Fly Another Day: The Daring, Thrilling, and Misguided Life of a Test Pilot

**Elliot Seguin** (0:02)
Mojave has been and will always be at the heart of flight test. Not just Mojave, but this valley, right? I mean, it's just historically, it's the place to be. However, the two things about this most recent revolution or series of revolutions within aerospace that are significant is that number one, the vehicles have gotten a lot smaller. And number two, that startup culture and the availability of startup cash has allowed you to think about starting your own company rather than being forced to go to the experts and ask them to build you a thing.

**Ashlee Vance** (0:47)
All right, if you have been on the sub stack or the YouTube this week, you have noticed, it is the Mojave week for Core Memory. We've been exploring all things aerospace, and today's show fits right in. We've got Elliot Seguin. He is a test pilot who lives out in the Mojave. He's come to be a test pilot in a really unusual way. He's an unusual character. He's just a great dude that I always hang out with when I'm in the Mojave. I think you're going to love this episode. As ever, please go find Core Memory wherever you like to get your podcasts, and I hope you enjoy the show.
We're here at the special moment in Mojave with a special man, Elliot Seguin. We've known each other for a few years now.

**Elliot Seguin** (1:40)
Get near 10 years, I bet.

**Ashlee Vance** (1:41)
Yeah. I think I've been told of the legend of you from friends. I think I would do what I usually do, which is I'm going somewhere and I ask my friends who's interesting in the place I'm going. I know we're sure I was coming down here for a story, and people kept pointing me in your direction, and it turned out it was true. You are a very interesting man.
If you had to begin by just telling people what your job, your life is, how would you describe it?

**Elliot Seguin** (2:18)
Yeah. Test pilot, on my best day, that's what I'd like to call myself. But test pilot can mean a lot of different things in a lot of different communities. So in my case, coming from the engineering ranks, coming from Reno Air Racing and performance testing, power plant testing, it's a different background than say like the movie Top Gun, where he's coming from a military background. So instead of, the old joke is what is test pilot school or why is test pilot school so expensive? And in most cases, you're taking a fighter pilot and you're teaching them engineering. And guys like me, you're taking someone who's been designing and building systems, and you're teaching them, making sure they're ready for the flying portion, because they know how to test the system, they understand that part of the flight, but you're making sure they're qualified for the rest of it. So that's been my path to flight.

**Ashlee Vance** (3:07)
Yeah. So I always tell people, you're a test pilot, and you were just describing, obviously, this different how many people are like you versus the traditional vision of a test pilot.

**Elliot Seguin** (3:18)
It's lower than 101 Well, lower. So in the United States, we don't have a test pilot rating, which is, of course, like everything, it's a good thing and a bad thing. When we met, when I was trying to get into the history, it's a great thing because it means I can just charge way less and take way more risk, and I get to do cool stuff. As you get later in your career, it becomes, now you have to deal with all those whippersnappers that show up. But because there is not a rating for it, it becomes, how do you make yourself stand out in that market? So a guy that's grown up in F-16s, he just has to show the picture of him sitting in front of F-16.

**Ashlee Vance** (3:58)
They all look the same.

**Elliot Seguin** (4:00)
There's a look, and I would argue that the way they fly is different. But the other side for a guy like me, it's really about just leveraging what I can bring to the table, what I could bring to the table back then, which was I was willing to build stuff. I knew how to build stuff, I knew how to design stuff. So I'd be willing to do that in exchange for the opportunity to fly on the backside so we could fill in the resume and start to put the big pieces together.

**Ashlee Vance** (4:22)
How many test pilot jobs would there even be?

**Elliot Seguin** (4:26)