GoAero is the challenge that succeeds GoFly, to which we pitched up in California in 2020 BC (Before Covid), and the organisers have clearly learned a lot from the prior.
Its eleven Stage One winners have all recently rendered somewhat derivative craft in pictorial form and yet shared $100,000 between them. Though I'm not bitter (Ed. He is), I do consider it may be worth throwing my hat into the Second Stage ring.
For the current focus is on rescue, for which elements the above is ideally suited:
(a) Retrieve a drowning victim at the beach.
(b) Evacuate flood victims.
(c) Rescue someone who has fallen through the ice on a frozen lake.
The takeaway from all of the half-dozen giant drones that I produced (along with good colleagues) before, during and after the competition is that eVTOLs are a royal pain in the ass. Beside that however the principal finding is that, absent the person on board and things are altogether cheaper, easier and safer.
Which brings you back to the Industrial Revolution and the canals and railways here in Lancashire that made it all possible. For an early finding was a horse could pull a ton on land, but two on rail and no less than forty on water.
Once you're moving fast enough however, progress in the air is wholly more effective than on water, with one proviso: it takes a good deal of energy to get airborne in the first place.
Many years ago I gave up a spin in a Whirlwind helicopter for a flying lesson that did not eventuate... story of my life. It was dedicated to SAR, or Search and Rescue, and this is something the UK can no longer really afford, along with all else. The turbine engines such aircraft use have to be exercised regularly even if there is no rescuing to be done.
The modus operandi of the sketch ~ penned as ever around 04:00 a.m. ~ is to fly to a rescue by air (where else?) and to recover by water. In this way you are reducing the cost of getting the thing up there to travel to the rescue site soonest and to conduct the search. And afterward to return with the casualty by sea, which ideally they'd now be out of.
Then it's travelling light on outbound (ideal in air) and heavy inbound (ideal on water): all of which means you can deploy several hundred for the cost of a single helicopter.
Imprinted on my memory from childhood is the lion surmounted by a swarm of bees on the tins of golden syrup I'd use to sweeten my porridge. It's been removed, as you can imagine, for fear of it unsettling the snowflake generation at breakfast.
But there's a moral to the tale: paper covers rock, bees sting lion*.
* Yes, I know it was supposed to be dead already... get a life.
