#2318 - Harold "Sonny" White

**Joe Rogan** (0:03)
The Joe Rogan Experience.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:06)
Trained by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.

**Harold White** (0:12)
What's happening? How's it going, Joe?

**Joe Rogan** (0:14)
Pleasure to meet you.

**Harold White** (0:15)
Yeah, thank you for having me here today. I appreciate it.

**Joe Rogan** (0:18)
My pleasure. Well, as soon as I saw the subject, I was like, oh yeah, like, what are you doing?

**Harold White** (0:22)
Right, right, right. Advanced Power and Propulsion. Kind of been a passion of mine for the last 20 some odd years. I suppose if I kind of look back through the annals of my life, right, I've been thinking about Advanced Power and Propulsion ever since I was a teenager.

**Joe Rogan** (0:38)
What do you think inspired that? Was it space missions? Was it, did you look at it and go, I think we can do better? Like, what was it?

**Harold White** (0:46)
Well, you know, I grew up in Washington, DC, and so I got a chance to spend a lot of time in the air and space Smithsonian. I don't know if you've ever had a chance to go to that. But I grew up in DC, getting a chance to go to the air and space Smithsonian. I got to see all these awesome examples of people working together to try and accomplish amazing things.
You might walk into the air and space Smithsonian, and you just think about, well, this is full of a bunch of stuff. But it's not just about the stuff, right? It's about the people that worked together to do all these amazing things like the Bell X-1 rocket. I mean, if you really want to go back, the Wright Flyer, right? That's something where two guys worked together that made bicycles for a living, that decided to go create something that flew. And then in less than 50, you know, 50, 60 years from when they flew that Wright Flyer, right, were putting human beings on the surface of the moon. And so all that really resonated with me as a kid. And I think tended to make me gravitate towards a technical field, although it wasn't a straight line, right? I'd like to say, you know, I knew at an early age what my calling was and what I was going to do, but I bounced around for a little bit until I finally got on a path that, you know, I really connected with. And so I think I knew very early on in my journey in university, right, when I was going to get my degree, that I wanted to work in Advanced Power and Propulsion. And so at that point, everything I did kind of worked towards, how do I get the skills? How do I get the math and physics training that helps me kind of work in this domain? Because I was thinking about the idea of space warps very early on, right?

**Joe Rogan** (2:36)
It's amazing that you were so focused so early. What a great head start, you know? It's a huge advantage to know what you really interested in at such an early age.

**Harold White** (2:45)
Well, there were a few speed bumps along the way. We took a few detours, like any human, right? You're like, I don't know if I want to do this yet, right? Yeah.

**Joe Rogan** (2:53)
Well, it is pretty extraordinary if you look at that number that you said, like from Orville Wright and Wilbur Wright to space travel, like how quick that is. Yeah. I mean, we think about in terms of ancient history, how long it took us to get to this point, and that kind of acceleration so rapidly inside of a lifetime to see just world changing events and the Internet all happening simultaneously, right?

**Harold White** (3:15)
Absolutely. You know, there's another interesting story, right? So my background is I've got a PhD in physics, and a master's in mechanical engineering, so both a scientist and an engineer, so I have deep appreciation for both disciplines. But within the discipline of science, right? We just talked about the right flyer, and then going to the surface of the moon, and that's more of a kind of an engineering story. On the topic of science, you know, think about E equals MC squared. You probably heard that or saw it on a coffee cup.

**Joe Rogan** (3:49)
I don't really honestly know what it means. It's a theory of relativity.

**Harold White** (3:52)
It's theory of relativity.

**Joe Rogan** (3:53)
I could say it to people, like, come on, man.

**Harold White** (3:55)
Right, E equals MC squared. You actually need to explain it.