Friday, September 25, 2015

The First Airplane That Anyone Can Fly

This is what can happen when the government gets out of the way.

Free market innovation is awesome.





-RW

10 comments:

  1. Obviously it's not for everyone; you've got to have the coin...

    I think it's fantastic, fascinating and very exciting.

    Notice the first words out of the female hosts mouth: "It seems like a disaster waiting to happen." Not "How cool!" or "That's incredible!". No, just seems like a disaster waiting to happen. *eyeroll*

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  2. That was once true for electricity, cars, and decent shoes.

    What was once available only to the elite becomes, through market forces, available to all, if there's interest in it.

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    1. Are you referring to my comment @ 4:13 PM? Perhaps I should have included the word "yet" as in "Obviously it's not for everyone yet" as I wholeheartedly concur with what you are saying.

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    2. Any kind of aircraft is still a heavily government-regulated entity -- the price will not likely come down even though they should.

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  3. We have free markets now? What about all the govt subsidized education that gave the designers the skills to build the plane?

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  4. Forgetting the cost of the airplane itself (which is not listed on the plane's web site), you're going to need $4,000 to $5,000 of training just to fly this -- not exactly an "anybody can fly" kind of thing.

    While flying itself is not particularly difficult (most of the time), it tends to be VERY unforgiving of errors near the ground. Another argument against "anybody can fly". If you stall the aircraft near the ground, you are almost certainly going to die -- along with any passenger who is along (one is allowed under LSA rules). If you get into trouble, sometimes you have to do the opposite of your instincts.

    Flying is awesome, and lots of people should do it, but you really have to respect it, or it will bite you in the ass.

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    1. Icon A5 base model - $195k

      fully loaded - $250k

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    2. The aircraft is $189,000 with a refundable $5,000 deposit and the rest due upon receiving the aircraft.

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  5. Palo Alto. Cool stuff come out of there. Tesla owners will buy this? Well, I will have to check that out then. We will see.

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  6. I would think helicopters would be more likely to be something that could be made easy enough to fly so that anyone could do it. Airplanes are much more difficult to simplify.

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