Menu Sign In Contact FAQ
Banner
Welcome to our forums

First Earthrounder: Friedrich Karl von Koenig-Warthausen - Method to the Madness?

But, there will be a time when bold people will have a renaissance and mankind takes its chance to survive – I hope.

At least in the west I don’t see this happening for the foreseeable future. The reason is simply demographics: all western nations have smaller younger than older generations, so the number of young people that can care for their elders, both financially and physically, is limited. Politics is absolutely dominated by older people (the Brexit vote is an example). This creates a climate where
a) there are not many young people around who are traditionally bolder than their elders and
b) those who are around are heavily discouraged from doing anything risky, lest they injure or kill themselves and thus are missed as payers of taxes and pensions.

And of course the prevailing political ideology of neoliberalism wants people to slave their lives away as low-wage workers and consumers, and heavily discourages non-conformist actions.

I guess all this will ultimately change once we explore and colonize space – the Final Frontier – in earnest, or possibly earlier if another major war occurs.

Low-hours pilot
EDVM Hildesheim, Germany

There may be other reasons too why people no longer get excited by “grand achievements”…

What would be some “grand achievements” you would like to see? No matter if aviation related or not

Here are mine:
1) Fly around the world in a battery powered electric GA plane. For example a Stemme fitted with electric propulsion
2) Time to climb records using electric propulsion. For example something like an RV8 + LIPOs should be able to put out 1.x MW power for a few minutes, so about 10x increase in power compared to piston engines
3) Fusion power. Seems like with the newly available superconducting materials, the magnetic field strengths can be much higher than what ITER is using → much smaller plant → less cost and faster iteration. There is a youtube video on it somewhere.

1 & 2) I think would wake up the broader population of GA pilots to electric power being the future for surprisingly many use cases within a few years. I think both of those would be achievable with a budget that is manageable with enough dedication (+ sponsors). Say 250k-1m EUR.

3) is of course a bigger project, but I don’t think multi-government support like for ITER is still needed. Within reach of Bezos or Gates or maybe even Branson. Would love to see a “fusion race” similar to the space race.

Switzerland

The next “grand achievements” and bold actions will be in private space travel and this side of the Atlantic already f***ed up every chance to be part of that race.

13 Posts
Sign in to add your message

Back to Top