Space travel is closer than you think: Utah aerospace companies are using data visualization and simulations to speed up R&D.

• Author: Mumford, Jacqueline

"SCIENCE FICTION INSPIRED A LOT OF the technology we're developing now. It's not fiction, really: it's what we're doing," says Brian McCann, CEO of Intergalactic. He's one of the people taking ideas off the page and into the real world.

RAM Company is the brain behind Intergalactic, acquiring Airborne Environmental Control Systems and relocating the company to St. George in 2019. Airborne started making inroads reducing heat levels in aviation production and McCann, along with the rest of the RAM team, saw this firm foundation as an opportunity to shoot for the stars.

Literally.

AEROSPACE INNOVATIONS INSPIRED BY FORMULA ONE RACING

Intergalactic's foundational innovation is their thermal management systems: the way computers, cars, and aircraft alike keep from exploding.

"The systems we have now have at their core, are technologies from the 1950s and 60s," McCann says.

They just can't meet the heat load that we're bumping up against now. We've developed, tested, and sold a system that's 300 percent more efficient than anything else on the market.

Their product's base design is inspired by precision cooling technology--the stuff used by your car's AC and keeps your house comfortable in the summer. The rest of the system was constructed from a handful of other preexisting ideas--from lines of code in Silicon Valley's Al to Formula One racing's microchip heat exchangers--that had never been applied to the aerospace world before.

"We knew that Formula One racing needed to cool entire cars quickly and consistently, and although what they do and what we're doing is pretty different, we shared that same need," McCann says. "We were able to pull stuff like that from a bunch of different places because of our core management team's experience in the industry--we're combining modern tools with our career-long experience in aerospace to build better."

An Intergalactic-branded thermal heat system doesn't just mean better AC in a fighter jet--it creates faster leaner and smarter aircraft.

"Once the system is installed, it automatically adjusts to make itself more efficient," he says. "It's coded and tailored to Department of Defense standards, so not only is it secure and able to be maintained from far away, but it can also monitor its own use, communicate to users what levels it's operating at and give advice for cleaner operation."

This Siri-esque tech is revolutionary in the aerospace realm, but it's only the beginning for future advances: the engineering team is using it as a springboard to supersonic flight ...

FIGURING OUT FASTER-AND SAFER-SPACE TRAVEL

... and Mars.

"With this critical layer of innovation, sure, we can make our planes and jets fast enough to fly from Los Angeles to London in three hours--but what's...