Kestrel Aerospace is an early stage startup company based in Livermore, California.  Started in mid 2023, we currently have four employees plus a solid network of small businesses and consultants whose expertise and equipment we draw upon as needed.

 

Kestrel was founded with the goal of revolutionizing aerospace through the use of novel materials and design approaches.  We see great opportunities for improvement through the use of modern materials and manufacturing techniques.  For decades many aircraft designers have mostly focused on using lighter materials like aluminums, titaniums, and composites to improve performance without significantly altering the basic aircraft structure design.  That’s evolutionary, not revolutionary, and it has resulted in some incredibly expensive aircraft.

 

Our approach is different.  Our patent-pending designs use high performance steels with properties that were inconceivable just a few decades ago.  The proprietary steel we use is more than 8x stronger than that of the aluminum alloys used in most aircraft, resulting in an almost 3x improvement in strength-to-weight ratio.  We also cut the major structural components from a single monolithic sheet of material, thereby eliminating the stress risers associated with welded or bolted joints.  Together these improvements allow us to reduce the weight of the airframe by over 75% compared to a conventional design, which creates a positive cascade of benefits - less weight means less wing is needed, less wing means less drag, less drag means a smaller engine is required, which further reduces the weight needed for fuselage structure, fuel, etc.  Revolutionary, not evolutionary.

 

Another key advantage to our approach is that even the most premium steel is less expensive than aluminum, and the laser cutting process produces major subassemblies in a near-finished state.  Our aircraft designs do not require countless hours of chopping, drilling, and riveting of aluminum tubes and sheets, nor endless layup and sanding of various composites.