UAS News Podcast — 2012-10-24
Transcript
Hello everyone and welcome to another installment in a series of podcasts where we discuss issues and news that are relevant to the unmanned technologies community. I am your program host Patrick Egan and say a big hello to our co-host Gene Robinson. Hello everyone out there in UA land?
Sounds good, I like that. This week's episode we're going to discuss some of the things that we've been doing and take a look into some current UAS RPA work and some historical perspective on the global airspace integration effort and then mainly as the title of this episode would suggest space oddity we're going to talk about space. But before we get into that I figured we would talk about some of the current news stories from the SUS news webpage and other relevant stories and I think one of them for this week is that it is now legal to fly a commercial UAS in Ireland.
It's another country that, I don't know how I can put this without sounding negative. Remember right Gene what's the FAA doing?
They're leading the way right? Leading from I think a different position than we'd like it to be. Was it behind?
Yeah that was it. I'm sorry I said the word then I guess I said it out loud. You did and we are leading again from behind. You know I'm getting a lot of feedback about the MIS-O-MATIC on the SUS news webpage and people seem to really enjoy that and where it came from and what was behind that and you know let me just explain that that was Gary's brainchild.
And as Gary put it you know he can't believe that we have a civil aviation authority that let's say has that much disdain for the public that they supposedly represent. So that's where the MIS-O-MATIC came from on the webpage. You can go there and you can look at like the congressional mandates and other I'd say milestones that were supposed to be met and I think I do want to say I think that you know one of them is out there almost a year. Not really too surprising to me.
I'm actually looking at it right now. Okay NPRM is 11 months 7 days. The FAA test site is 2 months ago 8 days. So you know that's kind of where we're at on that and I think it's a good thing because it lets people know of the inactivity of the FAA.
Now the Ireland thing while it's good you know the fees I don't know if you're familiar with this story Gene but oh are you? Yeah okay well you know so what do you think about the initial 1100 euros?
What comes to mind first? Well the first thing that came to my mind was it was good that they got out there and said okay you can do it. I think that somebody decided that they're going to capitalize on it pretty heavy. I don't know how many Irish UA pilots we have out there and to pay 1100 euros.
I mean I don't know what the Irish economy is like right now but it couldn't be much better than ours and I don't know how much aerial photography is going on in Ireland but 1100 euros 1500 US that seems a little steep to me. Yeah there's only so many pictures of sheep that you could take now. The economy in Ireland is I'm going to you know I haven't been back in a little while you know but I doubt that things are that good. Last talking to the relatives things are not that good and you know 1100 euros as far as I'm concerned is crazy talk you know.
It's oppressive. I don't think that you know I mean you know okay you only have to pay that initially and then it's 250 euros every year after. I even think the 250 euros is a little high but I could probably live with that and I have talked to some people at the Civil Aviation Authority in Ireland and there are other people over there doing it. It's too bad but I guess they're not you know picking up on the high taxes and fees are killing what's left of their business there you know.
Hard to do business and now that the EU is not pumping all that money into Ireland you know the wells kind of run dry but whatever you know. Whiskey is good the beer is not too shabby and I like the weather I like the rain but I think the fees are a little high but again on the bright side silver lining like you said at least they can do it. Legally you know so I think that's a step in the right direction. Anything else on the current events file that you'd like to speak about Gene?
Well yeah there's some stuff going on since our last little junket through Washington DC and with the congress people there. It appears as though Ted Poe the honorable Ted Poe from the Houston district is going to have a hearing tomorrow and I've got to tell you I grew up in Houston and I know Ted I don't know him personally but I knew of him because he was a sitting judge and he was always really creative with his sentences
and was known for these really kind of bizarre sentences that he would pass out to people for example if he got caught smoking in the non-smoking area in downtown Houston he would make you go out and pick up five thousand cigarettes off the street.
Like Denise Dury kind of. Yeah that was his kind of twisted way of applying his justice and I served as a juror on several of his panels and he did preside over the jurors court and he was always very helpful and I liked Ted a lot. I really do. And the thing that I'm concerned about right now is this hearing that we have tomorrow is more me tooism coming out on the privacy issue.
It's you know it was years ago that we kind of approached the privacy issue and it really wasn't that much of a concern but it still kind of bumped its little head up there and we kind of patted it down and we're not going to be doing things like that. Now it's kind of come full turn and it's not just a little head picking up it's head and shoulders and chest and it's trying to fall out of the hole
and there are a lot of folks that are really taking this thing and running with it. I think we're going to have to criticize them more than anything else in this very highly political atmosphere that we're in right now.
And I believe this is more of it. Now tomorrow it's technically it's not even an official hearing because it won't be entered into the congressional record. But the House Judiciary Committee is allowing Representative Poe to voluntarily call for witnesses and hold an event for that for all intents and purposes looks like a congressional hearing. And as you know the media is going to be very heavily involved in this.
And there are going to be two separate panels of three to four witnesses on each one. And AUBSI will be represented by Justin West who is the AUBSI's Executive Vice President and who we have had on our show. And there are some other slots that are going to be filled by members of the ATOU obviously and a sheriff there in Texas and some folks from the Department of Public Safety. And it's going to be held at Rice University, the bastion of academia and we know what most of their leanings are towards the privacy issue.
So it looks like it could be kind of a flameless approach to the privacy issue. We have already been contacted by KPRC Channel 2 News and they wanted a counterpoint. And this was last Friday. They came, a girl from Houston up here and did an interview with me and wanted to find out what the counterpoint was to the privacy issue and the spoofing issue.
I'm sure you remember the spoofing issue that one of the higher intelligence's over there at the University of Texas came up with and it made quite the big splash in Congress. Very carefully in a controlled environment spoofing aircraft to fly somewhere else. Well this is kind of what has really stirred the pot here recently. And one of the reasons we went to DC and again one of the reasons that we are now providing a counterpoint to that is to show that as many years as we have been doing search and rescue and as many missions as we have flown and literally terabytes of data.
And when I say data, they're images. And they're high resolution images. And I am proud to say that we have not one bikini clad woman next to a swimming pool. I know.
I keep looking but they're just not there. When you're flying in clad golf airspace and there are turtles and lizards and scorpions, you know, there's not too much sunbathing that goes on in that area. That's what we're going to try to present in some form or fashion. I think Ms.
West already knows and she has been through this drill before. So she knows that there are things like search and rescue and search and recovery that have no privacy issues. And I do believe that Patrick, there was even a poll that showed that there was like an 80 some odd percent approval rate for unmanned aircraft for that use. Yes.
So I mean, when it really the public, it's kind of a strange issue. The public starts to go sideways on it when you're like using it. This technology to give it give out speeding tickets, the popularity goes down. Now looking for fugitives, search and rescue, lost children, Alzheimer patients, things like that.
It's very favorable, even Border Patrol, very favorable. When it when it's something like where it starts affecting people's personal life or like breaking the law, fractions or whatever, that's that's when the popularity starts going down. Twinkie dinkie doo, I don't know. Yeah.
And well, one of the things that we wanted to point out here is that Congressman Foe has introduced his bill, which is H.R. 6199. So there you go. H.R. 6199. You can look it up and it's going to require a search warrant for all law enforcement use of UAS.
Yeah, but they don't do that with, let's say, the manned assets now. Negative. They do not. And a very good friend of mine, and we've had him on the show in the four, was the commander of the helicopter division for Houston Police Department.
And they have very strict rules. And even the cop on the beat, the patrolman on the beat has very strict rules that they have to live by that they cannot breach or it will ruin a case for them. They can't take their Apple box out of the car and throw it on the ground, stand over your private defense with a camera and take pictures. That's even better than the weather.
Right. Well, we talked about that. What's the relationship with the manned aircraft?
We have talked about that. We've had people on and we've discussed it. And, you know, again, there's another, there's some people making a documentary and they were in touch with me yesterday and it was kind of enlightening. I think I hit him with the fire hose.
But it's the same deal. I mean, really, you know, as far as I'm concerned, the privacy thing in this country is over. You were asleep at the switch when it went down. There are cameras everywhere.
I mean, everywhere you go, gas stations, stoplights, highways, you know, stores, 7-Eleven, ATM, your cell phone, your smartphone has got GPS in it, you know, that you can be tracked for the cells, you can be tracked. I mean, it just goes on and on. You got black boxes in your cars. You know, I just think that this is an easy target for people.
But again, you know, like I had suggested before, you know, get on the Internet and, you know, Google FLIR, C-Star Sapphire and watch a video of what's capable of this with this thing. And you'll, and when you realize that this is already on, you know, federal, state and local police, air assets, you know, what's on the small unmanned aircraft is it doesn't even hold a candle to that. And one of these people can watch you from 10 kilometers away if that's what they want to do. You know, I mean, there are already rules in place, you know, yeah, there are going to be abuses, yeah.
But you know what, I mean, I'm looking in the forums and I'm reading in there and these people are talking about taking shotguns out in the yard and shooting these things down. But now, you know, where I hail from, you discharge a firearm in the city limits and you're probably going to go to the Graybar Hotel. The guy flying the unmanned aircraft might get a ticket. You know, I think it's extreme when people talk about shooting stuff down in the neighborhood and all the rest of that.
But, you know, we've kind of gone on with that. But I'm glad that you're going to be there to offer this voice of reason and offer this perspective because one thing that's definitely missing in the hearings that I've seen and testimony that I've read is mostly they get people in there that do not understand the technology at all. The last hearing where even they held up the AUBSI one-pager and tore us to pieces as far as I was concerned because we didn't have anyone there that knew what was going on.
And you will be outnumbered, Gene, but all I have to say is remember the Alamo. I definitely will. And we're going to get a flavor tonight. KPRC Channel 2 News has already started running those teasers for hacking the drones over Texas.
So we'll get an idea of what we're going to be up against tomorrow when they run that 10 o'clock, 5th night. We'll see you on the web before we get there tomorrow. So we'll be a little forewarned so we can be forearmed before we get there. Have to wait and see what the investigative reporter decides to put his spin on it.
Yes. Well, you know, the other thing is, I mean, we do have a YouTube channel and we should probably see if we could get that up there too when that all happens because it'll be interesting to see. I know it's kind of difficult to work with the media. It's difficult to work with reporters who don't know the technology.
I've been, I got huffpohed twice. And a lot of journalism today is sensationalism. You know, if you don't throw something out there that's going to pique somebody's interest and nobody's going to watch it. And so there is some of that.
I mean, it's not really, it's infotainment really. But, you know, sometimes you get somebody who's on the ball and is actually a journalist or, you know, is interested in, let's say, a painting affair picture. So hopefully that will be the case here. And you'll go in with a little bit of, let's say, skid-greased a little bit.
I don't know. I don't know if I'd hold my breath, but, you know, sometimes you're pleasantly surprised. But I do think that you're going to have your work cut out for you in hearing. You're going to have, you know, people, the sky is falling again.
It's the same deal. You got to come in there, you know, do the cannonball in the pool, make the big splash. Oh, you know, how are you going to get funding?
You know, if there's no, if there's no sensationalized problem there. Right. Right. So you're going to have to combat that.
But I'm sure you'll do fine because you know what you're talking about again. And then, you know, segueing right into that. And I know that the title of this show, Space Oddity, and we will get there. But, you know, I wanted to talk about, I know we discussed it.
I mean, the snake oil thing is getting wholly out of control here. I mean, I think we're getting to the point now where it's, it, we're the point. Where the PT Barnum Circustent is out. Would you agree, disagree with that, Gene?
I would disagree. No, I'm sorry. I agree completely with that. I started to get a good disagreement with something else.
But I agree with you completely on the snake oil sales because they seem to be coming out of the woodwork. And I'm amazed at the number of manufacturers that have suddenly spun up since the recent passage of the funding bill. That's what surprises me is how many people that now manufacture unmanned aircraft specifically for law enforcement. Yeah, it's a big one.
I mean, the stuff that I'm seeing and hearing and getting emails about what people are doing and how they're doing it. And I mean, we've kind of discussed that before. We have people out there consulting, you know, well, do you know anything about unmanned aircraft?
Now, have you ever seen one? No. And you're consulting on this subject. Okay.
Sounds good. You are correct. I'm getting calls from people from all around the world who are making aircraft and think they're just going to, you know, get out there and start selling to the police departments like it's going out of style or, you know, training the police departments. Yada, yada, yada.
And then, you know, I have to say that the let's say the DOJ said it's kind of, you know, sequestered themselves and they're kind of insulated. And I don't know if you want to go into the RFI for the DHS fly off. Did you want to go into that a little bit?
I know you got some inside scoop on that. But I don't know if you want to show the cards. Well, we're going to run long on our space oddity, I can tell you that because the RFI is full of information that we do need to talk about. But we might want to save that for another show.
Yeah, I know there's a lot of information there and I know that people are like, oh, you know, I'm going to go do this. And, and really that is enough material for a whole show. But I will say that, let's just say this for the benefit of the listening audience that one may want to go back and read the RFI. Is that a fair statement?
Very close. Yeah, it just gets better every day. Anyway, yeah, I would suggest that you go back and you read that before you're ready to go. And I will say that some of the you know, flashing back into the snake oil pan.
There are you know, there are folks that are ready to exploit this full force. And not that that's a totally bad thing. You know, I mean, I have to keep saying that, you know, people are out there trying to make a bucks or bucks a month. I keep saying that, you know, people are out there trying to make a buck survive, pay their mortgage, feed the family and all the rest of that.
And you know, hey, you're gonna have to do that. I understand. I understand how that works. I do it myself.
But you know, get kind of educated on the deal again, you know, I get and I'm sure this probably happens to you too. I get a little frustrated when I get calls from people, spend all the money, they've designed it, they built it, they've tested it's the best thing since sliced bread. They call me up after they've spent all of their money and say, Oh, well, you know, now I'm having a problem selling this thing because nobody can really use it. What do I do?
And it's like, well, you know, I do some consulting for a living again, paying the mortgage, feeding the family. And all the rest of that. And I usually hear, yeah, well, you know, we're out of money. We don't have any money, which is kind of frustrating because it's like really, if you would spend, you know, 2003 $4000 upfront, you might be able to save yourself $100,000.
That's, you know, that's why people invest in professional services, you know, same with an attorney or an accountant. I'm more partial to the accountant, but whatever your mileage may vary, you know, but, you know, put that back out there and think about that. I mean, would you like to add on to that, Gene?
I agree. And unfortunately, there are a lot of folks out there that have really, really good ideas and they've come up with some really, really good designs and they've spent a lot of money proving that they do work in a very controlled environment. And that's the normal product cycle that you would see in development. However, in this very atypical situation that we're in, and you have a product that really can't be widely used, you're developing on what you think the user might need after you finish your basic fundamental flight parameters and then you can start to develop it.
And yes, it flies and yes, we can make it go from point A to point B. And then after that, it's purely speculation. And the speculation part of it is what really is bringing the snake oil salesman out because everybody says that they can cover from soup to nuts and they've never done it. Right.
And, you know, as we've put out there, talked about, written about, you know, the articles and everything else about people getting educated first. And it's kind of funny, you know, I'm going to take it right back to the police departments or let's say public safety set has kind of, you know, let's say distance themselves from the conversation. And I think personally that that's kind of a bad place to be because they are trying to find people that supposedly know. I got to say too, this means right back into I tell people, you know, same deal, get the calls, everybody's talking, what do we do?
How do we do it? Yada, yada. And I go, hey, you know, my co-host on the on the podcast here, Gene Robinson, wrote this book. And, you know, he's actually been doing it for eight years.
And it's like, oh, well, yeah, yeah. Like, hey, you know, here it is here. Here's the gold. Just go ahead and read it.
They're not even interested in getting educated. Scary. Very scary. And it's not really so scary for me besides the fact that, you know, I think when the thing goes law enforcement, you're going to have milk cartons, a lot of pictures of ravens on them that say, you know, have you seen me and other aircraft?
Because they're not going to add up. Yeah, exactly. Reward. And there's going to be a lot of that.
So that's one thing I don't like. But on the other hand, I'm not the guy betting my job. That's not me. But there's going to be a lot of people betting their job.
And they're going to, you know, they're going to lose and it's going to be embarrassing. It'll be kind of a Sacramento flashback. You know, I don't know if you saw that. It was years ago.
They bought a Procerus unicorn and add another one. They had two of them going and, you know, spent all this money. It's still a very sore subject with the police department there and didn't look into the legality of flying them and couldn't fly them. So you got a hundred thousand dollars wrapped up in bookends.
And I'm guessing on the amount of money because they will not go public with what they spent on that. But again, same deal. Oh, you know, we could make that happen. And nobody checked into it.
And they will. They don't like talking about it publicly. I'm finding that a lot with our government, you know, on all levels, federal, state and local. Just kind of decide they don't want to talk about stuff.
They don't talk about it. You know, no one wants to be associated with a boondoggle. And really, that's political death, you know, to have your name associated with some boondoggle that cost the taxpayers a bunch of money for nothing. The million dollar bridge to nowhere, the unmanned aircraft that you can't use.
And unfortunately, the law enforcement thinking really kind of leans more towards let's look to the military and get some military gear out here because that's more of, you know, what we're about kind of a situation. And unfortunately, and I've discovered even with one of the most prominent law enforcement agencies here in Texas, that they use or they were given some of that equipment that was used in the theater. And it was a very small aircraft. And the commander said, if you can get me something that will fly in the wind and won't fly into a mountain, I'll use it.
Because the one that they had been given was as errant as it could be. And they couldn't keep it on track, on course or anything else the entire time they used it. And that was made by one of our large DOD contractors. Well, you know, it goes right back to the militarization of the police force is another thing that I think is folly.
But that's me. You know, what happened to the cop on the beat?
You know, now everyone, you know, what happened to SWAT? Now everybody's wearing, you know, they look like they just came out of Afghanistan. You know, I think that's a mistake too. It makes people think that our police are the enemy and yada yada.
But, you know, on a smaller scale with the unmanned aircraft, I've been saying that, you know, it's a lot easier, you know, that asymmetric model, trying to put it on the American people is not going to work. And that's what you're going to get from the DOD contractors because they don't have any other experience. The other thing too is, you know, when you're 8,000 miles away from the voter and they're crashing and you're losing them and all that rest of that, the shenanigans are going on. Nobody knows it.
And it's like I said here, you're going to, I don't think a lot of the Afghanis probably have smartphones to guess. But, you know, here when your asymmetrical warfare thing craps out and, you know, smoldering in someone's front yard, they're going to have the iPhone, it's going to be on YouTube, going to go viral, you know, people. We run it out there with their sticks with the marshmallows on it. I could see the whole show, you know.
Hot dog roast is the trash cans smoldering out in the front yard, you know, with the kids. Be hilarious. And one other point I want to make is I did jot down boondoggle because I know as sure as I'm sitting right here that we're going to have a show in the future with the title boondoggle. Yeah, you're probably right.
So that was a stroke of genius there, Gene. Wrote that down. We'll definitely use that in the future. And I have a feeling that'll come up sooner than later.
But all right. Well, you know, we got a lot of stuff out there. And again, you know, what these podcasts, it's kind of a crapshoot. I mean, I think we're laying out the gold here.
I think we put out the recipe for success for today because usually these are the shows that get seven or eight thousand downloads for the week or 10. Again, it's kind of funny. We'll have some guests on and they think, oh, my God, this show was so great. It's a slam dunk and it doesn't really do too well.
I did invite some guys on several people that work for NASA and I wanted to get some historical perspective on airspace integration. Some of them have been working with the different standards groups. Another guy is down there at Dryden and he's working on that droid program and some other things. And another gentleman from Langley who is working on some Sands and Avoid stuff and I invited them on.
It was too soon. Maybe we'll get them next week. I think we'll do one on the 31st, the Halloween show, and we can tell scary FAA stories. But the 30th, they're having RPA media day out at Holloman Air Force Base and I'm down here at White Sands and I'm going to try and get in on that and get over there.
I can't get the guy to call me back. I guess he's busy. I don't know. We're working on that.
And then that leads into the space out of the portion of the program. And one of the things, last week I went to the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight here in New Mexico. I was over there in Las Cruces. And it was definitely interesting to see how these folks as a community came together and worked the issues.
In the past I had said that we should emulate some of their efforts, look at it and say, hmm, what did they do? How did they come together?
How did they make this happen? They were very effective at coming together, approaching Congress and dulling the FAA sort. I mean, the one thing, FAA had a booth there. That's kind of funny is now they're kind of like, hey, we're the FAA.
We're here. We're here to help. Which is totally different. We want to be part of this, which I think is different than the unmanned aircraft thing.
A lot of people when I said I wanted to come and I asked you, I asked news and what do you do and unmanned aircraft and what are the parallels that we don't get it? There's a lot of parallels between unmanned aircraft or unmanned systems or robotics and space. Namely, what do they send into Mars?
And until they get over that, let's say radiation hump, a lot of the stuff going to Mars is probably going to be unmanned. A lot of the commercial stuff, guy from Popular Mechanics was beating me up because I'm kind of an unmanned is the future thing. Oh, no, it's going to be manned. Well, SpaceX was that manned or unmanned?
It was unmanned. X-37 manned, unmanned. Anyway, I don't want to split hairs there, but I think there are a lot of parallels. And my hat is off to them as far as how they came together and approached this thing.
And basically, Congress said we will not impede commercial spaceflight, paraphrasing. And man, it's going, it's a very small community. It is like if you've been to one of the EVSI shows, it's minuscule in comparison. But everybody's pretty much on the same page.
They have one advocacy group and that one advocacy group has worked the regulatory issues like a rib bone. Something interesting to understand is, and again, this is another one of those parallels of the nomenclature. OK, and you'll remember back in the day, Gene, remember when these were unmanned aerial vehicles?
Yes. When they were unmanned aerial vehicles, that nomenclature basically left the FAA out of regulation because they were not aircraft. They were vehicles. We as a community did not come together and say, screw you, these are vehicles, you know, and we let that nomenclature change.
There's been some steps along the way where we haven't like thrown out the boat anchor and said, no, we're not taking that. And I think it's a little bit of a undoing and there's multiple reasons for that. Would you agree?
Disagree? Yes. Oh, a lot of reasons, but do carry on. All right.
So, you know, I thought that was pretty interesting. I said, OK, that sounds good. We've got this thing here. And part of this, an example of this nomenclature is if you are, and I asked how this is going to work, you're going to be, you want to go into space.
You know, a lot of people want to do it, you know, oh, I want to go to space, yada yada. I mean, I don't know what you're going to do up there, but whatever. You want to go. And so I'm like, OK, is this like a part, you know, there's a small craft.
I don't even know what they're calling them. But, you know, remember that conveyance, the definition of aircraft is a conveyance that flies through the air. You have the material of people or cargo. Yes.
Yeah, which I still contend it's, you know, another BS. I'm not really carrying people or cargo. I'm carrying electrons, ones and zeros and what not. But anyway, we will get to the other double standard part of that.
But anyway, so if you want to be a, you're not a passenger. If you're going into space, you are a participant, which let's say eases some of the certification part of it. And then it's OK. Well, you know, what is the certification parameters for manned spaceflight?
And part of that nomenclature or concept doesn't even exist. There is no certified for manned spaceflight. I think I think that that only is contained within NASA. Again, I'm not an expert on this, but this is what I was being told.
That's pretty interesting that you're going to go into space. I mean, there are some, you know, we're out here in the middle of nowhere and we're trying to kind of guarantee that you're not going to fall on people. It's that non-participant safety thing. OK, that's all interesting.
But, you know, I mean, they agree. They're on the same page with me as far as mishaps are going to happen. Accidents are going to happen and people are going to die. And that's with anything.
You know, I mean, you can have a boat, a car, a plane, an unmanned aircraft, a bus, whatever people are going to die. And I think that they realize that I was told that they did get insurance and they're ready to go. I don't know why they're not going, but they're thinking that the suborbital flights will be you will have participants in 2013, which is going to be another chap or a high chapter if the commercial space people are actually taking people into space before we can fly a two pound foam aircraft.
That will be that will be kind of depressing. That is going to be very disconcerting, you know, especially when you consider it hard as we have worked on trying to provide solutions and provide alternatives to be able to fly out there. That's very upsetting. It is.
You know, and I will say the other, you know, the other thing with this is kind of another interesting thing is, you know, you know how they've been drumming this safety and do no harm. And I mean, all the platitudes and the nonsense that only seem to apply to unmanned aircraft systems. Not that I want to I'm saying let's get out there and be reckless and do harm. OK.
But here's one for you. There's a company out of North Las Vegas who wants to develop commercial space in space. OK. And that's fair enough.
You know, I think it's a great idea. You know, class A office space, you know, I could see you can open one of those Regis office somewhere in a prestigious location or space station or, you know, scientific, whatever you want to do. I don't care. Open a hotel, Starbucks, whatever.
But I have to say, so you're going to, you know, you want to put this into a low Earth orbit. You know, how are we going to guarantee that these commercial projects don't fall out of this Leo and land on someone on the ground?
You know, even a city that's got, you know, a freeze in place. How are we going to guarantee that?
I mean, in my mind and as, you know, fair minded person, I don't think they can guarantee that at all. Remember Skylab?
Oh, I remember it well. And you know for a fact that there is inherently more danger in reaching escape velocity and then once you reach escape velocity, returning back down at a significantly higher speed than the terminal velocity that an aircraft can make. Oh, exactly. And there's, I mean, you know, and it goes back to the safety numbers.
And I asked, so, you know, what are the safety numbers? And I don't think they're getting hammered as hard because they couldn't even remember. 10 to the something, I don't know, you know, where they keep talking about us doing 10 to the nine. And, you know, but, you know, you're going to, you're going to put a strip mall in the sky. And, you know, that thing breaks up and, you know, where does it go?
Or, you know, gets hit by a meteorite. And you got all this stuff. I mean, you know, you can't guarantee any of that crap. I'm sorry.
And I'm not buying for two seconds. And actually next time I run into people at the Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration Office, that's going to be one of my big questions. You know, some of those same people that worked, that's another parallel. Some of the people that worked in the Unmanned Aircraft Systems issues worked a commercial space issue.
And some of the people that are no longer there, you know, told me they went out and looked at this stuff. And they were like, ooh, scary. Ooh, you know, I wouldn't ride in that. You know, you could take it for what it's worth.
It's secondhand news or whatever. I haven't seen this stuff personally. But, you know, it's going to happen. You're going to have some, you know, eventually someone's going to burn up on reentry or whatever.
And cue Shelly Williams and, you know, we'll have the Poseidon adventure in space. You know, it's just going to happen. That's the reality of things. But there's no way you're going to guarantee any of that.
You're not guaranteeing the safety of the people on the ground. I'm not buying. So, you know, what it points back to is to me is another double, triple standard. Because the other thing is, you know, remember they say they need data on two-pound aircraft.
Remember? How long have we been hearing that, Gene?
Let's see. Okay. That was back in 2006 when we were asked that at the STM38 meeting in Dallas. Yeah, five, six.
Looking for data. Where are you going to get your data for this commercial, you know, to strip them all in the sky?
You know, where's that coming from? How are we going to, you know, where, you know, are these going to be telephone numbers you're pulling out of the sky or space, for that matter?
So, you know, it's another double standard, you know. You got the LSA greased skids double standard. You got the space triple standard. You know, and one has to, you know, if you're going to be in this field, you've got to really step back, objectively look at it and say, geez, what, you know, what are the parallels?
What are the differences? And why are we getting, why is everyone else getting a gold mine and we're getting a shaft?
It's a family show. And I'm sure you probably remember that song from the 70s. I did. Great song.
Jerry Rist and Pete. Yes, that was a great song. But, you know, that's one of the things. One other thing I want to, a point I'd like to make is that, you know, whatever the case with the space thing, God bless them.
They're making headway. They're moving forward. It's very exciting. They do have one big customer, and that is NASA.
And I think, you know, I did ask that. I go, you know, okay, so I ask, what are the successful points that are making this successful, this commercial space thing?
And this is definitely one of them, that NASA doesn't have a launch vehicle, you know, since the retirement of the space shuttle, putting a lot of money into commercial space. And that's great. And I do think, you know, one other difference I'm going to mention about that is I think that, you know, again, and I know, okay, I'm turning the flame thrower on here. I think the biggest detriment to our community has been the DoD contractors, you know.
And I know that's going to make me unpopular. But, you know, those people have been crawling and scratching and, you know, climbing all over each other to get at the lucrative contracts. I think that DARPA needs to change their thinking. And I do, I am encouraged by the things that DARPA is doing.
But like the last episode we did with the fly-in, I think if the DARPA had six fly-ins from around the country, and we talked about this on the phone, but we had six regional fly-ins, and they spent $100,000 at each fly-in and gave people grants, you know, come on out, show us what you're working on. What do you need to make this thing rounded out or make it better?
And, you know, somebody's got to do up a one or two page proposal and say, well, I need 10,000 or 20,000 or 30,000. And I'm not talking about salaries, but I'm talking about an investment so they could buy the technology. Yeah, I think that they'd come back in six months and DARPA would be like, whoa, you know, wow, that's pretty amazing. Definitely an idea they should think about.
I think for half a million dollars or let's say even a budget of $2 million, I think they could get their socks knocked off. Agree?
Disagree? I agree completely. I think that would be a wonderful idea, even myself watching the fly-in from the last show. I was amazed at some of the things the guys had advanced to from the one that we had had previous to that.
I think, you know, even you made mention that I made me a convert to multi-roader because I saw what they were doing and they were doing some really good things. Tools in the toolbox. It's it. It's another tool in the toolbox.
I agree completely. It's hard to drive nails with a monkey wrench. Yeah, well, you can do it, but you don't get many finished real good. No.
I mean, you know, the space audio thing, we're down to 30 seconds. I did miss that. I did get to come out here at White Sands and I went out to Launch Complex 33 where they were launching all the V2s, the early space program. Man, that's great.
If you ever get down here to New Mexico, Las Cruces, Alamogordo, you got to go. It is fantastic. Anyway, that rounds up another episode. Gene, till next week.
You bet. All right, buddy. I will talk to you soon. Have a good one.
And everyone out there, have a nice week. Everyone take care. Bye.