Blowing Stuff Up for Defense Innovation: From Tanks to Teleportation Ep 7

[Music] this is a founding media podcast welcome back to from thanks to teleportation a podcast where we explore the intersection of technology business and national security with leaders of the defense innovation unit which is part of the us department of defense i'm your host dan dillard and as always i'm joined by my co-host zach walker the texas lead for the diu today we have a very special guest on our show the man the myth the legend jaime heinemann you probably know him from his work as a special effects expert on the tv show mythbusters but there is so much more to him than that in this episode we dive into his history which has ranged from being a chef to boat captain and even a pet store owner we also hear from jamie about where he thinks the future of defense technology is heading and how he thinks the private and public sectors need to get better at working together today it's blowing stuff up for defense innovation let's get to our conversation [Music] jamie thanks so much for being with us today so while most people know you for some of the notable work that you've done i'm really intrigued to talk to you about and learn more about your background the work that people may not know about as i was looking into some of your backstory i was blown away by some of the things that you've done what i was learning from hitchhiking as a kid all over the country to having a degree in russian linguistics to honorary doctorates that you received i mean just wow then i read about your career uh when you're going to from boat captain to survival expert to chef and everything in between well um i grew up in the midwest and uh uh my parents were of a somewhat uh i don't know conventional background and uh in the midwest that means do what you're told and don't talk back um and they had issues with me not paying attention to that and uh it was in the 60s and you know hippies and a long hair and you know vw vans painted with flowers and lots of pot and all that kind of stuff and so uh it sort of was um formative for a lot of stuff that happened later my mother being a librarian did her homework and she looked around she found a survival training school in wyoming and uh and they said you make it through this you know next time you want to take off for the summer we'll at least know that you have some official kind of ability to take care of yourself and by the way you take the family car this time so jamie it's a huge pleasure to have you on from tanks to teleportation if you could talk a bit more about how you went from that pretty remarkable background to getting into special effects and getting into this love of experimentation and science and technology that we all know about you today so i made lists i researched it i went to the library these were days before the internet and you know put assigned pluses and minuses to all potential choices that i had and uh um and i found just purely artificially that way that effects was the choice for me because it was creative but creative over a wide potential range of different types of things it had a a a lot of reach like if you were wanting to do creative stuff i'd say you're going to be a sculptor what are you going to do put it on a make a sculpture and set it on a you know stump on the next to a wall or something or you know it's like if you're making movies millions and millions of people may see them and yeah so you're working with a wide variety of different uh um situations and people it was uh it just ticked off all the boxes it wasn't routine oriented um and by the way i uh um you know one of the things that you didn't mention was that right after high school i had bought a pet store uh my father had come home with a dog collar for the dog and found that the pet store local pet store was up for sale and uh i had a little inheritance uh you know a few thousand dollars from my mother having died uh just before that and so i bought that pet store and oh uh and i uh eventually i learned that uh i didn't like routines you know it's like you never in that kind of thing you never get away from it you got all these animals you know pissing and and and killing each other and dying and you know it just uh you can't leave it alone so i stayed with that for three years uh and had decided to do to go to college to so that i didn't have to you know work for a living or the equivalent of that because i didn't like my experience with uh you know running a small business but um uh that uh jumping to filmmaking uh being able to have a flexible routine or or flexible way of living that wasn't routine oriented uh was what i thrived on and that's what i wanted so i got into film effects work same drill made lists was methodical about it started out cleaning you know shops because i was handy and didn't you know and hardworking and uh shortly had my own shop because i kind of i don't know i i had learned you know this this is actually another funny little story that goes towards um how i approach things um uh i had reasoned that if i cleaned the the shop i would be the one that knew where everything was and so that's a position of power um so because if if the people there had to rely on you uh to to be able to do their job because they couldn't find anything if you weren't there then um that's job security and uh so i you know found all the work that i wanted that way uh and when these these these special effect shops tend to come and go because it's a it's an unreliable business you know you're living or working from job to job and uh and laying everybody off and rehiring they tend to get a little success from a movie here or there or something lasts for a few years and then they go away um and uh so i uh my shop now is actually a kind of a composite of close to half a dozen of those shops that um eventually went away and i got that i i would you know i got their stuff either bought it or was given to it because they didn't want it and um and i managed to stay and stay in business for long enough by doing prototypes like toy prototypes and other kinds of prototypes as well as film effects worth and work anything i could do to get my hands on and i kept my overhead down and diversified that way the diversification actually in that environment was what led to landing mythbusters because as unlikely as it seemed at the time that i would be able to uh you know have a successful tv show uh i took it on just as a matter of principle because small businesses need to diversify if they're going to have any longevity and uh sure enough this landed uh you know it was one in a million shot but that kind of saved me from going the way of computer graphics uh which is what all special effects virtually is now yeah yeah i'm sure yes there's probably all i'm well i know i'm sure there's a lot of really creative work that is being done and is going on in their heads but uh what are they doing they're sitting staring at a monitor yeah it's not physical it's not out there experiencing it yeah yeah it's uh you know there's there's something to be said for i mean we we were inundated with all this technology but i always remember that you know we regardless of who we are we live in the real world we still have to eat uh we still have to have a roof over our heads and and uh interact and hopefully interact with other people and stuff like that so there's there's more in the world than what you see on a tv screen i see the thread of the not wanting to like get in one compartment and just do all these various things and how that's led you down the path i want to talk about the diu and how you started working with the dod and how you know some of the experiences one of the things that one of the program managers over at diu had said about you is he's a true experimenter prototyper here's a problem and now we need to go solve it you go out and and future it out not just theorize it and you make it happen so why is it important to get it off the computer and out of the lab and just go test things will you talk about some of the projects that you've seen with the work that you've done with the od well um the thing that happened to me over all of this uh all these various experiences which were uh initially all over the map but then as i got into the effects i'd found my niche as it were and i stayed with that for decades and then mythbusters came along and i ended up with the ability to make pretty much anything you know it was almost like cg magic where if i have the idea i go in my shop and i have the thing it's just a matter of time i had had a good experience a couple of times working with the government throughout throughout mythbusters and uh uh ended up doing uh um some work for one of the three letter agencies and and uh you know it's not nothing uh um you know no spycraft or anything like that isn't more uh concealment and delivery devices let's say that were relatively innocuous i didn't even i didn't need to know what they were for but i enjoyed the work and uh one thing led to another and i uh ended up uh uh getting invited to go do some exercises with uh with uh some of the elite military people and um uh and so what i i would go out with them and see what they were doing and uh ask them questions about you know is it are the things that you are you don't like about this work or stuff that you know ought to be uh changed in in terms of the you know the technology or whatever you know physical things uh and uh and and several times i found uh that oh well i can take care of that uh and i would go back to my shop and make something and you know i uh uh and you know bob's your uncle where they i i became somewhat or fairly successful i did some work with them that they uh um that they i thought was uh was good and has things that have moved on from there um the first one i think with that was something that um the these guys if they end up having to board a ship let's say it's in the middle of night in open ocean they have a long pole that has a grappling hook on it that they send up and they may well be out in open seas uh that are you know that mean that every couple of seconds the boat and them are airborne now a ship can be a hundred feet tall with no uh uh and you know no uh kind of decks or anything that you can hook that hook on to and so on so uh it's a dangerous thing it's something really awkward they've gotta come up climb up a little caving ladder and they're uh uh you know heavily laden with their gear and uh you know it might be a piracy situation so they're they've got to be on their card for getting shot out or something and so i made this thing which carries them it's the size of a small suitcase and it carries them straight up at about a mile and a half an hour it has a little tank treads uh on it that are magnets with rubber pads on them uh and uh we've carried a couple of guys straight up the side of a ship it's terrifying because you're entirely reliant on this thing and you know you could fall 100 feet right onto the deck of that that uh you know go fast boat that you come off of or get you know or drown or something but um uh we found we never saw it actually break free sometimes they slide you know with uh uh if there's uh uh salt crystals or something like that on under our bump and so we uh um uh it's it's uh continuing in development uh i did the prototype and that was a situation that you know uh uh it was just uh well what you know this this doesn't seem like a a reasonable thing to to do you know and so uh i had and you know what's funny about that and this is also telling about my mindset is that that goes back to a thought experiment that i had wondered about it uh earlier which was that well if you have a magnet and you hook it onto a steel ceiling if you weigh 200 pounds the magnets gotta have more than 200 pounds of pull if you're going to hang on it how much magnetic pull do you have to have if it's on a vertical surface and if you put a non-skid material between it and that surface and it turns out i can support 200 pounds with 30 pounds of pull with that um and so the thing that i built actually is theoretically capable of holding you know close to a thousand pounds or something like that because why not it and it's just that much more security um it's there there there are issues like salt crystals and uneven surfaces and things like that which we have addressed but um that was a perfect little gadget for me somebody had tried it before apparently uh years before me and i don't know what the problem was but uh it took several guys to move this thing onto the side of the ship and it didn't you know it wasn't that reliable or something like that i spent a month and a half by myself uh in the shop with the music cranked up and uh i was just you know partying with this thing and it come out it works i took it over to a nearby ship in san francisco bay a military ship and told the guys what i was doing and they said sure let's let's try it out and we even uh you know got some sea water and put some dishwashing soap in it make it nice and slippery and mopped down the wall and still had a a a couple of operators there with me that just hang they just one of them got on it went straight up so the other one hung on to him and they both line up so it's that uh that thing was a beast could you speak a bit about the uh some of the other work some of the counter drone work the h-wing that's some really interesting stuff too well drones maneuver by uh changing the rotation of props so that they like they'll slow down this one so that drops and off they go in that direction um well that means that for them to change direction they've got to move all that mass now a little drone can just and and it's and it's gone big drone not so much you'll see they're kind of and that's the way it works well so i thought about that and uh that meant to me that i need to to tip the balance i need to make up for that extra mass by having vectored thrust so uh all of the props like ice the the h-wing was a uh a quadcopter as well uh but all four of the props were on servo so they could be tilted um as well as um they were on uh they were on wings so we had now we had a uh had a drone with this was four wings uh ten des moines designed two in the front two in the back and uh and so it takes off with the wings vertical uh so it does the be tall thing like your standard quadcopter but then when it gets airborne it tips the wings in and off they go uh and so now we have much greater range because we're using the lift of the wings greater speed um and we made the uh the props fully blown meaning the the diameter of the of the blades on the motors were the same as the width of a wing or the length of a wing and this thing is arguably the most agile aircraft ever designed i mean there's you have an osprey that does that but that's with two wings and it's it you know it's it's a big thing and it's not made to you know do aerobatics and stuff like that this thing was um we built everything out of heavy heavy duty carbon fiber uh tubing and whatnot and uh and structures that we made on it to reinforce it uh it can come in at 100 miles an hour with the wings like this and go like that and stop like air brakes um it can do uh you know barrel rolls and maneuvers like you know so that are so aggressive uh it's it's yaw authority is so aggressive that um you need the autonomy because it's too agile for a human to control it um at least at it at its uh upper limits of its performance uh i've looked at my work with the military as something that's you know not only patriotic but also uh you know by and large is making stuff that keep our sides safe you know uh testing and prototyping is what you described is key to finding out what's possible you know many organizations uh that work with the dod they stick with the pen and paper and propose technology solutions that way so in your opinion what's what things need to change to be more effective and efficient in bringing technology to the government i think that's one of the things about diu is that uh that they uh they will work towards uh negotiating about that if that's what they feel like will make for a more successful product and incentivize people because i think that's a lot of what diu is about is to uh try and find ways of of of uh keeping the the defense up to date and and you know whatever it takes as long as it's ethical uh let's figure it out and you know stay stay with uh our near peers and and others like that that maybe don't have some of the same constrictions that we do yeah your spot on jamie we learned pretty early on that to really get the best technology we can own it right we have to make sure the companies have the ability to commercialize it and market it and frankly profit on it and that's really the the key of being being dual use but there are many cases where like you mentioned earlier if it's something that is research and development done with the government yeah certainly the government does assert some kind of rights but we we really try to make it as negotiable as possible if a company wants to just let the government use it great if the company wants the government to own part of it let's work it out as well um but something else that we do that is somewhat unique is the access to ranges and testing that may be different than what you would get on the private side a lot of our portfolio companies have said that they've really enjoyed being able to get really quick feedback from beauty and honestly frankly just kind of blow stuff up in ways that the faa may not normally let you do i was curious if you could speak a bit about blowing stuff up for the government literally but also figuratively right the good the bad the ugly you know anything that that you would want our audience to know um sure well uh first up the uh the whole thing about blowing stuff up was it's it's what we got known for but um the reality of it is that it's kind of boring i mean uh first the thing is there and then it's not there anymore and you know we only really got to enjoy what was going on by using the high-speed camera afterwards uh you know and inspecting the shrapnel or something like that but um other than it's not something that uh you see all the time hopefully uh it it's it it's not that exciting for for me i i have not done any uh blowing stuff up for diu i did do some for the office naval research in developing a new type of of lightweight armor that was specifically designed to deal with a blast pressure reduction so we used geometry to in the in the structure of the of the material these blast panels to try to reflect and redirect at right angles instead of you know using brute force to absorb stuff which means mass and weight um the there is a a funny story about that is that i use some of the resources that we had um from uh the uh in the bay area uh with law enforcement at a blast range where we could you know legally set set off some explosives to test this armor and uh uh to control it i uh got a trench plate those heavy steel plates that are like an inch thick or something go on the road to cover up holes that have been excavated for you know work on the roads and uh i suspended that on a on the tines of an extended reach forklift like a gradal and i mounted this test sample of uh armor on the underside and we suspended the this whole affair over the required thing by the onr that the test would be a kilo of tnt at 10 inches and we set this thing off and you know these things off in different configurations of of the prototypes that i made um and you know the whole thing would you know obviously uh it affected the trench plate um because and it you know it as you would expect you know the explosive goes off and the trench plates kind of you know propelled upward a little bit and uh and the group in the uh the standard reach forklift is you know bounced some uh but it had its arm extended it was fine however over i don't know about uh close to ten tries the trench plate uh potato chipped and uh so it became like this where the you know because from the blast hitting in the middle over and over again we'd bolt on our next sample and do it again and so i was like oh i'm gonna have to buy a trench plate it looks like we went until we had about used up all the explosives and i said well let's turn it upside down and put the rest of the explosives underneath it see if we can straighten that sucker out and it did well exactly for rental you know trench plate companies like i imagine they're going to be looking at that there's a little bit of a kind of a nicely shaped shallow bowl shape right in the middle of it and be like what on earth could do that do you ever look back i mean you've done so many things you ever look back on your career and and have actually something that stands out for you i see that as like i see a lot of what i've experienced in my life has been kind of like surfing uh so you never really know where you're gonna end up you know there is the is a reality to pay do all due respect to the you know you're not going to fight the ocean you're not going to change what those waves do uh you're going to have to follow them but where you actually go with them is uh is up to you and so this rather unusual background that i've had is a good example of that and i'm still seeing that uh in the way that uh you know people that have seen me and and reach out to me there's been just so many opportunities and interesting things have been that have been happening you mentioned uh m5 or your company is that what led you to create that or what does m5 do uh well m5 was a special effects and prototyping company and we got taken over by mythbusters for a while as i mentioned it was fortunate because we were we had our niche but uh computer graphics has slowly come to dominate everything so it makes it hard to make a reliable living doing the what we call practical effects but uh the shop as it happens because we were the place that you would go to uh when uh if you were a director or producer and you didn't know where else to go to have something made it's like whatever it is uh if that director wants a thing he can come to me and if i don't know how to make it myself i know who does or know how to find who does and uh and so we have all this equipment to be able to expedite that kind of stuff it's nothing particularly exotic but it's it's varied and versatile and uh and designed to all designed to put something together together really quickly basically if i have an idea i just uh go in that shop crank the music lock the door i'm coming out with a thing sooner or later i kind of think you have to leave it to people like me or some or you know somehow engage them we live in the real world and um problem solving uh uh can greatly benefit by interacting with the real world that's where these prototypes rapid prototyping and stuff like in the shop uh that i have it like you start to pull stuff off of shelves you cut cut it up you screw something onto it you glue this or assemble that and and it gets it in your head you know is otherwise if you don't get it in your head it's like a pile of meaningless data on the table you need to internalize it because once you internalize it then you become an active participant in solving the problem and and making something uh instead of a passive one you can't just like think about something or stare at something and expect that that all sorts of amazing things are going to happen well i learned a lot today and i'm sure many of our audience did as well jamie thank you so much for being with us and connecting the dots for us on your life the experiences your contributions and i will say and i'm sure zach agrees with me anytime you're in austin i'd love to blow some stuff up with you absolutely okay then we we appreciate you being here in the chat today thank you so much thanks good luck thanks jv take care again for sharing your thoughts insights and experiences jamie we so enjoyed getting to learn a little bit more about you and what you're doing as well as your unique path again our offer still stands to get together to blow things up the next time you find yourself in austin if you enjoyed this episode be sure to subscribe and share it with a friend or fellow myth busting fanatic and if you haven't already be sure to listen to the previous episodes from tankster supportation to learn more about the exciting work the defense innovation unit is doing thanks to teleportation is in partnership between the defense innovation unit and founding media it's created in austin texas to learn more about the diu please visit our show notes thank you for listening [Music] you

Channel: founding_media

Views: 9,364

Keywords: Podcast, DIU, DoD, Defense Innovation Unit, Department of Defense, Explosions, Jamie Hyneman, Mythbusters

Id: TeYVpzvxXgw

Length: 29min 13sec (1753 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 22 2020