HYSKY Pod Ep. 9: Mikaël Cardinal on Project Proticity, Hydrogen Aviation, and Innovating with Dr. Martine Rothblatt
- Danielle McLean
- 1 day ago
- 8 min read
Mikaël Cardinal’s Path to Purpose
Before battery-powered eVTOLs, before Project Proticity, before lungs flew across the sky in a drone, there was a kid in Quebec, raised in a home filled with science and song.
Mikaël Cardinal grew up in Quebec City, the eldest of five, where excellence was a current that ran beneath everything. It wasn’t just the math or the engineering that called to him. It was music.
Mikaël’s classical piano training, shaped by countless hours immersed in composers like Chopin and Debussy, instilled in him a unique blend of discipline and artistry. His educational background combined both science and music that created a balance between creative intuition and analytical thinking. This was an ideal foundation for the complex work he does today.
A Destined Polymath
It was in those early years at airshows, in classrooms, and at the piano that the blueprint of a polymath was being drawn. Mikaël wasn’t destined to fit in one box. He was destined to build new ones... and fly them.
By the time he entered college, it was clear: aviation wasn’t just a passion. It was a mission. He earned a degree in mechanical engineering with a focus in aerospace from the Université de Sherbrooke. His capstone? A composite wing design. His internships? With Bombardier and MDA on space and flight systems.
A master’s in high-fidelity dynamic modeling of UAVs followed and soon a company of his own providing engineering services for aircraft modifications under Transport Canada’s certification framework.
Then came the call that would change his life.
The Martine Rothblatt Effect: Vision at a Global Scale
In 2017, Mikaël was introduced to Dr. Martine Rothblatt, CEO of United Therapeutics and an icon whose name is stitched into technologies like Sirius XM and genomics. At the time, Rothblatt had already been written into the Guinness Book of World Records for flying the world’s first battery-electric Robinson R44 helicopter. Mikaël said that as a young engineer he was very impressed with Martine. There was someone out there who was serious, who had already electrified a helicopter, and had a compelling use case for eVTOL: organ delivery.
It wasn’t just her vision. It was her execution. She didn’t talk about what could be done. She was already doing it.
I remember the first time I saw Dr. Martine Rothblatt fly an electric helicopter in 2022, and that was the day I realized how deeply I resonated with the way Mikaël thinks.
Everyone else was drinking champagne and celebrating, but Mikaël and I both walked out to the helicopter to study it. I wanted to know if hydrogen could fit anywhere on the helicopter and so did Mikael. We had met a few times before, but that was the first time we happened to be in the same place, at the same moment. It was a historic milestone and another world record, and we were both thinking the same thing.
He was, without a doubt, a true builder of the future.
Mikaël had already joined Unither Bioelectronics, a Canadian subsidiary of United Therapeutics, as VP of Program Management and Organ Delivery Systems, and I was cheerleading all of UT's efforts.
Now, in 2025, hydrogen eVTOL has taken flight, and of course it was led by Mikaël. He brought hydrogen flight to life.
Project Proticity: Breathing Life into Hydrogen Aviation with Robinson Helicopter Company
While the world still debates the feasibility of hydrogen aviation, Project Proticity is already flying.
First publicly unveiled at the Vertical Flight Society’s H2 Aero Symposium, Project Proticity is the continuation, elevation, and evolution of the work United Therapeutics began back in 2016.
From the first all-electric Robinson R44 to the eventual hydrogen-powered R66, Proticity is more than an aircraft. It is a vision embodied.
The name itself, Proticity, is derived from proton current, the foundation of how hydrogen PEM (proton exchange membrane) fuel cells work. “It’s the electrical current generated by the flow of protons,” Mikaël explained. “And that’s what powers our hydrogen-electric helicopter.” I can't help but brag that Martine even called me the Godmother of Proticity in her HYSKY Pod appearance in 2023.
Partnering with Robinson Helicopter Company, a titan in rotorcraft manufacturing with over 14,000 aircraft delivered, Unither Bioelectronics is making the strategic leap from the R44 to the R66 platform to gain 200 extra pounds in maximum takeoff weight and more space for hydrogen storage.
This isn’t just about going farther. It’s about saving more lives per flight. “With the R66, we can fit multiple organ care systems on one mission,” Mikaël shared. “And with hydrogen as our primary energy source, backed by a companion battery for VTOL transitions, we’re looking at 95% or more of flight time powered by clean hydrogen.”
From the inside out, Proticity is designed to show that hydrogen aviation isn’t just possible, it’s inevitable.
Organ Delivery by Air: Life-Saving Flight at Zero Emissions
But why helicopters? Why eVTOLs? Why all of this?
United Therapeutics is a public benefit corporation, a legal designation that allows them to prioritize saving lives just as much as generating profit. Their public mission? To create an unlimited supply of transplantable organs, so no one dies waiting on a transplant list.
That mission has multiple shots on goal:
Xenotransplantation: transplanting genetically modified pig organs into humans
3D bioprinting: creating organ scaffolds that are cellularized with a patient’s own stem cells
Ex Vivo Lung Perfusion (EVLP): recovering and reconditioning donor lungs that would otherwise be discarded
The delivery of an unlimited supply of transplants in a sustainable, zero-emission way also has multiple shots:
Beta Technologies and its electric fixed-wing aircraft
Piasecki Aircraft Corporation and its hydrogen-powered rotorcraft development
Mikaël’s work at Unither Bioelectronics, advancing hydrogen-electric helicopters for organ transport
In 2021, Mikaël’s team executed a world first: the drone delivery of a human lung for transplant in Toronto.
Think about that: a lung carried by an unmanned aircraft, from donor to hospital, in the middle of a pandemic, with zero carbon emissions.
Mikaël’s work with Unither Bioelectronics and Project Proticity is enabling an end-to-end organ delivery ecosystem, powered by hydrogen, designed for autonomy, and led by engineers who never lose sight of the patient at the center.
The Engineering Behind It All: eVTOLs, Fuel Cells, and Futureproofing
Behind every poetic flight lies a brutal wall of engineering. And Mikaël Cardinal is scaling it methodically, brilliantly.
Project Proticity isn’t simply about building a hydrogen-powered helicopter. It’s about building an entire system that can survive certification, safety audits, infrastructure gaps, and the fiercest skepticism known to aerospace.
At its core is a hybrid-electric powertrain, where liquid hydrogen powers a PEM fuel cell, producing electricity to drive rotors, all while a battery system handles high-demand VTOL moments. Hydrogen provides range. Batteries provide burst. Together, they form a system that's more than the sum of its volts.
And here’s the kicker: it’s not theoretical. It’s already flying. On March 27, 2025, Mikaël’s team flew their hydrogen-powered R44 demonstrator, a proof of concept that marks one of the most significant hydrogen milestones in aviation history.
That flight is just the beginning. Next, they will pivot to the R66, which opens up even more potential. The R66 gives us more volume to integrate the fuel cell system and maintain the aircraft’s aerodynamic profile and it helps preserve lift-to-drag ratios while gaining payload.
And they’re not just building for one aircraft type. The same fuel cell and LH₂ system could be integrated into Beta Technologies’ ALIA, a fixed-wing electric aircraft that already flies 250 nautical miles on batteries alone. With hydrogen, that range could triple.
This is a multi-shot strategy aimed at a single goal: life-saving, zero-emission flight at scale.
Overcoming Fear and Fueling Trust: Addressing Hydrogen Safety
Hydrogen safety often raises concerns, with many people immediately associating it with danger or historical incidents like the Hindenburg. But what Mikaël and his team are building bears no resemblance to those outdated fears. While hydrogen is indeed highly flammable, their approach is methodical, precise, and thoroughly engineered to prevent risk.
The systems being developed are layered with safety mechanisms, including multiple relief devices, and the hydrogen itself is housed in a unique structural setup that isolates it from the external environment using vacuum barriers. This isn’t about hoping it works—it’s about rigorous systems integration, strict adherence to best practices, and a commitment to continuous improvement.
Mikaël believes hydrogen can match or even surpass jet fuel in safety, but only when it's implemented with discipline and accompanied by public education. Every ground test, incident, and unexpected outcome is tracked and used to inform future design iterations. Every risk is modeled, and every potential failure is accounted for before flight.
This is what serious, responsible innovation looks like when engineers are empowered to lead.
Hydrogen Infrastructure: The Real Bottleneck
So what’s the biggest challenge after the aircraft is certified?
It’s the infrastructure.
Before HYSKY, at Happy Takeoff, we thought we’d fly a hydrogen eVTOL and the funding would rain down from the heavens. It didn’t. Investors asked where our hydrogen source was, and we didn’t have one.
So we pivoted from a for-profit tech startup to a nonprofit public educator and advocate, connecting aviation with real-time hydrogen suppliers.
Mikaël and I talked about starting small with infrastructure. Produce hydrogen at a small scale, then grow. One solution could come from Millennium Reign Energy, a Daytona-based team building green hydrogen production and refueling stations. Their systems are already deployed in multiple countries and have been funded by the Department of Defense. With an added liquefaction unit, they could produce LH₂ on demand.
It’s not just smart. It’s urgent.
While the DOE-funded hydrogen hubs in the U.S. remain in planning limbo, companies like United Therapeutics are ready now. They need LH₂ today, not in 2030.
Legacy in the Making: Music, Mission, and Meaning
Let’s rewind.
Before hydrogen helicopters or organ-saving drones, Mikaël was a pianist. He still is.
Classically trained, he competed at the provincial level and continues to write and compose today, blending synths and sound design in a way that feels like both precision and poetry. His wife, Sarah, also plays piano and sings. Their home is filled with music, a symphony of creativity, intellect, and love.
I connected with that immediately. I came from music too. First-chair clarinet. A signed artist. Late-night songwriting sessions with my co-founder Rachel. Music shaped how I saw the world long before engineering did.
And I’ve noticed something. Many of the greatest engineers I know are also musicians. Martine Rothblatt. John Piasecki. Mikaël Cardinal.
It makes sense. Music is engineering of the soul. Frequency, timing, resonance, signal processing. It's the same language, just interpreted through feeling instead of formulas.
The moment I realized that was in a lab, staring into a spectrometer. Watching light bounce, frequencies measured in peaks and valleys. All I could think was, this is just music. And suddenly, everything clicked.
Closing Reflections: A New Era in Flight
When I asked Mikaël what advice he’d give his 18-year-old self, he paused, told me that I'd caught him off guard, and said something I’ve carried with me ever since.
"Pursue your inner passions. Don’t be distracted by what others think of you." - Mikaël Cardinal
That’s the heart of everything we talked about in this episode. It’s not about chasing trends or building air taxis for the ultra-rich. It’s about creating something bigger than profit. It’s about building aircraft that don’t just carry people. They save lives. It’s about fuel systems that don’t poison the skies we fly through. It’s about doing the hard thing because it’s the right thing.
United Therapeutics isn’t a traditional aerospace company. They’re not selling hype or luxury. They are rewriting the blueprint of what aviation can be.
And Mikaël Cardinal, engineer, musician, visionary, is one of the rare few capable of making it all fly.
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