Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Woodstock, Georgia. It’s time for Cherokee Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Joshua Kornitsky: Welcome back to Cherokee Business Radio. I’m your host and professional EOS implementer. Joshua Kornitsky. I’ve got a fantastic guest here in the studio with me today. But before I begin, let me tell you that today’s episode is brought to you in part by our community partner program, the Business RadioX Main Street Warriors. Defending capitalism, promoting small business, and supporting our local community. For more information, please go to mainstreetwarriors.com. And a special note of thanks to our title sponsor for the Cherokee chapter of Main Street Warriors, Diesel David, Inc. please go check them out at dieseldavid.com. Well, I have to say that of the interviews that I’ve done since I’ve started here at Business RadioX, this one has me the most excited. My guest today is Trevor Smith. He is the founder and CEO of Atomic-6, a company creating advanced composite materials that make defense and aerospace equipment lighter, stronger and more resilient. He’s a two time founder of different companies with more than a decade of experience in technology and innovation. Trevor has led Atomic Six from concept to securing more than a dozen contracts with the Department of Defense, the Air Force, the Space Force, NASA and commercial customers. It’s really incredible the boundaries of what is possible with advanced materials. He has pushed that to its limits and the products that are really going to be in orbit one day, and maybe even on the surface of the moon. Um, with over $3 billion in pipeline, the future must look pretty bright. Welcome, Trevor Smith. It’s just a pleasure to have you here.

Trevor Smith: Nice to be here, Josh. Uh, I have, as I mentioned, I’ve done, you know, one other business, radio x, uh, interview, I think it was 11 years ago or something. Um, very different capacity. Um, yeah. As a commercial real estate broker.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, and I’m gonna ask you about that, but but first, I wanted to start with just sort of learning a little bit about your background and your history and tell us how how you got to first commercial real estate and then ultimately making this insane jump into a place that most of us dream of.

Trevor Smith: Uh. So I went to the University of Mississippi, Ole Miss, as they say, and got a degree in commercial real estate and moved to Atlanta in 2010. Okay. And was a commercial real estate broker working on the the tenant or the buy side of the transaction. So offices and warehouses, that kind of thing. Um, had success in it. Uh, just was kind of bored, right? Okay. Didn’t really feel like I was building anything that had lasting, you know, value to it. Uh, no offense to my real estate buddies. No, no. Love you guys.

Joshua Kornitsky: Because they’re in a they’re in a niche. That’s all unto itself. But it wasn’t your niche.

Trevor Smith: Correct. Um, I’ve had a few people ask me. So, Trevor, are you are you competitive? And my response is no, but I just like playing games where I don’t have anybody else competition. Like, I just like to play a game where I’m the only person that can win.

Joshua Kornitsky: I understand sort of a your own version of single player. Yeah, exactly.

Trevor Smith: Yeah. Eliminating the competition from the beginning.

Joshua Kornitsky: So was there something was there an impetus that that led you from commercial real estate to composite materials? Because those are not two fields one would typically find adjacent.

Trevor Smith: Yeah. Uh, as a lot of good stories start, it was over a cigar and an adult beverage. Nice. Um, met my co-founder and needed a warehouse. And so we got connected there, and then, um, he sold his company to, um, actually, the companies here in Georgia, what was, uh, they went out of business, unfortunately, but they were building composite wheels, so single piece carbon fiber wheels for the automotive racing segment.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay.

Trevor Smith: Um, and if you look at if you knew my background a little bit, I grew up racing motorcycles. And I love all things that go fast.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay.

Trevor Smith: And so I met the met the Wheel company and they’re like, well, you seem like a really good sales guy. Would you like to come sell wheels for us? And I’m going, well, that sounds way more fun than commercial real estate. Sure. Yeah. So wind down the real estate business. Um, and it was the day before my wedding. We’re packing up, and I get a phone call.

Joshua Kornitsky: Surprise, honey.

Trevor Smith: Yeah, I get a phone call. We had been prepping for this opportunity. Um, the CEO had to step down, and he said, hey, I can’t I can’t give you the job. So, you know, sideswiped rug. Rug gets pulled out from underneath you right as you’re packing up for the wedding. And I’m going, oh, sweetie, I’m gonna have to do something different, I think. Um, but that got me exposed to, you know, composites, and I couldn’t get it out of my head. And so, uh, stayed in touch with Blake, my my co-founder, and I said, I think there’s something here. And that something is like, how do we manufacture high performance composites? Not necessarily automotive level manufacturing, but you know, more in that direction, right. So how do we bring that high performance ability and put modular productized. Productionized scale into composites. Because historically it’s almost more of an art than a science.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, and as most of the guys in my generation. Right. Space has always been a passion for us. And yeah, everything’s in a clean room and everything is a one off, a single build that was machined out of a single piece of titanium. Yeah, right. It only cost $1 million and took 16 months.

Trevor Smith: Yeah. You’d be surprised how many people use clean rooms and they don’t really need to. Fair enough. Go watch a SpaceX launch and see all the debris that comes out when they release the the booster stage.

Joshua Kornitsky: It’s all going to burn up anyway.

Trevor Smith: Yeah. Yeah. You don’t really you don’t need a clean room for everything. Um, sorry. Osha. Um, so I said, you know, I’m kind of bored with this real estate thing. I got all excited about composites, and I kind of want to get into it. And so, um, Blake and the the wheel company parted ways, and I said, I think there’s something here. Um, let me run with it. And so April 1st of 2018. Not a not an April Fool’s joke. I started a startup to fund my other startup.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay.

Trevor Smith: What’s this?

Joshua Kornitsky: That’s the most entrepreneurial thing you could do.

Trevor Smith: Yeah. I mean, what’s it like 90 plus percent of all startups fail or something.

Joshua Kornitsky: Within the first five years?

Trevor Smith: Yeah. So let’s stack that. Let’s put two one on top of the other.

Joshua Kornitsky: It’s a multiplier.

Trevor Smith: Yeah. And my wife, God bless her, she was like, okay, so not risky at all. This is great, right?

Joshua Kornitsky: Um, your new wife?

Trevor Smith: Yeah. My brand new wife. Right? I love you, sweetie. And so I said, I really want to do this. I can I can turn this into a business. And so I started a commercial LED lighting company. So I didn’t know anything about lights, but my real estate background was all finance and LED lighting at the time of 2018 is really about what’s the ROI, what’s the return on investment?

Joshua Kornitsky: Right. And that was the beginning of the boom of it, wasn’t it?

Trevor Smith: Yeah, that was actually the sweet spot. Um, fortunately timing, as they say, is everything. Now, it’s much harder to kind of make a good living in lighting, but I made more in lights than I did in real estate.

Joshua Kornitsky: That’s crazy.

Trevor Smith: So the idea, it was crazy. The idea was, I’m gonna take every dollar that we make on the lighting business, and I will put it into research and development for atomic six to get it to a point where we are fundable. We are backable by venture capital, or somebody will give us some money because we think we know what we’re doing. Right. Um, so three years, uh, did that, uh, fortunately, my first investor, as I call her true co-founder. My wife paid the bills at the house while I was off, spending a lot of money on trying to get atomic six off the ground.

Joshua Kornitsky: And so when you started atomic six, were you already think you were obviously in the space of composite because that you had shared was was your kind of you’d gotten excited about that? Were you looking toward space or were you just looking towards building or fabricating something out of composite.

Trevor Smith: Trying to find customer fit? Okay. Um, and so the initial actually idea, the very first meeting we had was with Mickey truck bodies. They’re the largest truck body manufacturer in North America. They’re out of, uh, North Carolina.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay.

Trevor Smith: And we’re like, well, if we can. Do, you know, the I-beams? Uh, it’s a it’s a steel I-beam that runs. So I was like, if we can lightweight those, we could increase payload, uh, and efficiency. Right. They can haul more, get better miles per gallon, all kinds of stuff. Sure. So we pitched Mickey truck bodies, and we said, hey, we have this idea. We’re going to be consultants for you, and we’re going to show you how to build this. So you own the process and you can use these composites in your truck bodies. We were, uh, politely laughed out of the meeting, um, because it was like, hey, go spend $10 million to get this idea off the ground that we have not proven whatsoever. Um, so quickly pivoted.

Joshua Kornitsky: Right.

Trevor Smith: Into, we got to go build this ourselves, right? Sure.

Joshua Kornitsky: And did you?

Trevor Smith: Yes. Uh, yes. We we now for sure. Um, so truck bodies, and then we’re like, okay, what else could we get into? Uh, auto haulers. So that was our very first conference we sponsored was a auto hauler like trucking, right? So they they take cars and they haul them down the road. And these cars are getting heavier and heavier because of the electrification of these cars. Yep. So you’ll see a trailer typically you will not see it, uh, what’s called um, cubing out before they weigh out, meaning they’ve got all their capacity filled and they’re still not hitting their road weight limit. So these cars are getting heavier and they can’t fill their capacity because they’re hitting that weight limit on the road.

Joshua Kornitsky: And it’s funny because it used to be the steel in the cars that made them weigh so much. Now the steel is gone and it’s batteries.

Trevor Smith: Yeah. So we looked at um, uh, doing some parts there and ultimately it’s like, okay, same kind of story. How highly regulated industry it was really tough to break into. Sure. So we did that. And the last one before we get into defense, we looked at an even highly highly or that’s not a word more regulated industry which was uh, rail cars. So we got connected with Trinity Rail. Largest rail car manufacturer in North America.

Joshua Kornitsky: That’s a trivia question.

Trevor Smith: Yeah. And, um, they make a lot of rail cars. So the truck set, which is the piece that holds the wheels onto the rail, is one of the heaviest pieces, about 7,000 pounds.

Joshua Kornitsky: Wow.

Trevor Smith: So if you could cut that weight in half.

Joshua Kornitsky: Make a dramatic difference. Dramatic difference, dramatic difference.

Trevor Smith: And so we looked at the ROI is two years on a 50 year product. Like absolute no brainer, right? Well, the problem was our competitors were all established in the early 1800s, right. The truck set?

Joshua Kornitsky: Yeah, right. My brain had to catch up. I’m like, yeah, yeah, that makes sense because they’ve been building it literally since the turn of the century and last century.

Trevor Smith: And the rail industry is highly regulated. Right. So like, if, um, you know, if you have a derailment, it can almost be a domestic terrorist kind of situation. So it’s very regulated industry. Sure. Quickly found out that that was going to be a long, tough hill to climb. Um, so moving into some real traction, we got an opportunity with Lockheed Martin Skunk Works. You’re familiar with Skunk Works?

Joshua Kornitsky: I am, but just for anyone listening.

Trevor Smith: Uh, they’ve built some very unique aircraft, including the SR 71 Blackbird. Uh, the fastest aircraft known to humans on the unclassified side. Uh, for those.

Joshua Kornitsky: I’m not going to ask follow ups.

Trevor Smith: Well, I don’t have a clearance, so I can’t tell you on the class side. Um, but, yeah, they’ve built some really unique aircraft, and so they’re always trying to push the boundaries of performance for aerospace and defense. Sure. And I said, we have this. I describe it as a unique muffin pan. So your audience should know what a muffin pan is.

Joshua Kornitsky: I certainly hope.

Trevor Smith: So. I hope so. Um, but it’s a mold, right? In essence, it’s a mold. And so we have a unique mold that allows us to manipulate any composite material set towards its theoretical limit. So if you have a certain fiber, carbon fiber, or resin, it doesn’t have to be carbon fiber, but any any fiber, any resin set. There is a theoretical limit for that material set.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay.

Trevor Smith: So, uh, we we we were given the opportunity to build a flat panel, just, you know, kind of look like a coaster, right? Just a flat carbon fiber panel. And let’s see how close to theoretical limit we can get. So the high watermark at the time and I presented at Oak Ridge National Lab was 80 or 85% of the theoretical limit. Um, ours was 98%. Wow. So we were almost perfect. Um, and that first panel was built just by me. Um, start to finish, prep the tool, mix the resin. I watched YouTube for three hours to learn how to run an autoclave, which is, uh, an autoclave is the oven that we use. It’s a pressurized vessel. Very dangerous.

Joshua Kornitsky: It’s an Easy-Bake oven for scientists.

Trevor Smith: Uh, also a bomb, if you use it. Wrong. Uh, because it actually, they’ve had them blow up and people have died.

Joshua Kornitsky: Uh, and we certainly don’t want to make fun of that, but it’s obviously.

Trevor Smith: No, it’s just it’s a.

Joshua Kornitsky: Dangerous, pressurized device.

Trevor Smith: It’s a dangerous environment. But, uh, the fact that myself, not an engineer or anything like that, I just use the recipe. And my co-founder said, look, here’s how you should make this, uh, because he’s got a full time day job. And I was like, I’ll, I’ll make this thing happen. So we did the panel got some really intriguing results. And they said, can you do this again? So I made another panel, got even better results. Wow. And so that’s when I knew we had something. I didn’t know what it was other than we had this unique manufacturing process. So now we have to go figure out where to put that.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, so where do you seek that guidance from?

Trevor Smith: What do you mean?

Joshua Kornitsky: Uh. For what? What? Where do we make sure we’ve got this proof of concept that we can do this? Where did you go?

Trevor Smith: Money. You follow the money trail, man.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay.

Trevor Smith: Right. So who or what needs that extra bump in performance? Ten. 15. 20%. It’s the extreme and demanding environments. Sure. Right. So if you look at the early days of where we were going, which was trying to increase payload, increase capacity, increase range, all those things are needed in extreme environments in the aerospace and defense world.

Joshua Kornitsky: Absolutely.

Trevor Smith: Yeah. So we submitted our first SBIR, uh, proposal, small business innovation research, which is the way the Department of. Now the Department of War, um DoD uses to invest in new technologies to develop into something that they can use. Um, and ideally it is a what’s called dual use technology, meaning it’s it’s a commercial version and a military version, but you can use the same thing for both.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay. So double the value out of the investment. Well, in.

Trevor Smith: Theory the government. Sure. But the government wants to see products that can stand up on their own on the commercial side. Right. Because if you can stand up a product on the commercial side, you’re buying down the risk and the cost for the government. A great example I don’t know how you feel about guns, but guns are a great example of that, right? So like if there was no commercial market for guns, right. A military gun would cost a lot more, right?

Joshua Kornitsky: Right. Because there is it’s it’s spreading both the risk and the cost. Correct.

Trevor Smith: Right. You’re amortizing the cost of that product. So you look for dual use things. The very first contract was a phase. It’s called a phase one proposal. They have phase one two, three. And there’s some things in between. So that’s $75,000 from the United States Space Force okay. So that very first contract was to develop a deployable mast for space. So I’ve got a little, you know, hardware I can show you here.

Joshua Kornitsky: Absolutely.

Trevor Smith: So this, um, is a deployable mast. So it flattens like this.

Joshua Kornitsky: And it looks like it’s made out of very thin paper.

Trevor Smith: Uh, nine thousandths of an inch thick. Oh, about as thick as a human hair. So this mast will roll up flat. Kind of like a tape measure. Um, and I have this here, so. So you can roll it up and you can deploy it out for the audience. The cracking is the carbon fiber that I’m rolling out. But you can deploy it out like this. So this is a support structure for systems in space.

Joshua Kornitsky: And because you’re in space and you’re dealing with with greatly reduced gravity, I imagine that the strength is exponentially more valuable there because you’re not fighting against you are in orbit, but you’re not fighting Earth gravity with it.

Trevor Smith: Correct.

Joshua Kornitsky: Wow.

Trevor Smith: Yeah. So that was our very first foray into the defense world.

Joshua Kornitsky: And if it’s not asking a question you can’t discuss, do you know if that has been used in space?

Trevor Smith: Uh, well, it’s our product, so. Not yet. Okay. We have first flight February 1st of 2026. So we’re coming up on first flight. Okay. Very excited about that. We cannot disclose the customer. Of course not. Well, you know, you like to disclose it, but some some missions, you can’t disclose the customer. So Vandenberg Space Force Base is out of California, and we’ll be launching that. I think it’s on a Falcon nine, um, in February of 2026.

Joshua Kornitsky: That’s absolutely amazing. Thank you for bringing that in. Because when you walked in with it, I wasn’t really sure what it was. And it’s kind of hard to believe that. What is that about? A about a meter long. About a. Yeah. Three feet.

Trevor Smith: This is my little travel companion here. Uh, we’ve built, uh, hundreds of feet of these deployable masts. And that’s one component of what the Space Force ultimately wanted to see in a system which is a deployable solar array. So you know what? Solar panels are here. Absolutely right. So solar panels in space look a little different. Um, there’s lots of radiation they have to overcome. You have off gassing in the material systems. Off gassing is bad because it can get on cameras and change trajectories and all kinds of nastiness. So you need to build the systems where, uh, they are made for space, right? And you have thermal environments that are really unique. You’re going to plus 80 degrees C to -80 degrees C. I don’t even know the Fahrenheit but it’s hot. It’s really hot and really cold. People think of space is really cold. It actually gets really hot too.

Joshua Kornitsky: Um, if you’re in view of the sun, you’re going to have a bad day without the sun.

Trevor Smith: Exactly.

Joshua Kornitsky: So now is that ultimately I. On your website, I did some reading. Is that the right wing product?

Trevor Smith: Correct. It’s called light Wing.

Joshua Kornitsky: So it’s it’s lighter, stronger. And it’s a smarter solar array. What do you mean by smarter.

Trevor Smith: Yeah. So the the big unlock that really kicked things off. I’m looking at your door here. So you’ve got some metal hinges right. Right. So those metal hinges look very similar to how solar panels are deployed today in space. So I’ll hold up an example of one of our panels here. This is a nine thousandths of an inch back sheet. We call it a back sheet.

Joshua Kornitsky: And there’s no hinges.

Trevor Smith: There’s no hinges on this. Um, but you put your your solar cells on the back sheet. And historically, those metal hinges sit right on the edge of this panel. So those hinges have what’s called biaxial loading, meaning they can bend in two different directions. Okay. Uh, metal doesn’t do well in really cold of space, right? So if you’re if you’ve got metal that can bend in two different directions, it can be problematic for solar arrays. The number one reason for infant mortality on satellites infant mortality, meaning they die right after launch.

Joshua Kornitsky: Gotcha. Sorry. Sorry. Little confused. I was scratching my head on that one.

Trevor Smith: You’ve launched a satellite, and it dies. Day. Day zero. It is not functional. Um, the number one reason is for failed solar array deployment.

Joshua Kornitsky: Wow. So it’s actually a gigantic potential problem for a very expensive investment. Satellites.

Trevor Smith: I’ll give you a perfect example. Uh, Viasat, who offers a lot of satellite communications. They had an insurance claim last year for $450 million. Because of a failed solar array deployment. Wow. Yeah. So trying to fix that, right? We’re trying to fix that. Our hinge looks a little different than that metal door hinge you have here. So this is a memory shaped composite hinge. And I’ll demonstrate with you here. So it’s cured in the stowed position. So you can imagine the solar back sheets are on each side. And as the system deploys out and we’ll show a video on our of our website on this. But as it deploys out, this hinge actually bends and pulls tension on these back sheets. So it only wants to go in one direction. It just wants to it can’t lock up, right? So if I let go it just goes back to the original position normal state. So you’ve eliminated hundreds of points of failure. Single failure points in the system because it can’t fail well.

Joshua Kornitsky: And doesn’t it also reduce the overall weight of what you’re sending?

Trevor Smith: Yeah. I mean if you I didn’t bring it with me, but you’ve got one here. You can imagine a metal door hinge with something that is I mean, this is I don’t even know the weight, but it’s very lightweight. You can hear.

Joshua Kornitsky: Yeah. It basically weighs nothing.

Trevor Smith: Like a paper. A piece of paper.

Joshua Kornitsky: Yeah.

Trevor Smith: So, um, when you look at solar arrays, the key metric, uh, one of the key metrics you look at is watts per kilo. Watts per kilogram. Right. So how much? How much power to how much mass? So today, competitors offer anywhere from 30W per kilo to maybe 100 to 120W per kilo.

Joshua Kornitsky: And is that traditional metal hinged? Yes. Okay.

Trevor Smith: Yeah. And the deployment mechanisms are also, uh, you know what a scissor lift looks like? Uh, the fancy word for that is a pantograph. Okay. So. Right. They’re deploying out like a scissor lift. It’s all metal. Uh. Same issues. They lock up. They have hundreds of little bolts in them, and.

Joshua Kornitsky: All of them are potential points of failure.

Trevor Smith: Potential points of failure. We’ve eliminated all that with this deployable mast and hinge. So you’ve gotten rid of all these metal connection points that could be a failure, and you get rid of all the weight.

Joshua Kornitsky: Right. So it costs less to send up and to make.

Trevor Smith: And and to keep running and all the other things. Um, so the watts per kilo on our system, if you look at even a small system, uh, 2 kilowatt or 2000 watt system, we’re pushing 200W/kg. Kilogram. So to back up 30 to 100W per kilo competitor, we’re pushing 200W per kilo.

Joshua Kornitsky: And and is the limitation there simply the solar technology? I presume that as that improves because of the the improved weight offering that you ever lessened weight that can even go more.

Trevor Smith: Yeah. So it actually it gets even sweeter so that 200W per kilo, if you use what’s called silicon cells, um, those are sort of lower efficiency. They’re not the highest efficiency cells. Um, if you use high efficiency called triple junction, gallium arsenide is typically the material in it. Uh, multi-junction cells, those are like double the efficiency. Right. And so our, our watts per kilo goes even higher than 200 when you use those higher efficiency cells. So we are agnostic. We can use any type of cell which allows us to be able to service any type of mission.

Joshua Kornitsky: Wow.

Trevor Smith: Right. So you could have a ten year mission in what’s called geosynchronous orbit or Geo.

Joshua Kornitsky: Right.

Trevor Smith: That that’s going to have a lot of radiation because it’s ten years and it’s a long mission. You would typically go for a triple junction multi junction type cell, high efficiency because it’s good at not degradation in radiation. But if you need a two year mission in low Earth orbit or Leo we can use very cheap cells. So we’re not locked into the solar cell. And we can adapt to the customer’s mission set.

Joshua Kornitsky: And I presume that that’s something they’re going to specify anyhow.

Trevor Smith: Well, what they typically would specify is an end of life wattage requirement.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay.

Trevor Smith: Right.

Joshua Kornitsky: So the mission is complete.

Trevor Smith: Hey we need we typically will quote a Bol beginning of life and an EOL end of life wattage. Right. But you have to design for the constraint which is the end of life. So what’s the minimum amount of power you have to have at the end of the mission. So you take that into account and we’ll we will work with our solar cell partners to find the right fit for that mission set.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, and this just sort of occurred to me, right. If the if the measure is watts per kilo. Because of the weight differential of what light wing is, a kilo of light wing is going to be considerably. You’ll have a lot more potential material than you would in a traditional solar cell.

Trevor Smith: Yeah. Let’s say just for round numbers, you are setting aside, I don’t know, 100kg for your solar array. Right. So 100kg for solar array. We can give you four times more power just on that mass.

Joshua Kornitsky: And that’s what I’m realizing is it’s not just about weight and cost savings. It’s actually also about efficiency.

Trevor Smith: And we have a thing called conops in the usually on the defense side. But Conops stands for concept of operations.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay.

Trevor Smith: So when you have this and the thing that we are touting even more than just the watts per kilo is this retract and redeploy capability that does not exist today outside of one system on the ISS.

Joshua Kornitsky: So basically you you when you launch a satellite that has panels, You push them out and you’re all done.

Trevor Smith: Yeah, it’s a single deployment, right? So space is an ever changing environment, right? Right. You have debris floating around there and you’ve got, um, maybe you have a high thrust capability with your with your satellite. High thrust, meaning high horsepower, uh, for for car terms. Right. You got to go somewhere really fast. Um, these new engines can have a high thrust capability ripping off the existing solar arrays because of the inertia that they cause. Well, if you have a system that you can retract and lock back down, you press the gas pedal and then redeploy.

Joshua Kornitsky: Right.

Trevor Smith: If you want to land on an asteroid or a celestial body, bring the arrays in, do your landing and then redeploy.

Joshua Kornitsky: And that just doesn’t exist today.

Trevor Smith: No, no. On unclassified side. I can’t speak to the class, but I understand. Yeah, I’ll stop saying that. Disclaimer.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, so so you touched on something else, and it lets me segue to the next thing I wanted to ask about. So I checked, uh, just with NASA, and NASA says.

Trevor Smith: You called NASA.

Joshua Kornitsky: I did. I went to the. They have a website.

Trevor Smith: Okay.

Joshua Kornitsky: And according to NASA’s website. Let me clarify. There are approximately 25,000 objects larger than ten centimeters known to exist in Earth orbit.

Trevor Smith: Those aren’t the ones you need to be worried about. Do you know why?

Joshua Kornitsky: Tell me why.

Trevor Smith: Because they can track them. Right. Because if you can see it. And this happens all the time on the International Space Station, they’ll make maneuvers to go around that bigger debris.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay.

Trevor Smith: You cannot track three millimeters or less, which constitutes about 92% of all debris in Leo. You’re in the millions of pieces of debris. Which tiny speck of paint.

Joshua Kornitsky: Which brings me to how do you. So you’ve now got your retractable mast. I’ve got the ability to go land on the asteroid and come back. But how do I protect it from not getting smashed while it’s sitting in orbit?

Trevor Smith: Well, you know, as I say, you need both power and protection. Right. We have a second product for space. We call it space armor. I’m going to let you guess what it does.

Joshua Kornitsky: I’m guessing it’s some form of protection. And Trevor’s got a very interesting, uh, piece of white material here. Yeah, it says strike based on it.

Trevor Smith: Strike face. Um, so this, uh. Well, I’ll let you hold it. Um.

Joshua Kornitsky: So so it’s much more dense than I would have expected.

Trevor Smith: Well, you’re stopping a bullet that’s moving at Mach 21. 17,000 miles an hour.

Joshua Kornitsky: That’s pretty fast.

Trevor Smith: At that speed. You could go from Atlanta to LA in five minutes. So you see an entry. Wow. You see an entry hole in the shield that you’re holding?

Joshua Kornitsky: I do.

Trevor Smith: But there’s no exit. You can look at the back side. Yeah. Um, so that was hit with a three millimeter aluminum ball. Think like a BB, right. So that BB goes from zero to Mach 21 and about 16ft. It’s overcoming 1.3 million g forces. And when it hits and there’s a great video on our website, we can show.

Joshua Kornitsky: This to see that.

Trevor Smith: There’s an explosion of plasma that comes out of this thing.

Joshua Kornitsky: Is you’re changing the state of matter at that speed.

Trevor Smith: It’s quite wild. Yeah. So this space armor is the thinnest, lightest, micrometeorite and orbital debris shield that the United States Space Force has ever seen. We built this two years ago.

Joshua Kornitsky: Wow.

Trevor Smith: And we got a tacfire tactical funding increase contract through that SBIR program to get this through flight qualification. So this will be going up next year.

Joshua Kornitsky: Um, and without asking obviously proprietary information, it is some form of composite. It is some layering or some combination of deposits that it is.

Trevor Smith: It’s all composite. Uh, I can tell you there is no metal. Right. So when you have metal, and if you look at that video on our website, um, there’s a thing called post-impact ejecta, basically debris that gets flung out. Right? So we did a side by side video, and you can see this on our website where this shield was impacted at three millimeters in the. The ejecta that comes out is really just like particulate and gas. There’s no like debris if you will. Nasa has a standard for the same impact. It’s a 0.44in aluminum. I forget the aluminum but 0.4in thick aluminum monolithic block.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay.

Trevor Smith: All right. Just a block of metal so it gets hit. And technically it has stopped the projectile. But what you see happen in the video is thousands of more pieces of metal get flung out.

Joshua Kornitsky: Into space.

Trevor Smith: Both in the front side, the strike face and the back side. So while there was no penetration, the shockwave from the impact delaminated the metal on the backside, causing metal to go back towards whatever your spacecraft is. I would not want to stand behind that.

Joshua Kornitsky: No. And it seems to be ultimately a solution that creates a bigger problem.

Trevor Smith: Yes. So there’s a thing called the Kessler syndrome. Are you familiar with this?

Joshua Kornitsky: I am not.

Trevor Smith: Okay. So imagine, you know, two satellites coming at each other and they hit. You’ve got thousands of pieces of debris. Those debris go and hit another satellite, causing thousands more pieces of debris. So you get this, like snowball effect.

Joshua Kornitsky: An exponential domino game.

Trevor Smith: Yeah. Uh, the gentleman, Don Kessler, uh, he’s still alive today. I talked to him about a month ago. It was pretty cool. Um, but, yeah, Kessler syndrome is a real concern because as we put more and more satellites up, you will have inherently more and more debris. Right, right. So until we figure out a good way for debris, uh, remediation, garbage cleanup, um, this is the only way I know. Or the Space Force knows, uh, to stop impact debris and not cause additional debris creation, which is kind of crazy.

Joshua Kornitsky: So is the intended use. Remember, I’m not an aeronautical engineer.

Trevor Smith: Neither am.

Joshua Kornitsky: I. So you know, you’re not either. Um, would this be so if we’re talking about a communication satellite. Yeah. Would this be around the outer body? Is that would it be inside where.

Trevor Smith: You you know, when you see a police officer, they have a chest, you know, a chest protector on, right? Like you want to protect the critical components of the satellite. So that might be your avionics, your your fuel tanks, what have you. Um, and this shield particularly is really special. So do you know what a radome is?

Joshua Kornitsky: I don’t.

Trevor Smith: Uh, when you get on a commercial flight, there’s a little bubble on top of the fuselage. Okay. Right. So that little bubble is a dome that protects the radar system radome. Right. So it’s protecting the comm system for the airplane.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay.

Trevor Smith: We’ve never had a radome for space.

Joshua Kornitsky: Really?

Trevor Smith: Because when you look at how we’ve historically protected from debris, it’s with metallic systems. You cannot pass radio frequency through metal. It doesn’t work. So our ultimate goal was to build space armor with an RF permeable radio frequency permeable capability.

Joshua Kornitsky: So it can stay functioning.

Trevor Smith: So you can protect the comm system which is arguably the most important thing on the satellite. Right. Um, so this one here was the very first one that we have, uh, shot and tested and also passed RF through building the very first radome for space.

Joshua Kornitsky: That’s pretty amazing.

Trevor Smith: Kind of crazy.

Joshua Kornitsky: Does it have for really I mean, both products I have to think have terrestrial application as well. Just I wouldn’t hazard a guess just because of their in the case of, of of the, the armor, it’s obviously insanely strong. And I have to think there’s other things they could do with it.

Trevor Smith: Well, before I jump there, um, there’s more as they say. But wait, but wait, there’s more. Um, we have hit this shield with a thing called directed energy weapons. Uh, in short, high power lasers. Okay. It is highly resistant to laser weapons. Uh, which maybe not for commercial users, but.

Joshua Kornitsky: But happens in a battlefield and potentially.

Trevor Smith: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, space is the ultimate battlefield, the ultimate domain. Because when you look at the military branches, navy, army, the air force, they all rely on space for communications.

Joshua Kornitsky: Guidance.

Trevor Smith: Intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, all that stuff. So really, really important. Um, yeah. But you ask about terrestrial. So, uh, I grew up in Mississippi and, um, enjoy testing things, as I say, as a redneck. Um, I took this down to my local gun range, and I said, you know, we stopped a bullet at Mach 21. Surely, surely this thing can stop my nine millimeter Glock, right? I shot it, went right through. Yeah. You have a confused look on your face, I do. Uh, so the bullet was moving too slow.

Joshua Kornitsky: Interesting.

Trevor Smith: I’ll elaborate. Um, when you when you take a supersonic round, uh, a gun and shoot it into water that’s supersonic round, which is faster than the speed of sound. Goes about 1 or 2ft deep. If you shoot a subsonic round a slower bullet, it actually will penetrate a lot farther ten 12ft. So imagine like slapping the water with your hand, right? Versus slowly inserting your hand into water. You can you can penetrate deeper, right. So these shields don’t actually start working until about, uh, Mach ten. Wow. And there are no known terrestrial bullets that move that fast.

Joshua Kornitsky: And let’s hope that.

Trevor Smith: I’m.

Joshua Kornitsky: Aware of. Let’s hope we don’t find one either. Um, okay. Well, that that’s still an amazing.

Trevor Smith: But we think there is actually a terrestrial application, and it could be very big. Um, so I don’t know if you kept up with the Russia Ukraine war, but, um, Ukraine lit up a Russian airfield with these sort of kamikaze drones that had, you know, small explosives on them. Uh, explosives, when they shoot out, projectiles detonate, come out around the same velocity as what we see in low Earth orbit. So in low Earth orbit, this was tested just to give you the right metric. This was tested at 7.2km per second. Explosives come out around ten kilometers per second. Um, so we think this actually could be really good for protecting against small explosives.

Joshua Kornitsky: Wow. That’s a that’s a great idea to explore.

Trevor Smith: We think there’s a terrestrial application for it. We’ll see. We’re, uh, we’re going to go blow it up and see what happens.

Joshua Kornitsky: I imagine that may be on your website one day, too.

Trevor Smith: Oh, that’ll be a fun video. Yeah.

Joshua Kornitsky: Yeah, that’s that’s absolutely incredible. So help me understand because you self-admitted you are not an engineer. Is this just natural curiosity that that got you as deep in as you are now to the understanding of, of the product, the first of which you actually made yourself? Yeah. How did you how did you what is, uh, the best way to ask this question? How did you get so invested personally? Not financially, but in in the depth of understanding of the science of what you’re dealing with.

Trevor Smith: I think if there’s a topic, and this is just applicable for anybody who wants to learn, right? If there’s some topic that you’re interested in, especially if you’re really interested in it, you can learn very quickly. Like you soak it up, right? Right. Imagine being in school and you’re in class and there’s some boring class. You’re like, I don’t I don’t really remember anything from that class, but the teacher did something very unique and it caught your attention.

Joshua Kornitsky: Sure. That’s the one you remember.

Trevor Smith: That’s the one you remember. Exactly. So going back, I love things that go fast and blow up and all that kind of thing. So like, for me, I was so excited about this, that learning all the metrics and and the numbers and the process was just, just went right in, right? Just soaked it right up. Um, but on top of that, I have to brag because I’m not the one that’s building this today. I have an incredible team. Uh, my my CTO, a 40 year veteran in the composites industry, has built thousands and thousands of parts, including hypersonic systems and, um, Airbus commercial aircraft things. And so he’s been great. And then, uh, we added our chief operating officer about two years ago. He’s a pretty unique individual, holds a lot of world records. His name is Christian Carpenter. Uh, he started out doing propulsion at NASA and then went to Aerojet Rocketdyne, where he set some world’s first and Guinness records, including the first 3D printed metal rocket engine for electric propulsion. So electric propulsion not not so there’s chemical. You have chemical and electric. We call it EP electric propulsion. Um, so he set that record and, um, got a call from Elon Musk. You know, he’s kind of famous guy. I’ve heard of him. Um, so Elon’s like, hey, I need a new propulsion system, an EP electric propulsion system for this new constellation of satellites that I want to put up. Have you heard of Starlink? I have essentially Christian designed the prop that runs all Starlink.

Joshua Kornitsky: That’s kind of cool.

Trevor Smith: Pretty cool.

Joshua Kornitsky: That’s, uh. And that’s that’s really quite a team you’ve, you’ve put together. Yeah. And, and I do want to ask about that if I may. Right. Because in addition to all of this incredible science and, and the literal, uh, outer space or near or near Earth orbit, low and high level. Right. And and who knows where from there. You still actually lead this company? You don’t.

Trevor Smith: Somehow they haven’t taken the reins from you.

Joshua Kornitsky: Still. You don’t just get to talk about how cool everything is. You still have to run the organization. Yeah. What are some of the challenges? Because, I mean, you’re you’re at an intersection of innovation, technology, defense, aerospace. I mean, you’re juggling 11 different directions at once. What are some of the challenges that anyone listening today could, could learn from on that side of the house?

Trevor Smith: Uh, so I think one skill set that I learned even from the real estate days was incentive alignment. And I think it’s one of my super skills, and I don’t have very many, but that’s probably one of them is incentive alignment. So finding out what you are personally interested in and then finding out what the other party is, whether it’s an employee, a customer, a partner, you know, finding out what incentivizes them to move and then making sure you can align their incentives with yours. And a perfect example of this, please. So we wanted to go build some hypersonic systems. And I’ll have to be careful what I say here. Yeah, yeah. Um, so Hermeus is a customer of ours. They’re here in Atlanta. Um, quite a large company. They’re building hypersonic aircraft. And so I friends with the the co-founder there, Glenn. And I said, Glenn, what what do you guys need? Right. What do you need built? What’s the hard thing that you haven’t figured out yet is we need a radome. We need a radome for hypersonic aircraft. Very difficult thing to build because you have to again pass that radiofrequency through it, but also survive the extreme environment of hypersonic speed. Right. So I was like, great, you’re not gonna pay me 100% to develop this. Let’s figure out how to get it funded. Aligning some incentives. So I call the Air Force because they have a number on their website like NASA. Yeah, no, we called our POC technical point of contact because we had another we actually had another hypersonic contract we were developing already. So I had a relationship built with them. And I said, hey, would the Air Force be interested in atomic six developing a hypersonic radome specifically for the Hermes aircraft? Yeah, we would love to see that we’re already funding them like we it’s got to be built anyway. Right? So you’re aligning and aligning incentives from the Air Force because they want to see it built. I want to get Hermeus as a customer and then Hermeus needs it built. But the Air Force is going to bring the money to do it.

Joshua Kornitsky: That’s fantastic.

Trevor Smith: So we’ve we’ve brought everybody together, aligned incentives. And we have that under contract right now. We’re working on it.

Joshua Kornitsky: That’s an incredible example.

Trevor Smith: So skill set right. That’s one of the one of the skill sets.

Joshua Kornitsky: And and so you’ve brought together some pretty incredible team members from pretty diverse backgrounds. How do you keep them aligned beyond creative incentive? Right. Just that with with keeping everybody on the same page.

Trevor Smith: I think if you you look at the products that we’re building specifically on the space side, it’s it’s tough to not get excited about it.

Joshua Kornitsky: I’m excited and I’m just getting to see them.

Trevor Smith: It’s tough to not get excited. So like I think if you’re building a company and this is applicable to any industry, um, you need to be focused on what you are excited to do. Money should be a byproduct, sure, but you got to make money too, right? So the thing that you’re excited to build, you need to make sure that there’s a financial outcome with it. Um, so I think keeping the team focused on, hey, what’s our next launch opportunity? Or hey, what can we go put this in an astronaut suit, which we actually are working on. Putting space armor in an astronaut suit.

Joshua Kornitsky: Seems like a good application. Pretty cool.

Trevor Smith: Yeah, right. Commander Chris Hadfield is on our board and he’s like, this needs to be in the astronaut suits.

Joshua Kornitsky: Particularly for a guy who’s been out in space, literally. I imagine he’d be very interested in having something that’ll protect him from a hypersonic.

Trevor Smith: Uh, actually hyper velocity. So it’s even faster than hypersonic.

Joshua Kornitsky: Um, I’ll need a scale next time we talk.

Trevor Smith: Yeah, like, once you get over fast.

Joshua Kornitsky: Really fast. Super. Really fast.

Trevor Smith: Yeah. Mach 20 is when things gets a little hairy. Um, but, yeah, like, spacewalks are very dangerous, right? Like a grain of sand could kill an astronaut because those things are moving so fast. Uh, they just puncture the spacecraft and they hit if they get hit in the wrong spot, you know? Thank goodness we’ve never had a, you know, a failure in a spacesuit or an astronaut really hurt, but.

Joshua Kornitsky: Right.

Trevor Smith: It’s kind of an inevitable thing.

Joshua Kornitsky: It’s hard to consider, but just the the odds of it are crazy.

Trevor Smith: Yeah. So we want to go protect. But getting the team aligned with what they’re excited to build. And then, um, you know, making sure they have ownership in the company, meaning genuine ownership, like they’re on the cap table, the capitalization table. So they have shares and equity in the company. And so they get excited one for what they’re building because it’s really cool. And then two, you have that money byproduct piece. Um, further incentivizing people to like, oh man, what was how was that last conference go? You know, what’s our next opportunity?

Joshua Kornitsky: Because then everybody’s got a reason to be interested.

Trevor Smith: Yeah. Exactly right. Like, building things are fun, but you want to make sure you can also make money doing it.

Joshua Kornitsky: No, it makes absolute sense. Absolute sense to me. So the the last question that occurs to me is, is, you know, how do you measure success? Because it seems like there’s always going to be more for you to consider as an organization. Atomic six how do you what is what is the top of the of the mountain?

Trevor Smith: I mean, the mountain keeps moving, right?

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, it kind of does. And and I imagine that That, uh, if we’re sitting here ten years from today, the things we’d be talking about would be vastly different than we could even imagine right now.

Trevor Smith: Yeah, I think, you know, it’s all relative. So, uh, some people would say that Atomic six is already a success. You’re you’re a startup. We’re eight years old, you know, we’re self-sufficient, if you will. We have customers. Um, so success at that level? Sure. Um. Crazy story. When we were doing our first fundraise. Didn’t have an office, didn’t even have a customer, didn’t have our first dollar. I had a billionaire offer me $30 million for the company. Wow. So I called my dad. Um, I was sitting at the lunch table, and I said. I said, you know, I appreciate the offer. I really want to make my first dollar and see where this goes. So I called my dad and he goes, are you crazy? You you could retire today. And I was like, well, where’s the fun in that? Right? Right. Uh, same billionaire called me a month later and he said, offer still on the table. And I said, still no. Um, so, you know, had I sold at that point, maybe somebody would have called that success. Um, you know, today, I think success looks like. And we and we tell our, our, our investors and our customers, we want to build out the power grid for SpaceX and the protection grid for SpaceX, but the revenue is much more on the power side. Um, we want to build out the power grid for SpaceX. So if you could invest in, you know, Westinghouse. Right, right. Or if you could invest in some of those early electrical grid companies. That’s what we’re looking at today, right? Because there’s very few competitors. Um, because the the global demand for solar arrays hasn’t really been that big, uh, in historic past. I’ll give you an example. Why now? So three years ago, the global demand for solar array. Uh, if you exclude Starlink, which my co built. Right. Same shameless plug was about two megawatts. Uh, so 2,000,000W, I think if I’ve got that right. Um, today we have six times that in our current sales pipeline.

Joshua Kornitsky: Wow.

Trevor Smith: Six times the global demand. Just in my little 12 person company. Wow. Um, one, because I think we have a unique product and people are interested, but two, like, space is going to be a thing. Uh, I have the saying, um, every company is a space company. They just don’t know it. Right. I mean, today you’re interacting. You’re using space technology. Today, whether internet, whatever. You’re you’re like, every company is a space company at some level.

Joshua Kornitsky: And I think that that we learned in, in the, in the after effects of the, the Mercury and the Apollo programs. Right. That, that so many of the things that were designed to solve problems in space had practical applications to this day that still exist in ways that many people don’t even know.

Trevor Smith: Oh, well, um, you know, data centers and AI seem to be a hot topic.

Joshua Kornitsky: I think I’ve heard that.

Trevor Smith: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, so data centers are a big drain on the natural resources of Earth?

Joshua Kornitsky: Absolutely.

Trevor Smith: Electricity, power, water, electricity. Uh, data centers are going to be in space and.

Joshua Kornitsky: A lot cooler.

Trevor Smith: Yeah, well, again, it’s hot and cold or colder. Actually, the hardest problem. The hardest. Well, I’ll get to that in a second. Um, we announced a few months ago our very first space contract was actually for six missions. And we will be powering the very first data centers in lunar orbit. So they won’t be on the surface. Uh, this company, Lone Star Data, has already been to the surface of the moon twice. Wow. Uh, on Intuitive Machines. Uh, unfortunately, the lander tipped over.

Joshua Kornitsky: I remember that.

Trevor Smith: Both. Both attempts. Uh, unfortunate, but we’re going to put these in satellites, and so they’ll be in orbit around the moon. And this isn’t necessarily a data center for like, AI compute. This is more of a like a backup redundancy. Think like, hey, I got a hard drive and I’m putting it in a lockbox because I don’t want anybody.

Joshua Kornitsky: On the moon.

Trevor Smith: Or.

Joshua Kornitsky: Orbit.

Trevor Smith: In lunar orbit. Yeah, ultimately, they actually do want to be on the moon. Um, and then you’ve got, you know, Eric Schmidt bought relativity. You know, Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google Data Centers, right? So, so you want to put data centers in space. There’s lots of space data center space startups. We’re talking to almost all of them because the two big things they need are power and protection. Well, protection ish, but more cooling. So cooling is ironically the hardest thing you got to figure out. Solar arrays are the second biggest problem, uh, because the power that they need, you’re looking at 4 or 5 times a single International Space Station. Uh, on a certain data center, there’s there’s one star cloud that we’re friends with. They want to put up a 16 square kilometer solar array. So there’s a lot of power.

Joshua Kornitsky: That’s a lot of power. That’s a lot.

Trevor Smith: But you got to cool it off. So the big problem is actually getting that heat radiated out. So you got you got a Yeti cup right there. What does your. Why does your cup stay cold or hot?

Joshua Kornitsky: Because it’s double wall insulated with a vacuum in between.

Trevor Smith: It’s in a vacuum. Space is a vacuum, right? It’s really tough to get the heat out. So deployable radiators are going to be a big thing we’ve got to figure out for the near future if orbital data centers are going to be a thing. So both power and actually getting that heat out.

Joshua Kornitsky: It sounds to me that that’s definitely a problem for for some innovative thinking.

Trevor Smith: Uh, well, we have deployable structures here.

Joshua Kornitsky: That’s that was the first thought that I had is, is, is if you can push them out and pull them back. Well, he doesn’t go anywhere that way. But you still got to use the you got to capture and dissipate the heat.

Trevor Smith: You need surface area. Right, right. You need surface area to get that heat out. Um, we’re flying up with Auburn University. I think we’ve announced it, I can’t remember.

Joshua Kornitsky: I won’t.

Trevor Smith: Tell. No, no, no. It’s fine. Um, we’re flying up with Auburn University next year. And it’s not the solar array. It’s just the deployable mast with our deployer. And they want to. They want to push out a sensor out away from the spacecraft. Right. So you could insert sensor for radiator or selfie stick. Really expensive selfie stick because you need to actually see a picture of a satellite. So there’s lots of use cases for just deployable structures beyond solar panels and solar power.

Joshua Kornitsky: It’s going to be incredible to watch you grow.

Trevor Smith: I’m having fun, man.

Joshua Kornitsky: It certainly seems like it because you haven’t stopped smiling since you got here.

Trevor Smith: Oh, we have a I haven’t even talked. We have a version of this. Um, so the diameter you see here is two inches. Okay. We’ve built a 12 inch diameter, 33 foot tall deployable mast, which is just a demo, um, for a flight model that will be 150ft tall. The surface area will be 1.2. Nba basketball courts. It is a lunar vertical solar array tower. Wow. And the goal is to put this on the south pole of the moon in Q1, Q2 of 2027. Really powering the infrastructure needed for permanent residence on the moon.

Joshua Kornitsky: It’s a little hard to wrap my brain around that. And and isn’t there? Uh, is it an eight minute communication lag between here and the moon?

Trevor Smith: I don’t know.

Joshua Kornitsky: I know, I just know that there is so. So it always makes me wonder. Knowing that that even though it’s minuscule when it’s orbit, I know that the farther away you are, the longer it takes right now to get information back and forth. But as you said, it’s not going to be necessarily for, for, uh, the data centers, the first generation.

Trevor Smith: Well, this.

Joshua Kornitsky: Customer necessarily for, for instantaneous answers.

Trevor Smith: Well, this customer isn’t even data center customer. Uh starpath. Robotics is a commercial customer of ours, and they plan on building, uh, mining services on the moon. So they’re going to mine for liquid oxygen to do refueling for Starship, uh, for SpaceX. Um, there’s another company called interlude. Rob Meyerson’s, a friend of mine, uh, former president of Blue Origin. He was employee number five. Bill built up Blue Origin. They’re going to be mining for helium three on the moon, which will help the energy crisis we have here on Earth. If we can figure out I don’t know if it’s fusion or fission, but, you know, one of those, um, uh, but that will go towards, uh, cooling systems for quantum computers because helium three is I think it’s like $20,000 a kilogram right now.

Joshua Kornitsky: A little pricey.

Trevor Smith: Real hard to get here on Earth. It’s abundant on the surface of the moon. So their idea is frozen solid. Yeah. So their ideas, they’re going to mine. But all those systems need to be autonomous, to your point, because.

Joshua Kornitsky: They’ve got to have.

Trevor Smith: Power and they have to have power. Right. So we’re going to stand up these large solar array towers and then they will beam power beam, uh, typically to these structures that are moving around and doing all the mining.

Joshua Kornitsky: That’s absolutely.

Trevor Smith: I had no idea this was going to be my life. Uh, it’s kind of.

Joshua Kornitsky: I don’t know how you could have imagined.

Trevor Smith: It.

Joshua Kornitsky: Uh, but it certainly sounds like it’s a heck of a good time. Well, anybody that’s listening that wants to learn more, where would they go to learn more?

Trevor Smith: Uh, I live on LinkedIn. Um, it’s a really great tool. Uh, our our company profile is just atomic Dash, the number six on LinkedIn.

Joshua Kornitsky: And we’ll also share, uh, LinkedIn profile. We’ll share the company’s website. Uh, if they wanted to ask questions, where would they send those?

Trevor Smith: Yeah, we we have an email address, info, info at atomic com.

Joshua Kornitsky: I can’t tell you how much I’ve enjoyed this conversation, Trevor. I’ve only got about 11 hours of more questions, so I’ll just start saving those up and whittling them down for the next.

Trevor Smith: Did we cover half your page there?

Joshua Kornitsky: I’m not even sure, but I don’t feel like we missed anything. I, uh, I have to tell you, this has been absolutely fascinating, and I’d love to have you back for another discussion. Uh, as as your technology and what you and your team are building, uh, continue to grow and expand. We’d love to.

Trevor Smith: Well, we’re we’re here right in Marietta, but, uh, we have expansion plans. We plan to build the first Gigafactory, if you will, for solar array production. Right? 100,000ft² will be 4 or 500 people working at this thing. So we’re doing site selection right now to go build that, because we have this massive pipeline of interest for solar array power.

Joshua Kornitsky: And I have lots of questions on that. But I want to be respectful of things that are still in motion.

Trevor Smith: Yeah, yeah. I appreciate that.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, again my guest today has been Trevor Smith. He’s the founder and CEO of Atomic six, a company creating advanced composite materials that make defense and aerospace equipment lighter, stronger and more resilient. He’s a two time founder, uh, with more than a decade of experience in technology and innovation. And Trevor has led Atomic Six from concept to securing more than a dozen contracts with the DoD, the Air Force, the Space Force, with NASA and with commercial companies. Pardon me. And he’s really pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in advanced materials with products that absolutely are going to be in orbit in one day on the moon. Oh, yeah. Uh, it has just been a pleasure having you here, Trevor. Thank you so much.

Trevor Smith: Oh, thanks for having me.

Joshua Kornitsky: Um, I want to remind everybody again that today’s episode is brought to you in part by our community partner program, the Business RadioX Main Street Warriors defending capitalism, promoting small business, supporting our local community. For more information, please go to Main Street Warriors. Org. And a special note of thanks to our title sponsor for the Cherokee chapter of Main Street Warriors Diesel David, Inc. please go check them out at diesel David. Comm. My name is Joshua Kornitsky. I am a professional implementer of the entrepreneurial operating system. My guest today again was Trevor Smith, founder and CEO of atomic six. Thank you for joining us here on Cherokee Business Radio. And we’ll see you next time.