It's a Sad, Sad, Sad, Sad World

Seven years since I investigated its feasibility, but now its reality... at least on social media. The takeaway in the first case being that it was never going to fly, and in the second that in the only way it matters nowadays, it's flying already.

The giveaway however in that latter case are the facts that (a) you don't want to be trying it out over the world's deepest canyon (b) those propellers should ideally be turning and (c) they do create 200lb's worth of downwash and last time I was there ~ unless they've cleaned it since ~ it was dusty.

Bear in mind however that to most of us, suitably sedated by the blue pill, it's real.

And what's Orwellian about it is not that any Big Brother has orchestrated the fact we no longer distinguish truth from fiction... but that we'll happily do it to ourselves.

Ed. Tho' if you think we're characters in a matrix, try telling it to a traffic cop.

Sharp Intake of Breath

Reading matter I chose whilst travelling recently included a book on the inevitable extinction of the human race ~ and not before time ~ and Adrian Newey's book on how to design a car. Or more specifically a Formula 1 car, the most researched and to my mind over-complicated type on the planet.

Rear-engined racing cars are nothing new, used by both Audi and Mercedes long before they were standardised, largely due the efforts of the likes of Lotus. They do though share a problem with turbo-propeller engines, which unlike an everyday jet is unable to draw breath directly from in-front, where the propeller is located. As for the race-car, it's the driver in the way.

When they first arranged an intake behind the driver's head it was three-sided like an inverted horse-shoe, which meant that the airflow was disrupted over the lip by interference from the driver's helmet. The solution was to separate the mouth of the intake ~ and the incoming airflow ~ altogether, as had been done with every turbo-prop engine out there since the 1950s.

Adrian however only introduced this standardised layout in the mid 1990s after... gazing out the window of an island-hopping aircraft in the Caribbean. Like me, tho' with success, he likes to fix design issues during flights and sketch the results prior to handing them to others to render.

So stay curious, look at how things are made and wonder why they are made that way and one day you too might be working for Ferrari.

At the same time, besides wearing sun-screen I would advise anyone wanting to get a job these days ~ when everyone else beside hordes of robots has identical skill-sets ~ is to see a project through to some kind of conclusion.

Few people have likely considered that a boat might fly itself from the shore to the sea prior to launch, and what was said about flight long ago still pertains: to dream up an aircraft is nothing, to build one is something but to fly one is everything.

Show people that you can do every part of that, including co-ordination of a team no matter how small, and people begin to see a way that you may produce revenue in the fullness of time by providing a competitive edge.

Which is how Adrian began, spending hours around the wind-tunnel at Southampton university and offering those skills to teams that once comprised barely a dozen folk instead of the eight hundred or more that each car requires.

For as comedian Jimmy Carr so often suggests: don't be the best, be the only.

Ed. The author's forthcoming TED talk will take place at the Cock and Bull in Cockermouth.

Look Up

I wonder how many nerds pass through security at Manchester Airport's delightful renewal of its second terminal, and are instantly transported to its 1960s heyday?

"Oh, what transports of delight..." I commented to one among its functionaries!

For here, and tastefully incorporated in a new artwork, were some among thirteen hundred lead crystal 'droplets' which formed the mise-en-scene at a place so loved by plane-spotters.

The original was installed by an emigre architect who had the royal seal of approval and died this century at the age of ninety-three.

Most we hope for nowadays is some or other piece of crap by Thomas Heatherwick.

Ed. Thomas failed to reply to one of his emails.

Take A Bow, Frank.

Stay curious. I spend a deal of time around sea-ports and what caught my eye here was the unusual profile of this pilot boat's prow. Inverted bows ~ sloping the wrong way ~ have a longer history than you'd think and this appears to be a combination of two types to produce what's called a 'wave-piercing' hull.

Such profiles drop in and out of fashion among large naval ships, but here the work (and the fabulous photo) is that of Frank Kowalski and his ship-yard in Ireland that appears to have sown up the fast and rugged boat market with innovative GRP hulls born of his own experience.

So take a bow, Frank Kowalski. The takeaway from all of which is that markets can be cornered by an innovative design stemming from the single-handed actions of a pioneer that will evolve to form a team involved in ongoing production.

Not always sure that's a good thing, as it requires me to do something about it.

Pilot boats are used to transport those with local knowledge of their own harbour to assist in the docking of altogether larger vessels.

Amphibian Ambition

Read with sadness how after 70 years the Land Rover ~ designed as a farming tool at the outset ~ is to be retired by the military, and how fifty were once adapted as amphibious landing craft.

And eventually rejected as unfeasible, since when there's never been anything like the DUKWs provided by Chevrolet during WW2.

The story since does however lend credence to Dominic Cummings' view (along with that of parliament) that UK procurement is not fit for purpose in peacetime let alone war.

Following Google's trail for instance I discover a competition from a few years ago in search of novel means of amphibious landing:

With a set of barely credible requirements ~ principally regarding range combined with speed:

Emerging from which are the safest bet, in the shape of 'the naval architects you know' who have previously provided pretty pictures of how ships might soon look:

Guaranteeing taxpayer funds to pay salaries whilst building a scale prototype:

And afterward going bust:

Leaving the only amphibious survivor stemming from the UK and provided to the US Marines by BAE Systems... as one designed and built by IVECO in Italy:

(Note suggested range in water is rather less than 350 nautical miles at just 12... coinciding of course with international waters.)

It should be me writing these tenders, few of whose clauses will ever be met.

They would include the following:

    *    Troops should also be provided red suits which squirt spider's thread

Fear I may be the last man here working on amphibious craft ~ albeit without those passengers about to get shot at.

Ed. The author apologises for any hurt feelings, pointing out God loves a tryer.

Saronic's No Hedgehog

And here is said Saronic, some among whose vessels are shorter than what's sat on my garage-floor, albeit with a greater displacement.

It's encouraging ~ I can't say it's not ~ and I like the fact they say it can be used for customer-defined capabilities, because it is most often the way innovation works viz. customers coming up with users that inventors never dreamt of.

I'm under no illusions and whilst these drones are nowadays the sinews of maritime presence, what make them useful is AI-reliant comms of the sort that BAE Systems produces.

But my boat brings all the boys to the yard and they're like, it's better than theirs.

(Damn right it's better than theirs... I can teach them, but I have to charge.)

YC/DC

Changing times, California's best known VCs migrating from apps that ensure pizza arrives before it goes cold migrating toward things that move over the sea at speed.

Fresh from Regent then there is Splash, which recently succeeded in an exercise for the Marines that involving delivering not much of a package to a beach in the Indo-Pacific ~ requiring the recipient 'not to get their feet wet'. Watching the footage the guy nearly did, whereas up and running the flat-cat should be able to fly it down the street to the nearest pizza parlour too.

Besides Regent's electrified wing-in-ground effect aircraft and Splash, YCombinator has also backed Saronic, as has the US Navy to the tune of nearly $400 million for the deployment of two dozen larger maritime drones.

Unlike the US however in the UK procurement operates on more of a 'who you know not what you know basis' as described by Boris Johnson's brain, which was known as Dominic Cummings. The only intelligent life-form involved with his government, he would be turfed out because Boris' girlfriend didn't like him: the way it's worked since Anthony and Cleopatra.

Nonetheless as Victor Hugo wrote, nothing can stop an idea whose time has come... even if it's in China instead of here.

Ed. He didn't add the China bit, we did that.