I uploaded this pic as a 'Project in Progress' to the boatdesign.net site, where it has been rebuffed by the moderator: likely because boats are supposed to be on water and not tarmac where, at best, they're merely a curiosity. This has caused the sort of existential crisis that a crack-cocaine addict might feel upon learning his supplier has been incarcerated.
There has always to be a balance between projection and reality, and my beef with the database at the Vertical Flight Society (VFS) has long been that much of what is featured is practically CGI render. In fact it is wholly plausible using AI to create the appearance of a company based around an electrical VTOL machine along with staff, pictures and a registered address without any of it existing at all. One confection of this sort even made the UK press ~ which admittedly says very little ~ with no foundation in reality that I could make out given the due diligence.
I'd be the first to admit that ideas are one thing and execution the other. The first is like the production of semen, which is rarely something to boast about, the second like having raised a child to adulthood. Or as Lilienthal put it, To design a machine is nothing, to build it is something but to fly it is everything. What he had to say about crashing it we shall never know, because he died in the process.
I'd be the first to say that where scale human-carrying drones were concerned, I did indeed get to that flying stage; but that besides a drenching in the dock at Liverpool we've had nothing much since to have hit the water. So what do we do? Do we curl up in a corner and cry? Yes, but not for more than a week.
Instead we must freeze the design right here, pledging ourselves to its development going forward. For nothing is straightforward, no-one is going to do it for you and as I said to Miley Cyrus the other day, it's all about the climb.
But I have emailed Jeff at boatdesign.net to let him know that he has let me down, he has let you down and he has let the whole school down.
Ed. The author has removed himself (again) from Facebook: he's barely interested in his own life, let alone others.
