Originally Posted by
Heathrow Harry
many people have lost a great deal of money backing "small innovative Aerospace companies"
normally they completely underestimate the challenges they face and the time and costs involved and go bust
But that is
normal in the wider business world, especially in any activity that involves technology. It's the foundation of progress.
For reasons that are understandable amongst pilots, there is a terror of failure of any kind but this fear doesn't help the industry evolve. Think about it: for the last twenty years school children all over the world have been designing and building experimental processes and devices and sending them into space for testing and evaluation. Where is the opportunity for a motivated adolescent to "mess about" in aerotechnology and see his/her fifteenth wacky idea accepted as a sheer bloody brilliant? The irony is that the multitude of regulations imposed upon the aviation sector are largely reactive and fail to take account changes taking place in society or business.
Fortunately, it looks like some of the fissures in the system will soon develop into gaping holes and we will all, finally, benefit from useful cross-fertilsation.