A jet engine
By 3D printing
Like any other day, I started my day on Sunday with the usual backlog of a couple of thousand messages which need to be read. I now use our GenAI platform to do this. It does a fairly good job of separating the wheat from the shaff. I don’t look upon this as grungework but as an opportunity for learning. My team of four fellow imagineers think likewise as do the forty or so ai interns who scrupulously match messages with insights gleaned from ai models
My system threw up a message from Prashanth Raghu. He had a simple message. He had screen printed a super powerful ultra compact engine that could replace the main engine of the Tejas aircraft. As a strong nationalist, I have been keenly watching the Nag missile and the Tejas aircraft – as I know the two individuals after whom these were named. Dr B. Nag was our Director at IIT and a close friend. He founded the IIT Alumni movement and also helped incubate cos like BEL and HAL. He was the founder Chairman of the Electronics Chairman. One of the challenges he was trying to address from 1980 to 2000 was a suitable engine for a fighter jet.
My hostel senior and someone I admire Dr Girish Deodhare recently retired as head of the ADA which oversees the Tejas project. As a country, we have spend close to USD 10 billion on this project. When we did the India-USA trade treaty, one of the key points was that India would get access to jet engine technology from USA for use on the Tejas.
And here was a kid reaching out on LinkedIn with a home made jet engine in his garage. Later this year, we will launch India’s first two seater passenger plane called the Hansa designed by the National Aeronautical Labs. I am one of several hundred aspirants hoping to buy one. It would be great to go from Hindon to the airstrip at Bandhavgarh in sixty minutes. And even better to get a supersonic engine and do the distance in thirty minutes. I have yet to get a pilot license though. My hostel mate Srinivas Rachakonda has a fifty acre private forest waiting at the other end waiting, with a bamboo house and tigers who visit nightly. It is a guaranteed sighting without any travelling (after u get there that is)
Now back to the home made jet engine. I am told it actually works. And can make the Hansa into a fighter jet type experience with just a change of engine. Many years ago, we set up a joint venture with Dale Snodgrass. He was the original top gun and had killed more people than any naval pilot in history. His sorties at air shows were legendary. He even agreed to acquire a fleet of private F15s for the air shows. Dale set up a company in India with one of our IIT Funds called Topgun Simulation Technologies and had been instrumental in creating a game called Microsoft Simulator – probably the longest reigning computer game.
Dale is no more. And the JV had to be dissolved. But his vision of a fighter jet in everyone’s garage may just come true.
Thanks to a startup called Vayuvya.
