Two upstate New York startups are radically changing the worlds of quantum computing and drone design. At the same time.

And they’re starting with the debate about which propellers are the most efficient: skinny propellers versus beefy propellers.

Which admittedly is a debate that no one is debating because the current industry standard drone design requires a skinny propeller.

So why skinny and not beefy? Well, in order to explain that requires we get serious here with some science and math…and 19th-century Victorians.

And that means we need to first talk about the “Reynolds Number,” which has nothing to do with aluminum foil, but it has everything to do with a guy from Victorian England named Osborne Reynolds.

And like all people who lived in the 1800s in Victorian England, Osborne Reynolds had far too much free time on his hands and he used that free time to think about science things. Because that was really the only way to get a date back then.

You see, Victorian science nerds were a lot like rock stars today. You’d come up with some scientific thing (like a principle or law or a number) and you ended up with a lot of right swipes on Victorian Tinder.

Reynolds’s science thing was figuring out how and why fluids flowed the way they did at different velocities. And his “Number” is a nifty way to tell when the airflow changes from laminar to turbulent flow as you increase the velocity of the propeller. Now, why would anyone care about that?

Well, this is an oversimplification but:

Laminar Flow = Good, because laminar flow allows for the all-important pressure differential. You know, where the low pressure at the top of the prop and the high pressure at the bottom of the prop creates lift.

Turbulent Flow = Bad, because if you spin the prop too quickly, then laminar flow changes to turbulent flow creating eddies, separation bubbles, and many other things that disrupt the all-important low /high pressure differential.

And without a pressure differential, there is no lift. And the prop stops working. And the drone falls out of the sky. All bad things. Reynolds Number helps predict when all that will happen.

Well, you say: “just spin the prop much more slowly.” And that’s a good idea, but there is a problem with that approach. Most electric motors driving the prop want to go fast because electric motors are most efficient at high RPMs.

Well, you say part two: “make a skinny prop then.” And that’s been the right answer for the industry-standard design drone. A skinny prop has a much smaller width so there is still mostly laminar flow over the prop even at higher RPMs.

But that’s an unhappy trade-off. The skinny prop needs to be skinny enough to spin fast enough without losing lift to stay somewhat close to a standard electric motor’s high RPM efficiency band.

In other words: both the skinny propeller and the electric motor are compromised designs - and unhappily inefficient. Sadness all around.

What is needed is a (happy) way so that the electric motor is designed to be efficient at lower RPMs and that the propeller is designed to be hyper-efficient at those lower RPMs.

And that (happy) way means (you guessed it): a beefy propeller. Beefy propellers are like steak. The thicker the better. Plus everyone is happy when they are eating steak.

But how do you design a highly-efficient beefy propeller? Well, that turns out to be a very, very hard problem to solve.

A problem in fact that actually hasn’t been solved. Why is that?

Well, it has to do with the concept of infinity. Because every single point along the blade experiences completely different speeds and aerodynamic forces, there are practically an infinite number of variables. And if you know anything about infinity, you know that it takes a long time to compute. (Yes, we’ve combined dad-jokes and quantum-compute jokes in one article.)

Plus there is this insane battle between aerodynamic efficiency and raw physics: a propeller must maintain its aerodynamic shape while being actively torn apart by centrifugal forces, i.e., at high rotational speeds, centrifugal force pulls outward on the blades with immense pressure, attempting to rip them right out of the central hub. And the thrust pushing forward bends the blades along their length, while the engine's torque twists them backwards.

It’s an engineering and material science nightmare.

So, you say: “just make the propeller beefier.” Yes, we like the enthusiasm, but you can only add so much beef because, yes, making a blade wider or thicker adds strength needed to resist these forces, but doing so adds weight, which severely amplifies those same self-destructive centrifugal forces.

In summary: yes, you need to make a beefy propeller but it can’t be too beefy and it can’t be “bleu” (the French word for a very rare steak). It needs to be medium rare.

OK. How do you solve this challenge? Well, you can be transcendentally brilliant and intuitive geniuses like the Wright Brothers, because it turns out the Wright Brothers were beefy-propeller freaks too.

In a 2002 paper (we’re not exactly at the cutting edge of historical research, but you knew that already) entitled “Propeller Performance Tests of Wright Brothers’ Bent-End Propellers,” the authors describe the evolution of the Wrights’ thinking on propeller design and the simply epic amount of efficiency they were able to achieve by going to beefy propellers.¹ And the Wrights did this all by experiment and hand carving the blades - which is just insane.

And last time we checked it's 2026 and there is a severe lack of transcendentally brilliant, intuitive geniuses who can also hand-carve efficient propellers. So that option is off the table.

That means what is needed is a facsimile of the Wright Brothers in digital form.

That is why the current state-of-the-art is to design propellers utilizing “genetic algorithms,” which are algorithms that mimic the evolution process.But, because there are so many variables in propeller design, genetic algorithms require a ton of compute. In fact it can take many days of processing.

And even after those days of processing, it’s more likely than not that a genetic algorithm will not come up with the optimal design.

That’s because genetic algorithms get stuck repeatedly in what is called the “local minimum.”

What does that mean?

Well, genetic algorithms evaluate all propeller design options in isolated batches. If the genetic algorithm finds a shape that performs reasonably well, it tends to cluster around it. This traps the algorithm in a " local minimum," a false success where any minor change looks worse, blinding the system to a radically different, hyper-efficient blade design just over the next mathematical ridge.

We like this metaphor for explaining the “local minimum” problem: “You know you want to reach the absolute lowest point in the mountain range, but because of the fog, you can only see your immediate surroundings. If you walk into a small ravine, every step you take in any direction goes uphill. Even though you are in a "hole," there is a much deeper valley somewhere else that you cannot see.”

Well, how do you solve this problem?

What is needed is a capability that can contemplate as many of those infinite numbers of variables so that it’s possible to “see the deeper valley in the mountain range.”

That’s quantum computing.

Because with quantum computing, it’s possible to holistically test far more of those infinite numbers of variables, to test design choices and change conditions, to consider edge cases, with no assumptions. And with no local minimum.

And that’s why a partnership between BQP and Modovolo, two Upstate NY start-ups, ischanging everything about drones and drone propeller design.

Abhi Chopra, co-founder and CEO of BQP explains, “quantum computing has so much promise but it has been mostly stuck in the theoretical. We started BQP with the mission to bring quantum computing into practical applications. That’s why designing propellers and other applications with Modovolo is so revolutionary. We’ve broken out of theory and are into the real world. And we are changing that reality now.”

Let’s indulge in a geek dialogue (with translations) with Abhi Chopra, CEO and co-founder of BQP, on why this is so revolutionary.

Geekese: “BQP’s system starts the optimization by applying a digital version of a "quantum Hadamard gate." Mathematically, this forces the starting probabilities to distribute perfectly and evenly across the entire design domain.”

Translation for Non-Geeks: Every possible thickness, width, and curvature profile gets an identical, completely unbiased evaluation at the starting line.

Geekese: “That’s because in BQP’s quantum compute system an m-qubit individual floats in a probabilistic state of superposition, representing 2ᵐ different design configurations at the exact same time.”

Translation for Non-Geeks: That means that it’s like looking at every possible variation of a thick blade simultaneously, giving massive design resolution.

Geekese: Plus, “BQP’s system uses the concept of quantum superposition to evaluate variables probabilistically. Instead of testing standalone shapes sequentially, it maps out a massive layout of geometric options simultaneously.”

Translation for Non-Geeks: This comprehensive view allows BQP’s system to see the entire design landscape at once, finding the absolute best design, i.e., no local minimum or, to use our fog-ravine metaphor, the lowest ravine rather than getting stuck in the first decent ravine it encounters.

OK. That’s a lot of Geekese. But what does this mean practically?

Justin Call, CEO and Co-Founder of Modovolo, explains, “Our entire design and engineering philosophy is built on a principle of what we call, “performance-to-cost,” which means that for any product we are simultaneously seeking higher performance but also at a radical reduction in price. The first result of that thinking is the Modovolo Lift which has more flight time, way more payload capacity, but still costs far less than competing systems - even Chinese ones.”

Gabor Paulke, Chief Design Officer of Modovolo, “One of the things that performance-to-cost requires is looking at everything and determining how to simplify it. How do we reduce part count? Fewer parts means less weight and fewer things to break and fewer things to assemble. If it weighs less, it flies longer - increasing performance. If it has fewer parts, there are fewer parts to break and it takes less time to build, reducing cost.”

Arion Mangio, CTO and Co-Founder of Modovolo continues, “We have a patent-pending process for making 3D-printed propellers that dramatically drives down the cost of making propellers but we have been struggling to get performance gains. That’s why BQP is so important because their quantum capabilities are powering our propeller design. And it’s pretty wild stuff.”

Yes, indeed. The propeller shapes are dramatically different than anything the drone industry has seen.

Abhi continues, “We are able to break through the skinny versus beefy propeller debate. Because BQP’s quantum system, it doesn’t matter. For years the drone industry has been asking: ‘How do we make skinny propellers a little better?’ BQP’s quantum capabilities allows us to ask a different question entirely: ‘Why are we using skinny propellers in the first place?’”

And that’s why the future likely belongs to beefy propellers. Or some other weird quantum-designed shape that looks like it escaped from an alien spacecraft and would make the Wright Brothers spill their coffee. We don't know. What we do know is that when a quantum computing company and a drone company start collaborating, conventional wisdom becomes a target rich environment.

And that's bad news for skinny propellers.

¹ Source: Miley, S. J., Ash, R. L., Hyde, K. W., Landman, D., & Sparks, A. K. (2002). Propeller Performance Tests of Wright Brothers' "Bent-End" Propellers. Journal of Aircraft, 39(2), 234–241.