Sure it can.
The growth comes from the continual need to refine and redefine the helo and it's roles.
Social pressures may take a big slice out of charter and to a lesser extent VIP work, but they will never prevent the helicopter from doing what it was designed to do, a role that nothing else can replicate. A jeep is an expensive town runaround, but if you need a mountain rescue it looks cheap, and when the jeep gets stuck...
The only means of transport yet devised that has saved more lives than it has taken? Doesn't that tell us something?
Maybe the purest civil aspects of helo ops may reduce in favour of more quasi-official ones which may or may not leave you filled with a warm, snug feeling, but the future of the beast itself is assured.
Oh, and unless we get on with an urgent new nuclear power plan there'll be no patience either for a battery electric helo in the midst of the 3 day power week we'll all be suffering from by then.
Suggest make hay while sun shines!
Last edited by Agaricus bisporus; 20th April 2006 at 20:09.