea was to drop the rockets, which would then fly to space to deploy a variety of payloads.
After years working on human spaceflight, it was a shift for Krevor. But still space-focused, and attractive: He saw a company tackling hard problems and founded by an engineer, whom Krevor called a visionary. The company had been started by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen to make access to space easier than ever before.
AE alumnus Zachary Krevor (Courtesy: Stratolaunch)
After Allen died, his estate and foundation eventually sold the company, and the new owners saw an opportunity to pivot — to use the capabilities of Stratolaunch’s system to meet an unmet need: hypersonic flight capability. Krevor pivoted with them.
“I thought I could help,” said Krevor, who moved into the role of chief operating officer. “It became a way to answer the call for something our country needed, and I became excited and passionate about it.”
Hypersonic flight — five times the speed of sound and faster — presented Krevor and his team with a host of new challenges. Krevor admitted that was part of the allure. Traveling at roughly a mile a second is just a hard thing to do.
“I think once you go through Tech, you’re attracted to difficult things,” he said, and hypersonics qualifies. “The environment is extremely unforgiving. You’re flying in an environment where temperatures are 2,000 to 3,000 degrees. You’re moving so fast where a control surface in even a tiny, incorrect position can cause loss of the vehicle. You don’t have much time to react, and therefore you have to ensure all of the systems are working together at a very fast speed.”
The challenges are economic too, with a healthy dose of national security implications, Krevor said. Other countries are demonstrating sophisticated capabilities, and the U.S. hadn’t done much in the area over the last two decades. Now the Pentagon is calling for 50 hypersonic flights a year to get caught up.
Stratolaunch works to meet that call using its massive airplane, called Roc, to lift the company’s Talon-A hypersonic vehicle to altitude. Talon-A is a reusable autonomous plane that allows clients to test their technologies in real-world hypersonic conditions at a relatively affordable cost. That means they can develop, test, iterate, and test again.
Talon-A is a reusable autonomous plane that allows clients to test their technologies in real-world hypersonic conditions at a relatively affordable cost. That means they can develop, test, iterate, and test again.
Stratolaunch’s dual-fuselage airplane takes off with the Talon-A hypersonic vehicle. (Courtesy: Stratolaunch)
“Simulations are great. Ground tests are great. They are all needed, and Stratolaunch uses both all the time. But the truth source is flight data,” Krevor said. “To be able to know that your products and your technology is working, you have to go fly. And that’s where Stratolaunch comes in.
“We’re able to accelerate the hypersonic flight cadence and replicate NASA’s X-15 program. We can’t quite answer the 50 hypersonic flights a year yet, but we’re getting there.”
Krevor isn’t running those flights or solving the myriad problems that flying at Mach 5 or 10 presents. But he is clearing the runway so his team can focus on those hard questions. And, as he put it, he’s keeping the lights on, delivering for customers and thinking about what clients or the country need that’s just around the corner. In fact, he said, being CEO is a lot like working on his doctorate 20 years ago.
“You must have initiative and make sure you’re adding value to the academic body or, as in business, for the customer. You have to define that value yourself. And, of course, work with your advisors, mentors, sponsors, who help you test that thesis a bit.”
In other words, you have to see where the puck is going. And get there. Something Krevor’s been working on — in the lab or in business — for a long time.
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