Steelhead Composites

Steelhead Composites makes composite overwrap pressure vessels: tanks that hold gas at high pressure at a fraction of the weight of the steel they replace, for hydrogen storage and for space launch. Steel vessels are four to seven times heavier, they rust, and they cap what a hydrogen vehicle can carry.

Weight is the whole argument. A hydrogen fuel cell truck lives or dies on how much hydrogen it can carry and what that tank weighs, since every kilo of vessel is a kilo of payload it can't take. The same logic applies going up: mass to orbit is the constraint that prices everything in space. Composite pressure vessels are enabling components, unglamorous and load-bearing, and they decide whether zero-emission heavy mobility works. Getting from design to qualified production fast is what wins a design slot in someone else's vehicle.