Founded in 2021 by serial entrepreneur David Mayman and headquartered in New York City, Mayman Aerospace is the designer and manufacturer of a so-called Air Utility Vehicle (AUV) dubbed Speeder.
Subject machine is a compact, high-speed, Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) aircraft at once suited to dual-use military and civilian special missions roles, to include personal transportation; combat resupply; Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR); fire-suppression; Search And Rescue (SAR); and emergency medical support.
Painted in broad strokes, Speeder is small-car-sized aerial vehicle powered by varying numbers and configurations of turbojet engines arranged about the aircraft’s periphery after the fashion of the quadcopter architecture typical of conventional drones. Prototype specimens, to date, have been remotely piloted. Production Speeder aircraft, however, will be available in manned and unmanned versions.
Speeder’s engine thrust-vectoring is accomplished via individual gimbal-mounted engines (or pairs of engines) moving together or individually, and managed by proprietary computer hardware and software systems. Each engine is a self-contained, easily serviceable and replaceable unit. So powered and superintended, Speeder’s in-flight performance is characterized by rapid acceleration, excellent maneuverability, and stable hovering. Precision is augmented by moveable exhaust nozzles known colloquially as jetevators.
Speeder ascends with its engines gimballed forward and outward, and back and out, respectively. As the aircraft rises, the engines automatically rotate to the vertical, thereby reducing heat build-up beneath the vehicle and minimizing FOD hazards.
Speeder alternately burns Jet A-1, kerosene, diesel, or Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF). Ergo, the machine is capable of undertaking missions vastly beyond the purviews of its electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing (eVTOL) pseudo-contemporaries.
Mayman sets forth Speeder, in its unpiloted cargo configuration, will have a maximum speed of 434-knots and a range of 347-nautical-miles. Conversely, Speeder’s piloted iteration has an advertised top-speed of a comparatively leisurely two-hundred-knots.
In August 2021, Mayman Aerospace’s Speeder was selected by the U.S. Air Force’s Special Operations Command to participate in the Department of Defense’s High Speed VTOL Concept Challenge.
In September 2022, Mayman announced its Speeder program had received $1.25-million in funding from the U.S. Air Force's AFWERX Agility Prime program.
AFWERX is a joint venture of the United States Air Force and Space Force, by which the two services seek to “accelerate agile and affordable capability transitions by teaming innovative technology developers with Airman and Guardian talent.
Viewed through the lenses of pragmatism and plain-language, AFWERX—which, remarkably, isn’t an acronym—is fast and lean, low-red-tape initiative that scrutinizes and endeavors to weaponize extant and inchoate Advanced Air Mobility(AAM) concepts and technologies—or, as the AFWERX public-relations department puts it: “develop effective solutions to the challenges facing the service through partnerships with private sector business entities, with particular emphasis being placed on collaboration with technology startups.”
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