Prod'n FT helos vs. prod'n FT F-22/Eurofighter
A few years back, Nick Lappos gave me a 28-min ride in a just-off-the-line helo. There were a couple of relatively minor events, and something Nick said toward the end of the flight went deep, prompting me to effect a 45.deg. change in career track (experimental FT) and forcing me to spend many a sleepless night trying to reconcile what he'd said with what I'd been led to believe by some highly-regarded pilots and engineers.
I'm now working as a consultant to Agusta (Milan, Italy) and prior to this was on the A-380 program: I'm beginning to think that Nick was right. (It's close to midnight, so in case my argument seems out-of-thread or incoherent, let me know.)
In the late 60's, Asimov predicted that it would take 600 yrs for mankind to map and control our DNA. It took less than 40. Around the same time, the U.S.Navy stated the need to vertically lift 25.000 kilogram payloads from ship to shore, but 41 years later, we are still at least ten years away from meeting it. With the raw technology available (a high-end computer can now perform 350 billion calculations per second) there is the potential to solve some *really* challenging problems. For example, designing a VTOL aircraft which outperforms the -609 by a good margin, having per-FH safety levels on a par with the 777, and costs under $2M is *not* in the "Really Challenging" category. So why hasn't anyone done it? Think for a minute. Looking at the past 140 yrs of technology history, developing a new and improved gadget has usually required the backing of at least one individual with deep pockets, and a few friends in high places.
Now, however, it's two orders of magnitude more difficult. The Eclipse 500 team thought that it was all downhill when they landed Raburn as a backer: well over $1B behind a small, $900K vehicle with low technical risk. But every three weeks, the financial community forces them to go sharpen their pencils. So what chance does a smaller team, with only a $200M backing, have?
Back to the thread.
In 2001, the Eurofighter Typhoon team hired some of the best minds at BMW and Toyota to do design their QA systems. Less than two years later, they li