My fellow e-vtollers, it is customary at this time of year to review the state of our union and to look forward to how it might be advanced during the course of the coming year.
Accordingly, I have extracted the above screen-shot as emblematic of progress to date. The video itself features on CopterPack’s own website, which starts and ends with the view of a man wearing a pair of propellers and as firmly grounded as the Class-C Merc adjacent. In being so, however, it exemplifies the promise of personal air vehicles besides their current condition.
For as things stand, the electrification has devolved along four distinct paths:
- electrification of fixed-wing types
- electrification of rotary-wing types
- development of personal air vehicles
- evolution of ‘flying cars’
The bulk of institutional investment has been steered toward (a) and (b) for the simple reason that in the case of (a), electrically-motivated light or regional airplanes address an established market with the same form of substitution being enacted in the automotive industry… an area with an even larger client-base.
To the same extent, as regards (b) the development of ‘flying taxis’ is little more than an evolution of the helicopter in so far as it combines near-vertical take-offs and landings in a vehicle capable of inter- moreso than intra-urban operation. There is little benefit in taking taxis over routes easily walked, and likewise little benefit in aerial taxis between locations already met by road transport. Congestion at either end (viz. one city and another) can however be compensated wherever the intervening distance merits a consistently higher cruise speed than the alternatives on offer… this is already the reason we fly jet airliners on holidays.
With regard to (d) there is the same evolution toward the four-cornered arrangement which mammals, tables and cars enjoyed long prior. In that sport (and war) advanced the cause of both automobiles and aircraft since their inception, there is much to commend the progress that the likes of Alauda in Australia (or Skydive in Japan) have pioneered in this sphere.
This leaves (c) or personal air vehicles (PAVs) to be considered. As with all inventions, many appear to be pie-in-the-sky and not least my own preferred outline viz. a flying form of phone-box. Nonetheless they are ~ in an era when others are trying to fly to Mars ~ almost prosaic when it comes to what we could achieve collaboratively in the coming year(s). And there is a need to be fulfilled, when relating from the personal to the general:
For instance, I am not alone in enjoying a drink on high days and holidays. Combine this with an invitation to a Christmas dinner not ten miles hence as the crow (or phone-box) flies. It is however a half-hour's drive assuming no traffic, which is associated with a very expensive demand-driven fare, our a prison-term and driving ban on the other hand for those intending to celebrate the occasion as most would like. Would I like to walk to a skyport at one end and be flown in minutes in a personal booth to a healthy walk at the far end, with barely the option of being pulled over enroute? Along with the view of the landscape in place of the back end of a truck? Yes, I think so… even setting aside being elevated to ski-runs or ferried above terrain (or water) whenever and wherever required.
On the one hand then, I am wholly aware that the developers of aerial taxis in the UK, US and Germany have enjoyed ~ and are likely to continue to enjoy ~ whatever capital investment the markets here and there are able to provide. On the other hand I am equally confident that the development of personal air vehicles like the Blackfly for instance will continue to be an attractive target for private investment in the coming months and years.
Nonetheless as someone intimately associated with aviation over several decades, I recognise a fundamental division in all forms of flight viz. that for personal advantage and that for public. The advantage that those efforts in options (a) and (b) have over those in (c) and (d) is commercial carriage. This is a game for high-rollers however from its outset. To certify aircraft and their operation for reliable public transport is to all extent and purposes prohibitively expensive… costing billions of dollars of investment upfront for the promise of equal billions of revenue over future years of operation. A not insignificant advantage of commercial operations at this scale too is that in common with all else, such ventures are ultimately supported by you and I in the shape of tax-payers, should they suffer any form of adverse economics like, for example, pandemic.
It does mean to that PAVs effectively pick up the scraps, like the dogs we are. The UK for instance offers Europe its longest and fastest zip-wire, from atop the rim of a Welsh quarry. Would I rather be flown up to its mountain-top station than driven up on the back of a truck for around the same price as it costs to zip down? You bet, and for all the family. Nonetheless as public carriage this is not going to happen any time soon, nor at any alternative you might consider… Grand Canyon, anyone?
Thus the more aviation changes, the more it remains the same. Only being demonstrably safe over many thousands of hours of operation ensures that the market will evolve in the direction of personal needs being addressed by more personal means: in a way that computers and communications devolved from buildings to back-pockets, or mobility would return primarily to road instead of rail… or for that matter space exploration to space tourism.
Accordingly in 2023 I’m rushing into nothing ~ aviation being a sphere that has rarely rewarded those in intemperate haste. I shall however be looking for some form of engagement from pioneers and parties who are in it for the long-haul. Fellow fans of Star Trek who are exercised by the notion of moving people in three dimensions in the intra-urban environment and beyond; but able to suffer its reversals of fortune as the strides toward its fulfilment.
