Where are the new innovators?

[rpellicciotti]

As I prepare to leave for AirVenture, I was wondering about this. The 60's, 70's were a great time to be involved in Sport Aviation. We had Molt Taylor, Burt Rutan, Ken Rand, and some others (Jim Bede??).

 

AirVenture today is a lot different. I don't see much in the way of innovative developments or "experimental" technologies. Any ideas?

 

Rick Pellicciotti

[Richard Riley]

Two thoughts...

 

First, there weren't many used homebuilts available then. Now, if you want (say) a Glassair, you can buy one with 250 hours on it for less then you can build it. If you're trying to sell kits now you're in a market that's basically saturated with pre-existing product. And since people don't fly much (50-100 hrs per year, max) they can last for decades.

 

Second, there's a HUGE amount of innovation. Mostly, at Vans, with CNC pre-punched skins and machined parts. CNC and the change from hard tooling to software is totally changing the way we make these things. The NEXT cycle will be how they end up looking.

[Spodman]

there's a HUGE amount of innovation. Mostly, at Vans, with CNC pre-punched skins and machined parts.

That's nice for Vans, and anybody who wants a "bumhole", but enticing people away from spam-cans by making it easy & cheap to build their own spam-cans is not innovation, it is the DEATH of innovation. As existing designs continue to be refined, and diversified to fill mission niches, there is less opportunity for new players to get a launch. Their dreams won't stack up against the demonstrated performance of the existing designs.

 

If Burt was born 30 years after he was, and hatched his idea for an aircraft that flew backwards it would probably look quite like the Vari-Viggen. If he released it to the world this week at Oshkosh, business would be slow, even with CNC bits. To get anywhere he would have to refine & rebuild & polish the design until it looked BETTER than a Long-Ez. That would take time & money & he would probably want to eat every-so-often. It would be a lot harder for my new Burt to get into the industry, and with the minimal returns from plan sales he probably wouldn't bother.

[Steve Innova]

You have to understand that there are only so many ways of doing things efficiently, and then you're just into form over function.

 

If you consider the limitations of small aircraft (price, engine power, materials, and builder time/energy/skill), then it's clear that there isn't nearly as much room for NEW good ideas any more. The the ideas that best fit the above limitations have been done.

 

If you want to make a big leap forward, you'd need to go to a different airframe concept -- something like the blended wing body (see: www.wingco.com).

 

Proof of this is seen in military aviation, where budget, materials, and engine power are much less of an obstacle, bute even here we see the same basic designs with only minor incremental improvements. The innovations are found in things like avionics/radar and low observabilities technology.

 

 

BTW -- Burt is still here. It's not for a lack of innovators -- he's moved on to space flight vs. light aviation.

[Steve Innova]

Their dreams won't stack up against the demonstrated performance of the existing designs.

Exactly.

 

If Burt was born 30 years after he was, and hatched his idea for an aircraft that flew backwards it would probably look quite like the Vari-Viggen.

Burt no longer believes that the canard is a more efficient design.

[Richard Riley]

You have to understand that there are only so many ways of doing things efficiently, and then you're just into form over function.

 

A few weeks ago I was in Washington DC, played hooky Friday afternoon and went to the Smithsonian Air and Space museum on the mall.

 

They have a NICE Wright Bros. exhibit now, in it's own room. They have one of the 3 or 5 surviving Wright Bros. bicycles.

 

It looks just like a standard, ordinary bicycle you'd see at the beach. One speed, of course, and the handle bars are a little odd shaped, but the frame geometry is utterly conventional.

 

It's 110 years old.

 

If I go to my local gun shop, and buy a pistol, there will be revolvers and automatics. They look basically the same as they did 100 years ago. No big surprise, I have a Colt 1911 issued in WW1, it's absolutely functional. If I were to buy a shotgun or rifle, odds are I'd buy one that works the same as something John Browning designed in the late 1800's. Build a motorcycle that doesn't work basically the same as a 1918 Indian.

 

Some things can stagnate for decades, then make a leap - like lights. For years there was the incandescent bulb, copying Edison, and florescent, copying Tesla. Now we have metal halide and LED. There are some very different airplanes out there that have a chance to really change things - the Facetmobile and the Carter Copter come to mind. But things are convention for a reason - they've risen to the top, and they're hard to beat.