[R]yan McDevitt, 37, is CEO of Benchmark Space Systems, a 2-year-old South Burlington company that makes compact propulsion systems for small satellites.
Benchmark has six employees and is hiring three more to meet a $680,000 contract signed with the U.S. Air Force in March. In November, the company closed on $1.1 million in investment from local angel investors and two venture capital firms: Launch Capital in Boston and Fresh Tracks in Vermont. It’s receiving another $600,000 from investors this month and expects to start selling its product to other customers later this year or early in 2020.
McDevitt grew up in the Burlington area and graduated in 2003 from Worcester Polytechnic Institute. He earned a PhD in mechanical engineering from the University of Vermont in 2014 and then worked with his adviser, professor Darren Hitt, and the university’s Office of Technology Commercialization to start his company, filing a patent application for technology he had developed as a graduate student. It’s that technology — a method of making rockets work more efficiently — that he is now commercializing at Benchmark. His co-founder is Matt Shea, a first-year classmate who now lives in Pennsylvania but is involved in day-to-day operations as COO.
McDevitt won consecutive $50,000 awards in 2016 and 2017 from the university for his startup, and used the money to create a prototype he could show potential investors. He credits the Vermont Center for Emerging Technologies for teaching him how to pitch to investors. Without that help, he said, he would have had to leave the state to work in the space industry elsewhere. He also credits five years he spent running his in-laws’ auto business for teaching him critical lessons in management and finance.
McDevitt talked to VTDigger about his young company and its place in the fast-changing universe of small satellite propulsion. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
VTDigger: What are small satellites being used for?
Ryan McDevitt: There are two major applications: Imaging, where photographers and sensors are looking at heat map;, and then some telecommunications, whether that’s on the ground or bouncing off a satellite so you can reach a different part of the world.
It’s limited, but where it gets really interesting, and we’re just on the cusp of this right now: If you have 10 of these working together, you can do the science or commercial activities one of those big satellites used to do, at significantly less cost.
For example, if you want to take a picture of someplace on earth, imagine if you have multiple different satellites that are spread out so they are each flying over maybe 15 minutes apart. Now you can start doing time-lapse photography. You can see for example how many people are walking out of WalMart, so you can analyze what sales will be in a certain quarter.
You could have multiple satellites like this flying in formation taking photos from different angles, stitching it together. You could do 3D photos, you could use ground-penetrating radar with radar data that you are sending from the satellite, overlaying the two, and then you can see things like sewer systems under cities, electrical lines, oil pipelines being run. There are companies setting out to do that with these small satellites.
The next big thing is telecommunications — and high speed internet delivered to everywhere on the planet from satellites. One company talks about thousands of satellites: No matter where you are, there’s always a satellite overhead that can connect to your phone and computer. When we talk about the rural broadband gap, this is the solution to that.
VTD: Where (on earth) is the market for your systems?
RM: We are in engaged with customers about our product on every continent except Antarctica. Within the U.S. you have got your obvious hotbeds in California, Texas, Florida. The Northeast has a strong corridor. There are not as many as you would think in Florida. We’re not as dependent on specific launch sites as we used to be. SpaceX launches from California and Florida, and there’s another launch in Virginia. It’s really distributed. Colorado is another real hotbed.
VTD: Are the funding sources also now diffuse?
RM: Obviously NASA and the Air Force are still the majority of the money by dollars. There are other agencies like National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which does climate research, and this really fits with their mission. The National Science Foundation is big. We are also focused on the commercial customers.
VTD: What are the commercial applications?
RM: To be frank, one of the most straightforward applications of this technology is earth imaging, and one of the places that people are most interested in using that for is monitoring and studying climate change. Under the current administration that priority has shifted, and that has necessarily impacted budgets for products like this, but that obviously has a kind of ebb and flow as different administrations come and go.
Another major commercial application is agribusiness — for example, looking at studying grazeland over time. Imaging takes it to the next level.
VTD: Are there privacy concerns in this industry regarding this technology?
RM: There’s not much outcry about that yet. It’s an interesting one. It might be that it’s just not as obvious yet what the capabilities are; it’s possible over time that may shift. It doesn’t directly relate to our business model because that’s not what we do; we don’t do imaging here. But our customers do. So, yes, potentially.
VTD: Where are the satellites?
RM: They are all over the place. The Space Station is about 400 km above sea level, and almost all rocket traffic is going to the space station to deliver astronauts, cosmonauts and supplies. A lot of these small satellites catch rides to the space station, so the most common place they take off and do what they are going to do is at space station. At 400 km, something goes around the earth every 90 minutes.
There’s a really specific orbit where if you put a satellite at that location, its relative position to the earth remains fixed. It orbits at the rate the earth is rotating, and that’s roughly 36,000 km above the earth. A lot of these things are in low earth orbit, or LEO. Something in LEO goes around every 24 hours. They’re whipping around very fast.
VTD: Does Benchmark make its engines in Vermont?
RM: We do testing and assembly here. We buy some parts off the shelf. We can 3D print out of metal a lot of what we make. We don’t yet own one of those metal 3D printers; the one we need is on the order of $1 million, but every year they come down in price and it’s in our development roadmap.
In three to five years, all of what we do out of house now, we’ll bring in-house. The whole system is so small. Because of 3D printing, we need talented engineers and designers, but we don’t need 100 machinists to get it built.
VTD: Are you making money?
RM: It won’t be until 2020 that we expect to be more revenue-funded than investment-funded.
VTD: Who are your competitors?
RM: There are 12 companies worldwide that we keep an eye on. Most of them are in Europe or the U.S. There are a few others in places like Australia.
Even within small satellites, we are targeting different applications or segments of the market. If you looked at our product and theirs, the customer use is totally different.
VTD: What’s happening with international relations?
RM: The U.S. and Europe have a really tight relationship on space stuff. China does whatever they want, Russia does whatever they want. The U.S. is definitely still the world leader in the technology and the regulation side, so most people have offices in the U.S. and are kind of running things through there. We anticipate having offices in Europe for sales and technical support.
VTD: When will your system be up in space?
RM: If we stay on schedule with the Air Force contract, we expect to have something launched on that project as soon as mid-2020. Our product is ready; we could fly within the next month or two. We’re actively engaged with customers on demonstration missions; it’s really just a function of finding the right rocket to go up on, and the right customer to partner with.