johnwvincent

Good News

It’s good to see. Sad, in terms of so many lost years. Now, the UK has rejoined the Horizon Europe and Copernicus programmes with a new agreement with the EU.

The evidence is clear. Most people in the UK have recognised the mistake of Brexit. What public polling there is shows a strong trend going one way and one way for sure. A post-TCA Brexit poll of polls shows a stable rejection of Brexit. The British public worried about the economy, inflation, and the NHS. Brexit is a minority interest[1].

Even those who voted for Brexit, including the current Prime Minister (PM) have come to recognise that the UK needs a new set of agreements with the European Union (EU).

Announced back in September[2], a new customised deal opens the world’s largest research programme to UK scientists, researchers, and businesses. It could be seen as baby steps, but the direction of travel is towards much more collaboration with our closest friends and neighbours across Europe is on the cards[3].

This week, the UK was welcomed back to the Horizon research family. Starting from 1 January 2024, UK citizens will be able to participate in the EU’s research and innovation programme. This is a tremendous victory for common sense and a win-win outcome for global scientific advancement. British researchers and scientists will now be able to apply for grants and projects with certainty.

The UK joins Canada and New Zealand with an association agreement[4]. Other non-EU countries are also negotiating for an association to Horizon Europe. The current version of Horizon Europe began in 2021 and runs until 2027.

I’d written before about how the UK had shot itself in the foot by being so dogmatic about Brexit that it had severed links that it had no need to sever. One day we will look back on the post 2016 madness and wonder what it was all about. Historians and social scientist will write voluminous tones on every aspect of the subject. Textbooks will fill libraries. They will do so to warn of the mistakes that can be made by headline chasing Conservative politicians.

The economy continues to be seen as a most important issue for the country. Reconstructing a productive relationship with our European partners is an absolute must.

Let’s hope this move will reestablish some of the wonderful industrious links between universities across Europe and with other global partners. In the past UK researchers led a high percentage of projects. Life will be different as a non-EU country. Nevertheless, participation in the programme is a great boost. It’s not free but it is worth every penny or cent.

[1] https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/ipsos-issues-index-september-2023

[2] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-joins-horizon-europe-under-a-new-bespoke-deal

[3] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/landmark-moment-for-scientists-researchers-and-businesses-as-uk-association-to-80-billion-horizon-research-programme-officially-sealed

[4] https://sciencebusiness.net/news/horizon-europe/uk-primed-rebuild-its-standing-eu-research-after-officially-joining-horizon

Half full

Winter Sunday mornings are a good time for mild depression. Awake to grey skies as the bedroom radio clicks into action. Well, that’s one way of looking at the words dribbling out of the airwaves. Bouncing off the bedroom walls and hitting my half awake ears.

It’s billed as a weekly reflections on topical issues from a range of contributors. That’s elementary well-crafted BBC wibble[1]. Range of contributors means radio chums who sit well with the semi-religious Sunday schedule.

If we go back a couple hundred years, a middle-class family would be huddled around a hulking great bible looking for insights and explanations of the world around. Technology, namely radio, gives us the opportunity to squeeze all that into a short morning sermon. Now, the internet means a keen listener can revisit an ephemeral broadcast, any time, and any place.

Sunday morning should, in my mind, mean an articulate 10-minute essay on anything. Yes, anything. Often, it’s a rush to be profound and tickle unwilling asleep brain cells. This can start with controversial words that are then diluted for the breakfast table. Rather than writing a best-selling self-help book that only sells at international airports, Radio 4 drags in a version of deep thought to churn over a subject that’s vaguely topical but not quite. Vaguely philosophical but not quite.

Strangely, I like listening to the laconic warbling of someone like Wil Self[2]. It’s true that I can only do that if the dosage is reasonably thin. An excessive exposure to early and intense thoughts about the human condition can get overwhelming. Especially when sentences are the length of a double decker bus.

Sunday’s awakening is a moment in the week when I can be assailed by adolescent optimism or gravelly pessimism. Bravura passages can run the gamut of the whole of history. Equally, they can dissect a microscopic moment of personal revelation.

I’m going to get Confucian. If I recollect correctly, he has something to say about NOT being obliged to accept gifts that are not given with the best of intentions. It’s a kind of allegory. It’s a good one for the social media age.

Let’s say Suella Braverman does a slot on the BBC’s Point of View. I might be included to turn the radio off. But that’s not a good reaction for me, a person who believes in freedom of speech within civilised and reasonable limits. There’s the rub.

The essence is that it’s one thing to be offered a gift of someone’s great “wisdom” but there’s no obligation on my part to accept it. I think, in this country there’s too much a tradition of not rocking the boat. That’s to accept a gift as a matter of politeness. Even if the gift is quite appalling or bound to be harmful. Some cultures and countries don’t have that problem. I’m a great fan of Dutch bluntness. It’s a classical Britishness that has unwanted repercussions whereby we tolerate that which should be given short shrift.

How did I get to this point? Don’t tell me pessimism is good for us on a damp gloomy Sunday morning. Human events are not mostly random. Agreed randomness is a big part of life but please drop the “mostly”. Understanding probability is a useful skill. Randomness isn’t so random. But don’t let such an understanding led you to think that choice is immaterial.

I will choose. Radio, on or off. Get up now, or slumber.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001t34q

[2] https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/out-of-their-minds/

B. P.

A forensic dissection of the recent past is highlighting how major decisions are made in the corridors of power. It’s not nice to hear but it is good to hear. Transparency is a benefit of democracy. What we see is not pretty. There’s that saying about politics and making sausages being much the same. We desire results but are shocked if we study how sausages are made.

We easily get trapped in the noisy interchange between personalities. Newspaper headlines draw on our fascination of who said what and when. The more embarrassing the chatter the bolder the headline. The questions how and why are not given as much attention.

Even sampling a little of the reports of the compilation of evidence there’s a trend emerging. Much of this has to do with the way administrators, politicians, and scientist (practitioners and the theoretical) understand each other or don’t.

The classic divided between the Bachelor of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (BA) and the Bachelor of Sciences (BSc) is firmly embedded in our society. The divide between Oxbridge and the rest can look like a deep gorge. The divide between those who are instinctive hustlers and gamblers, and analytical reasoning calculators is uncomfortable.

Putting the above to one side, what shines through the submissions of the UK COVID inquiry is an embedded lag between events and a reaction to events. Knowledge with hindsight is wonderful. Time and time again after big events, files are taken down from a dusty shelf and on their pages is a register of risks. Within that the register is a discussion of risk of an event that has just become history. This week we heard a former Prime Minister almost admit that the COVID pandemic wasn’t taken as seriously as it should have been until it nearly killed him.

What does this say about our propensity to plan or take plans seriously? What does it say about becoming overcome or steamrollered by events? What can we do better to be prepared in future?

Lessons learned are fundamental to improving any way of working. It’s a feedback mechanism. Taking what can be derived from a crisis, catastrophe or momentous event and writing it down. Using that to make strong recommendations. Then tracking changes and moving forward to what should be a better prepared state.

We know we don’t have to wait for bad events to happen before we prepare. Our human imagination provides us with an effective means of anticipation. Tragic in the case of COVID is the ignorance of warnings that previous events had provided. The lesson from SARS[1] were know.

Maybe this is the Cub Scout coming out in me. Yes, that was part of my early upbringing in the village of Somerset. The motto of the British Scout movement[2] has a lot going for it: “Be Prepared”. Much of what goes with that motto is anachronistic, but the essence is immensely valuable.

[1] https://www.who.int/health-topics/severe-acute-respiratory-syndrome#tab=tab_1

[2] https://blog.scoutingmagazine.org/2017/05/08/be-prepared-scout-motto-origin/

Dangerous way to act

Why choose to make a deal with Rwanda the issue that breaks the UK Conservative party? It’s not the biggest issue facing the UK. It’s not the highest priority of voters if we take the opinion polls as an indicator. It’s only a totem for the far-right fringe. What we have is a sign of a stubborn disunity. Almost a fatalistic rush to collapse. An admission that there is only defeat over the horizon.

Clearly, the issue that should be addressed is to competently manage legal immigration. The numbers are orders of magnitude higher than those crossing the channel on small boats. Not only that but the backlog of unprocessed people dwarfs that which could be shipped to a third country.

A Government faces thousands of difficult policy choices every day. At this part of the electoral cycle, focusing down hard on one that is bound to cause disruption, dissent and disillusionment is politically foolish.

Let’s face it, to win a coming UK General Election progress must be shown on the two issues that are top of the concerns of voters. One: a cost-of-living crisis. Getting inflation under control. Two: fixing health and social care. Leading changes to health services and properly funding social care.

So, with the above in mind how is it best to react to the UK Government’s latest attempt to seal a deal with Rwanda. Through a legislative proposal there’s to be a definitive statement that Rwanda is a safe country. This is to be an unquestionable rule. Setting aside other existing laws.

What a dangerous way to act. Opening the door to this type of authoritarian legislative proposal opens the door to all sorts of acts that no one would want to see. Dictatorial nonsense. With the UK Conservative party’s current logic:

Why not a law that says that British rivers are clean. That would solve the problems of sewage discharge – not.

Why not a law that says that climate change is fixed. That would resolve global warming – not.

Why not a law that says that the tide must not come in. Dam – that one has been tried.

At the seashore, when King Canut[1] commanded the tide to stop, we all know the outcome. Since then, his name rather unfairly has become a byword for a delusional attempt to avoid the inevitable. When what he was attempting to do was to demonstrate the limits of his power.

It’s now more likely that my predictions of the date of the next General Election maybe driven by events. The limits of the power of a Prime Minister are most evident when those standing behind him slowly shrink away.

[1] https://www.royal.uk/canute-great-r-1016-1035

GE2024

Let me spectate. I’m no professional commentator, pollster or political pundit but do try to keep myself up to speed with the current affairs. The question in the mind of a lot of people is: when will the next UK General Election take place?

In these days before Christmas, it’s possible the Prime Minister (PM) doesn’t even know the answer to this question. It’s a balance of how strategic or opportunist he will be when it comes to making such big decisions. Most current predictions are that the Conservatives are destined to be defeated. The gap in the national opinion polls is substantial. That makes the decision of timing of an election one that could mark the end of the current PM’s term of office or elevation to Conservative saviour. Currently, political parties are desperately selecting candidates for each constituency. Something is afoot. Better stop there before I get tempted into a pun.

Let’s put aside any consideration of a winter vote. Arctic weather gloom hovers like cold mist. With the prospect of large heating bills upsetting most of the population there’s no politician who will want to accept the blame for that situation. Naturally, they will say that they are working at pace to tame inflation and overseas conflicts are the root of the pain.

The first step on the road ahead is next year’s springtime. Local elections are expected. Every year, they take place on the first Thursday in May. This is when a third, or less of the electorate put a cross in a box. At the same time London’s next mayor will be elected. So, 2nd May 2024 will be like a mini political barometer. Real votes in real ballot boxes are always a better indicator than sampling or sage views.

The European Parliament election is scheduled for 6th to 9th June 2024. You may think this European Union (EU) election has no bearing on the UK, but I beg to differ. If there’s a significant advance of right-wing political parties across Europe, then the impact will be felt in the UK.

The 2020 United States (US) presidential election was quite a show. In prospect, for the 2024 US presidential election is a gripping event despite the weak selection of candidates. That US national election is scheduled for Tuesday, 5^th November 2024. Guy Fawkes day[1] in the UK.

Let’s assume the Conservative party will want to hang on, not to the bitter end, but to get as much time elapsed after the pandemic shockwave, Partygate, mini budget madness and the cost-of-living crisis as they can. We are still reeling from the post-Brexit political earthquakes that have trashed confidence and the economy. Will the cost of government be political exile? That all said, people have shifted a long way since last year. The big question is: who do you trust?

The UK’s Labour party opposition should be confident and smiling. However, the opposition probably feels aggrieved having to wait so long for others to fail before getting an opportunity to win a general election. What doesn’t help is that the electorate are now pessimistic about any sustained recovery. Sadly, the public mood is beset with quite a sense of decline-ism.

Traditionally, in the UK, September is party conference season. That leaves October open for an election. But as noted above there’s a news media attention getting clash between what’s happening in the UK and US. Since significant geopolitical tensions are going to be raging throughout 2024, I think that topic may not be an influencing factor on the UK election date question.

Rolling the dice as late as October 2024 has several advantages for the incumbents. If there’s good summertime news, say inflation reduced and a modicum of economic growth the government will claim a great success. The struggle between democracy or autocracy around the globe could give a UK PM a platform on which to make one or two grand gestures. Also, with nearly a year to go, the opportunity for the opposition parties to trip-up increases.

When polls ask is Britain a better place to live than it was ten years ago or a worse place to live than ten years ago the pointer points at worse. It’s hard to imagine this will not impact voter intentions.

#ukpolitics #ukpolitics #politics #generalelection

[1] https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/evolutionofparliament/parliamentaryauthority/the-gunpowder-plot-of-1605/overview/people-behind-the-plot/guy-fawkes-/

Ineptitude

Yesterday’s announcement went like this: “The government will also increase the minimum income required for British citizens and those settled in the UK who want their family members to join them.” This Conservative view, that families are a burdening the State persists like a stubborn stain.

The Universal Declaration of Human Right says: The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

Clearly, by the measures announced, in the case of this UK Government the family is not a fundamental group unit of society. In fact, family members based overseas will be required to separate in the event of a person accepting a low income in the UK. That low income in the UK maybe relatively large when compared with what is available in their home country.

I guess this is fine for lawmakers when considering the level of a Minister or Member of Parliament’s salary and benefits. There’s no impediment that will impact their lives in this respect regardless of the nationality of their partner and children.

What I’m wondering is: what will be the case if a British pensioner, living in a European country, who wishes to return with a partner or children who don’t have British passports? If the increased threshold of £38,700 applies, then that will effectively ban them from returning unless they have a generous pension. It may be the case that they have worked on overseas and accumulated a non-UK pension, but this would be irrelevant if the deciding factors is a UK earnings threshold.

I don’t think there’s much disagreement that those who wish to move to the UK should be able to support themselves. The UK minimum wage is set at £21,673.60 for a 40-hour week. So, is the UK Government saying that no one can support themselves on the UK minimum wage?

Ministers have been quick to deny any responsibility for the chaotic state of the immigration system in the UK. Instead, they pretend that they are adapting to changing circumstances. The fact that they are 100% responsible for the current circumstances is brushed aside.

Having persisted for years with one set of flawed notions Ministers now announce another set of ill-thought-out proposals. The Brexit slogan of Take Back Control did not envisage giving control to a cabal of incompetence. In stark reality, that is what has happened.

The knee jerk reactions and ever shifting sand of the last decade need to come to an end. The British people should not be denied a General Election. More months of more chaos and ineptitude are incredibly damaging.

POST: U-turn. Minimum income requirement will not be increased as much as originally announced. A new threshold will be applied from the spring. A policy designed to exclude people from entry to the UK has been watered down for practical reasons.

Earthrise

24^th December 1968 did change everything. What was achieved in that year hasn’t been matched. An unexpected event took place on an adventure to orbit our Moon. Now, 55-years have gone by. Enormous strides have changed lives. Technology has raced ahead. We reside on a beautiful and bountifully planet. Yet, we have continued to pump massive amounts of carbon into the Earth’s atmosphere. I wonder, does this tell us anything about human nature? If there is such a thing.

The photograph called “Earthrise” was taken while the Apollo 8 spacecraft was skimming over the surface of our Moon[1]. I don’t suppose there has ever been a more significant colour photograph in human history. As one of the astronaut’s said, he could hold his thumb up at a window and mask everything and everybody alive except for the three of them in the capsule.

The Earth appeared as a swirly blue marble set in the dark emptiness of space. The image is stark. Eyes are drawn to the lush colour and liveliness of the globe. Contrasted with the darkness and vastness of space. Clouds, oceans, and landmasses all scattered across this lonely planet. At the time of the Apolo mission there was about three and a half billion inhabitants. Today, there’s eight billion people spread across the surface of the Earth.

This image has become pivotal in our thinking. So much of our debates and discussions about the future are dominated by conflict and competition for resources. When there’s the opportunity to stand back and realise that our small homeland is shared, those tensions fade, at least a little.

Fragility and, almost irrelevance, when set against the vastness of space, is our daily reality. Illuminated by the Sun, a minor star, and in just the right place for life, so we fight and war as if humanity was at the centre of the universe. That animalistic behaviour could be the route of our downfall. Only, we are doing something else to top that persistent stupidity.

What sets Earth apart? That cultivated atmosphere. Such are the interactions going on in the first 100 kilometres above the surface of the planet that a sustained healthy atmosphere exists. It takes a quick look at the images coming back from the exploratory rovers on Mars to see how alive and miraculous Earth’s atmosphere has become.

The question is, are we the generations of humans who will permanently degrade it? Presently we are struggling with the needs and desires of the eight billons of us and the realising that a balance must be struck. For one pumping massive amounts of carbon into the Earth’s atmosphere is pure idiocy. It’s even greater idiocy when we have advanced and invented technologies that mean we don’t need to do it.

COP28 may be another step on the road to sanity but we continue to struggle with the realities of our situation. A human-made climate crisis and a dramatic increase in climate related catastrophes may wake us up. Perhaps every screen saver on the planet ought to be the Earthrise image.

POST: The first such image of the Earth seen from the Moon was taken by Lunar Orbiter 1 in 1966. It was in black and white and of poor quality.

[1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/who-took-legendary-earthrise-photo-apollo-8-180967505/

Dr Who at 60

Now, I can be nerdy par excellence. It makes me nervous to the extent that there are far more knowledgeable scribblers on Doctor Who. It’s not like the internet is without a massive amount of coverage of every aspect of the time lord’s life. Although, I’m not sure I’ve seen the details of David Tennant’s shoe size – yet.

Last night, way out on the edge of the know universe was a spaceship. Somehow it got there through a random worm hole. The drama doesn’t expand as to what the enormous ship does, or why it only had one crew member or the anarchic mix of technologies.

Almost like a sketch from the Twilight Zone, the mystery mounts as we are asked to go beyond our normal understanding. That’s a good plot line, in that anything then becomes possible. So, at the edge of what exists there’s nothing but blackness ahead. Behind is everything that was ever known in space and time. The good, the bad and the indifferent. And where most of us would rather be.

The end of everything, as far back in time as it’s possible to travel in this story is not empty. A malevolent force or mystical entity hides there hoping to one day make its way forward in time to annihilate everything it finds. Malevolence is so often associated with emptiness. It’s a primal thing.

That’s what The Doctor and annoying companion Donna encounter when the Tardis goes awry. Given that it was spilt coffee that threw them to this point in space and time maybe the transport ship they encounter was an intergalactic coffee carrier or a shoe carrier. With respect to Douglas Adams.

Titled “Wild Blue Yonder” the tale told wasn’t so much blue as void of natural light. Way yonder lurked a clever and evil shape shifter. So, evil that the Tardis runs away, as it rebuilds itself. Our two protagonists were then marooned on a giant ghost ship with no idea what’s happening. Now, that’s a fine plot. Adrift in the deep darkness.

Over a series of frantic moments, the story pieces together. The original pilot of the ship turns out to be a hero, prepared to sacrifice themselves to destroy the nameless baddies on the ship. The pilot’s cunning plan was ticking away at ultra slow speed to evade the speedy thinking malevolent thingies. Distracted but feeling imprisoned the shape shifting villains put all their energies into attempting to copy The Doctor and Donna.

The copies strategy then appears to have been to hop on board the Tardis when it returned. That’s a bit of a plot flaw. Since the Tardis would presumably only return when the air of evilness had been destroyed. That’s what did happen in a wonderful just-in-time moment. Concluding the story with the destruction of the spaceship and the physical forms of the lurking baddies. Thus, again we are all saved from extinction. Open is the question of whether the lurking baddies still lurk.

This 60th anniversary special was for fans. To those uninitiated into The Doctors world, it must have been confusing. Difficult to follow. In fact, rather slow in parts. David Tennant as the 14th Doctor is the best modern incarnation. Long may the Tardis take us to the limits of imagination. It’s possible that the 120^th anniversary will include a virtual world that we will be able to step into and be immersed in a vast spectacle. Good luck to those who last that long.

Two upfront

One of the fundamentals that remains a part of civil aviation is having two pilots in the cockpit. It’s an indication of the safety related activities of the crew of a civil aircraft. Today, we have a mixture of human control and management. Pilots still fly hands-on when the need arises. The expectation is that throughout their working lives pilots have the competence to do so, at any stage in a flight.

Progressively, since the establishment of aviation’s international order in the 1940s the required crewing of aircraft has changed. Back in September, I visited the de Havilland Aircraft Museum in Hertfordshire. There I walked through the fuselage of a de Havilland DH106 Comet[1]. This was the first turbojet-powered airliner to go into service and it changed the experience of flying forever and a day.

That passenger aircraft, like aircraft of the time, had four crew stations in the cockpit. Two pilots, a navigator and flight engineer. It was the era when electronics consisted of valves in large radio sets and such long since forgotten devices as magnetic amplifiers. The story from the 1940s of IBM saying, “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers” is often repeated.

For modern airliners the navigator and flight engineer have gone. Their functions have not gone. It’s that having a crew member dedicated to the tasks they performed is no longer required. As the world of vacuum-tube electronics gave way to transistors and then to integrated circuits so computing got more powerful, cheaper, and abundant.

With a few significant failures along the way, commercial flying got safer and safer. The wave of change in a human lifetime has affected every mode of transport. More people travel to more places, more safely than ever could have been imagined 80-years ago. Does that mean the path ahead will take a similar shape? Excitable futurologists may paint a colourful picture based on this history.

Let’s get away from the attractive notion of straight lines on graph paper. That idea that progress is assumed to be linear. Tomorrow will be progressively “better” by an incremental advance. That’s not happening now. What we have is differential advances. Some big and some small.

The aviation safety curve is almost flat. The air traffic curve, with a big hole made by COVID, is climbing again. The technology curve is rapidly accelerating. The environmental impact curve is troubling. The air passenger experience curve may even be at a turning point.

Touchscreen tablets already help flight preparation and management[2]. Flight plan changes can be uploaded and changed with a button press[3]. The squeezing of massive computing power into small spaces is being taken for granted. What does this leave a crew to do?

Back to the start. Two pilots in the cockpit, with executive responsibilities, remains the model that maintains public confidence in civil aviation. The golden rules still apply. Fly, navigate and communicate in that order. Crews, however much technology surrounds them, still need to act when things do not go as expected. Does this mean two cockpit crew forever? I don’t know.

[1] https://www.dehavillandmuseum.co.uk/aircraft/de-havilland-dh106-comet-1a/

[2] https://aircraft.airbus.com/en/newsroom/news/2021-02-electronic-flight-bag-the-new-standard

[3] https://simpleflying.com/datalink-communications-aviation-guide/

Flight Ahead

Although, I’m an advocate of having people in control of machines it isn’t people that are opening new opportunities in transport. Technology is racing ahead and making the past illustrations of popular science magazines become a reality. I can do without the hype in the headlines of flying cars. Building expectations of one in every garage remains a 1950s dream or nightmare, dependent upon your point of view. Aside from that hot air viable new electric vehicles are in the works.

Heavier-than-air machine that do more than buzz around our heads are going to proliferate. The inevitability of this is open to question but if I was to assign a probability to it, the number would be close to one. If we stretch our minds back to an unobserved small corner of the planet in late 1903, a couple of diligent brothers flew a machine that hopped a short distance into the air under its own power. Many newspapers of the time didn’t bother to print this breakthrough story because wise and eminent scientists had told them that it was impossible for people to fly.

It’s clear, getting into the prediction business should be done with humility.

We have a dilemma. It’s so rare of us to turn away from advancing technology when we know it can be made. It’s even more irresistible when the economics scream out buy me. So, a ticket to ride in the realm of Urban Air Mobility (UAM) will need to be no more than a typical taxi ride. Given that a taxi ride from my home to Gatwick Airport is about £20 then that’s the mark to hit. True that short journey may not be commonplace by air at that price until around 2033, a decade away, but it will be irresistible when it comes.

This chapter in air transport, that is being written is as significant as that in late 1903. I know that’s a mega statement, but the signs do point that way.

Eventually, UAM will become a network of piloted and autonomous electric air vehicles operating between cities and major destinations like airports.

Now, a couple of solvable challenges stand in the way. One is the endurance and portability of the energy storage devices. The other is complexity and mastering the science and art of functional safety. There’s plenty of confident hyperbole to suggest that these two are short-term barriers to progress. I say they are not.

Weight is one of aviation’s biggest enemies particularly on small vehicles. Batteries are expensive, heavy and require tailored control. Autonomy or the semi autonomy, needed to make the economics click is challenging systems engineering orthodoxy. Both tasks require the meticulous diligence of the Wright brothers to get past. No fanfare or flashy investor can push them aside.

Making the absolute most of energy storage technology is essential. Finding the optimal configuration of batteries, transmission and control electrics means iteration and the tolerance of a good handful of failures. The engineering of what’s becoming a system of systems, with the complexity of vehicles and the complexity of traffic management, interacting at great speed demands extensive analysis and testing.

These tasks can be accomplished. Rushing them would be foolish. That’s difficult to resist when everyone wants to be first.