Greetings to the fusor community from a space launch entrepreneur

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Matthew Travis
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Feb 10, 2023 3:24 pm
Real name: Matthew Travis
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Greetings to the fusor community from a space launch entrepreneur

Post by Matthew Travis »

Hello Everyone,

By way of introduction, my name is Matthew Travis. I am the founder and currently CTO at Aphelion Aerospace (formerly Aphelion Orbitals). We are a small satellite launch provider and also marketing in-space chemical propulsion solutions. Why I joined the forum is because I’ve been interested in IEC fusion since 2001.

I was part of a team back then with a project to establish an IEC research laboratory in Florida, on the Florida Tech campus, called Spherelab. We made good progress but in 2003, fallout from the Columbia space shuttle accident killed our plans. However, my interest, and the interest of the Aphelion team, hasn’t diminished.

I founded Aphelion, in part, to support the vision I have for IEC propulsion systems for deep space exploration. In short, my intention was to build a company that could offer launch services or I could use the value of my equity to purchase launch services for a demo mission in LEO. To that end, I have had a discussion with Dr. George Miley (I am a U of I alum) regarding supporting the Fusion Research Lab and his proposals for conducting a demonstration mission of applications of IEC fusion for space propulsion and power.

I’ve set up a new company, IEC, Inc., to support this work. IEC will work with Aphelion and the University and be the go-between. Beyond that, there are details that will be made public later. For now, my focus is getting momentum going on the apparently radical idea that we can build and fly something capable of interstellar flight on a reasonable timescale.

Thanks for reading and hello again!

- Matthew
Matthew Travis
CEO, ARES Institute, Inc.
CEO, IEC, Inc.
matthew.travis@aresinstitute.org
Schedule a Meeting: https://calendly.com/matthewtravis
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