UAS News Podcast — 2012-08-01
Audio not available on SoundCloud — full transcript below.
Transcript
attoми hi everyone Welcome to another episode of the UAS News Podcast. I'm your host, Patrick Egan, where we're gonna discuss some more of the relevant issues of the global unmanned technologies community. Let's see here. First off, what I wanna do today, we're gonna actually do a recap of the, let's say last 12 weeks since its inception of the UAS News Podcast.
And I'm supposed to do that with Gene Robinson, but I do not see Gene Robinson on here. Just talked to him just a minute ago. So we'll email him here, where the heck are you?
Family show. Anyway, I'm gonna go over some of what we, some of what we have learned in these last 12 weeks. And I personally have learned a lot. The first thing I wanted to do is we were running the contest for a free download of Gene's boat first to deploy.
And basically what you need to do is you're gonna have to sign up on Facebook to be like us, or whatever is pretty tough. So that's what you had to do. Anyway, so that's what you had to do. We had people sign up.
I don't know how many people signed up. But anyway, our first deploy winner, contest winner, is Carla Cross. And Carla Cross is the first person to sign up. And she's the first person to sign up.
And she's the first person to sign up. And she's the first person to sign up. And basically we'll have to get in touch with her and email her a copy of Gene's book first to deploy. So, see what happens with that.
Let me see, what else do we got here? Okay, the big news of the week, besides Gene not calling in, is I'm now connected with Donovan the Sunshine Superman on LinkedIn, which is good. He's actually a friend of a friend of mine, which is another story for another time. I actually have a buddy who is the 17th incarnation of the spirit of art.
He's recognized by his holy name, just the Dalai Lama. It's an interesting story. We'll have to go into it again at another time. Let's see, what else we got here?
Gene got invited to come to go to D.C. for the SUAS, or the Unmanned Technologies, or Unmanned Systems Caucus demonstration at the Rayburn House Office Building. And we may go to that one and talk to the people there. There's some interesting people.
It's Bob McKeenan is the one that's running that. And so we got that rolling. Also worthy of discussion is part two of the Discerning the Culture, Ecos, and Mechanics of the FAA Unmanned Program Office. That's on the front page of the SUAS News Today.
You should probably go over there and check that out. As you know, that's an interesting story. It first appeared that we were going to get a little stonewall action. But now it appears that the Associate Administrator for Aviation Safety, Peggy Gilligan, has told them to make it so.
So they are actually working on my requests, my FOIA requests for financial data for the UAPO offices inception. And of course the idea with that is we are trying to discern if the public or taxpayers are getting their money's worth from, let's say, what's transpiring in that office. And then also we will match that to the progress reports. Pardon me, I'm going to sip a tea.
Got to make my own around here. I do not have staff like Gary down there. And he has Zulu Kingdom. He's living like the proper English gentleman.
He's got staff making him tea, fishing. He's living the life of Riley down there. And the Zulu Kingdom. Spears throw from Roark's Drift.
Anyway, I did digress from my story. So we are going to get those progress reports from the UAPO and the financial records. And hopefully we can kind of figure out what's been going on there in the Unmanned Program Office for the last couple of years and see if the taxpayers are getting their money's worth. Okay, what else do we get going on?
I finished another interview for another news story that I believe is going to be an AP story. That should be a day brightener for some more folks. I know when I do interviews or give statements for certain newspapers and whatever else, some people get a little excited about what I have to say and other people do not. Let's see if we can get Gene on the phone here.
Hey, are you participating in the live podcast that we're doing right now? Call me and tell me if we're doing it or not. Yeah, I'll call in. Alright, well it would be nice to have you.
Have you ever heard, have you listened to the podcast before, Gene? No, I'm kidding. Okay, I'll see you in a second. Okay, bye.
Ah, it's fine, live radio. Anyway, so Gene should be calling in here any second. The article that I contributed to shouldn't be good. Actually, the reporter, it sounds like he's kind of got his act together, did a little research, checked some of the facts.
That's always kind of hard doing interviews with people who don't really understand the technology or applications. Let's see, it looks like we have Gene. Gene, are you there?
Hello, I am here. Is this like as long as we push away from the gate and close the door, we have an on-time takeoff?
Exactly. Well, I've been doing it by myself for the last, I don't know, eight, nine minutes, and I haven't missed a beat except when I was trying to text you and talk at the same time. That didn't really work out too well. People were really witty.
Whatever else, you know, that's what was going on there. Anyway, so we did talk about some of the stuff. You know, the winner of the book, the free book download, was a Carla Cross, our Facebook like, that like contest we had going. We talked about your invite to D.C.
Could you tell us any more about that? Yeah, that's going to be a pretty interesting deal. It is the Science and Technology Caucus that's held in the foyer there at Congress, and it is intended to educate and demonstrate to those members what technologies are out there and what potentials there are for unmanned aircraft specifically. So it's going to be kind of interesting to be able to go out there, put a spectre up on the table, and show them how we've actually used them for conducting.
And I don't believe we've violated anybody's privacy or caused one accident in a match yet in eight years. So maybe that will keep you eyebrows. Yeah, and I think it will be good for other people to go. I would like to go, too.
When's the date on that? That would be September 13th, and those houses are in session during that period, so it should be pretty good. Oh, good. I think my schedule's stacking up.
I'm busier than a tick on a hound dog from here until it looks like Thanksgiving. But I'd like to make that, I think that'd be perfect for you to get out there and show them. Usually it's the usual suspects, as I like to call them, and you've got your barrel of wire, mint line up, you've got your Stan Eagle, you've got your Climb trash can, which I know the people at Honeywell love when I call it the trash can. Well, I think it's actually going to be a little smaller than that.
I don't know that the four-year-old that many people. They've done it before, but I mean, the usual suspects thing is that's what people envision as unmanned aircraft. So it would be nice to get some small business people in there like you to show them something different. Like I've alluded to in the past, when people see the smaller stuff that's not military grade, they start raising an eyebrow, scratching their head and say, wow, the FAA has wasted millions of dollars and years of manpower on trying to regulate this.
I mean, I'd have to bring the cracker barrel, put it on a stick. And when people see that, they go, wait a minute, this is what, hey, man, I know, you know, keeping the ass safe for everyone, which I don't know that I'm buying all that. But that's part of the news story that I went into that's on the SUS News website, the ethos story that I'm doing with the FAA. Actually, I did talk to someone that I know over there in the UAPO, and they're working on my request with the progress reports that have been generated from the UAPO and now the UASIO and also the financial report since inception.
So it ought to be interesting to see how much money the UAPO is spending and what the taxpayer and the public is getting for their money. I think it'll be a real eye-opener. It may cause some outrage. You know, I know that running that office cannot be cheap.
And years have gone by and we've got nothing. So ultimately, the question, you know, we'll have to see, keep an open mind. And, you know, I realize things have happened and, you know, you got Christmas parties and stuff to do. And we'll have to see what happened there.
It ought to be interesting. I'm definitely interested to see what we've gotten for our money. The other thing I want to do is I'm thinking about I want to go for, you know, and you got to tell me what you think of this idea, but I'm thinking full-blown flight school. And I'm looking for like an SAA blessed enterprise, kind of like some of the examples that are already out there.
What do you think? Think I'm crazy?
I think it's a pretty good idea because I think there's a couple of folks out there, some of the big boys that are doing it, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, and they're making some good money too from what I hear. We're not talking like, you know, come on down and let me whack you for $1,000 to get trained on our system. I mean, it's a lot of money.
And these aren't schools just teaching military people. These are civilian contractor, deployers. And, you know, I mean, I guess that charging people for training, you know, is not considered commercial. I thought it kind of fit into the definition of, you know, the money exchanging hands like the $1 because that's a VUIPO's definition.
If $1 changes hands or in-kind services, no bartering, no nothing, then that's a commercial thing. But if I can train people and I can hit them for, you know, tens of thousands of dollars for a chair, you know, I think I might have just tapped into the mother load. So I'll be looking into that. I'm going to definitely I've told I need to speak with Artie Williams about that.
You know, me and Artie go way back. I mean, way, way, way back. She, we're on. Yeah.
We exchanged Christmas cards and everything. And so I'm going to be talking to her about that. So, you know, the syllabus thing was timely. The book was timely.
It's almost like you couldn't have planned this thing better. I think we're going to be on Easy Street here by Christmas. What do you think?
You know, it could happen. And we got a lot going for us. Actually, when you consider the amount of experience and the stuff that we put on paper, you're there to battle it out. You've done a lot of training stuff there and it's it's it could be about right.
It could be right on target. And we got insurance and everything. I mean, I think that we could really put something solid together and we got eight years of experience. We've we've written the test.
We've we got best practices. We got checklists. We got it all covered. I think we're going to be able to put together the whole program goes through that experience.
And like I'm saying, you know, Santa might just have something in his sack for us this Christmas and that'd be my training, you know, as a school where we're training people to operate safely in the news. I think it's a win-win for everyone. And we're going to work on that. And we'll talk about that progress here on the podcast and on its news.
I mean, I just think it's going to be a slam dunk. And if people are interested in getting in on this deal, you might want to contact me if you've got something to bring to the table and especially, I think the experience to that you bring here, Gene, I think that you just got years out there. And you've you've you've said a lot of things. You've got pretty good track record.
I don't think we've even drawn blood, to be honest with you. All right. And I know you got some big mosquitoes down there in Texas. Yeah, this is just a little bit of a surprise.
I mean, I think it's a little bit of a surprise. I mean, I think it's a little bit of a surprise. I think it's a little bit of a surprise. I think it's a little bit of a surprise.
All right. And I know you got some big mosquitoes down there in Texas. Yeah, this is true. Well, I said that you can see anyway.
I might have, you know, skint my knee or something like that or gotten spread. But it's nothing serious, that's for sure. And we have certainly not had any run ins with full scale aircraft. And when you get right down to it, we've flown with full scale aircraft in a coordinated fashion and everything worked out just fine.
All right. Well, you know, we'll have to in my spare time and in your spare time, we're going to really going to have to put together the paperwork on that for submission. But we got we know the people were right there. We know everybody there.
They know what we're finding. They know what we're doing. This ought to be this isn't some Johnny come lately thing. This ought to be expedited slam dunk.
All right. Well, I don't know. I'm pretty sure you caught up on that, because actually the theme of today's show is kind of reflecting on the first quarter or last three months of the podcast and since inception of this program, which I'm presently surprised to have of yourselves. I'm pretty pleased, actually.
We've been pretty well received all the way around. We've had some really, really good shows. There's been a few that we've had some technical difficulties on, but that's kind of typical of any learning process that we go through. And I think now other than being able to figure out whether we're on Pacific Daylight Time or Zulu or Central Time, that's been the only issue that we've had so far.
Yeah. Well, that, you know, even like today, I, you know, I had it all scheduled for 930 tonight. But, you know, that's probably because I'm doing too much multitasking and my ADHD and all the rest of that. But we are interviewing intern producers, and that would really free up my schedule to the show prep and getting the guests and setting up the show and all the rest of that.
So maybe I could get a couple of other things done. I got a whole stack of things to get done. So we'll see if that comes online. Again, we're following.
Yeah, that'd be great. We're following the Gary Mortimer example. You know, he's got staff down there in Africa. We're going to emulate.
All right. Yeah. So the show has been good. I want to talk about some numbers.
And I've learned a lot through the show, through the numbers. And I mean, I don't even know, you know, I'm an out there on the Internet trying to look at numbers to see, you know, what good numbers are for downloads and stuff. But that's still kind of subjective. But anyway, you know, I wanted to talk about the shows that have been very popular.
And, you know, we did the back to school series. You weren't really a part of that, but it was three half hour episodes. And basically what we did was talk to these universities that have some programs from in technologies, mainly air systems. I did invite.
I invited a lot of schools and I was surprised. And we really did not come back. Kansas State, we just couldn't link up time wise, but the school that did come on gave us kind of a wide and varied, let's say, education philosophy, which I thought was kind of interesting. And hopefully the idea was for prospective students to say, hey, I could listen to this and decide if this is the school I want to go to.
If they're running a program that works for me. And that series has been, well, it's the only series. So, yes, it's been a very, that's our most popular series back to school. Did you catch any of this?
Yes. You know, I think, no, I did get to, after the fact, get to listen to a few of them. And I think it's a reflection of where agencies and where people are looking now as to where to get the information that they are really looking for to get into the unmanned aircraft industry. I do think it's a little unusual at this time, though, that there are schools putting together programs for masters and doctorates and things like that when it really hasn't been out there in the civilian end of it that long.
To be able to put together a curricula that is a four-year curriculum. I mean, to me, I'm not sure how that works. Maybe they've got some really, really good professors there that are writing curiously on that particular syllabus. But it's still, it's a reflection that there are a lot of folks out there looking for information, they need the information, and they want to be interested.
I think it's a very clear sign. I agree with that. And, you know, it is some of this stuff, I talked to another gentleman this morning from England and I do some forecasting stuff. And, you know, we were talking about that, the regulations and some regulations are coming on in the UK and CASA's got some stuff in Canada, you can fly.
So as this stuff kind of comes online, you've got people that want to be poised. And I keep telling my clients that, like consulting clients, you have to be poised. For one, this, when you get the go code, if you are not like right there, ready to go, you are going to be behind the herd. And the herd is going to be out in front of you and you're going to be paying catch up.
And that's going to be a cyclical thing that's going to take you years to overcome and millions of dollars. So invest now, you know, you're getting some more gold here. Invest now and be ready. But I agree with that.
Now the Unmanned Vehicle University podcast is our overall winner too. They had over, are you ready, 11,000 downloads thus far for that one episode. Well, you know, Jerry Lemieux is working very, very diligently at getting the word out about the Unmanned University. He's working very hard at it and he is working all social networks, everything that he can get, get people to recognize what he is doing over there.
And that's paid off, very clearly that's paid off. It has. And I think it also shows a difference in, you know, again, the psychology of education. Because what I've also discerned from that is he's had 11,000 downloads and you're right, he's working the social media hard.
And, you know, next in line, and I'm not going to give the downloads, but they're not even anywhere close, it's the University of North Dakota. North Dakota is a little bit more forward thinking. And then I found from North Carolina State that Dr. Silverberg had a little, seemed to get a little terse with me about me asking, you know, are you going to do any off campus, any e-learning, any long distance stuff.
And, you know, he used to know, we're more of a traditional university, which, you know, that's fine and then you can run your program any way you want. I'm not going to tell you how to run your business, you know. But I do think that, I mean, even for myself, I'm actually taking one of these online classes. And it is hard for me to be in this in place once a week for two hours.
And I, they're actually lined up. I do that class in the morning. I make all my international calls. I do that class and then the podcast.
So by time lunchtime rolls around, I've already got six or seven hours in, you know, and I got to let the cat out at five in the morning. That's bad because we got to get rid of him and take him for a ride. Anyway, but I do think that it is reflection. I think that also this business, and I'm going to talk about the career path, that later on down that too, even with these government jobs and consulting and whatever else, a lot of the jobs, I mean, I've been looking for a job or more consulting clients or whatever.
And a lot of people think that you have to sit in the cubicle somewhere. It's that old style of thinking. Most of these program managers are saying, well, you know, I got to be able to look at the cubicle and you got to be there, which, you know, with today's technology, even the Navy program that I was on, you know, multiple sides, hundreds of people all over the United States and also Oconus. And we were able to, you know, put it all together and, you know, internet, cell phones, modern technology, tweet, whatever.
So I think that more and more as time goes on, people cannot be locked into a cubicle or one spot or a school. There's no way I could go to a school for four years. I can't take four years off. You know, I can't even take a month off.
Yeah, that's difficult to do, you know, especially as you push out into the business world to stop and put everything on hold for four years or to try to juggle both. It's just extremely difficult. Yeah, there's, I just don't see that happening. I mean, you know, it's just it's not practical.
A lot of people, too, when I'm looking for jobs or I'm looking for jobs, you know, well, do you have an engineering degree in this field? And we're looking for somebody with a, you know, like there are no real universities that have been around long enough for you to really get a degree in something that's going to apply to that. Or they're looking for qualifications for somebody. I mean, there's like a small handful of people on the planet.
I should probably go into that more. We could do another show about trying to get hired in the unmanned aircraft remote sensing field. And maybe we'll do that in the future. Yeah, we could.
We could talk a long time about that, things to look out for, the pitfalls, the trials and tribulations and kind of whatever else. But anyway, we got off the track with the numbers. Now, the second runner up for the most downloads is the first to deploy, the one we did about your book. And that's had over 5,000 downloads.
And, you know, the one thing that I think that we did forget to do in there, and I'm not sure if we did or not, but, you know, was the website address of that. And since we're on it one more time, amigo. It is suasnews.com slash first dash two dash deploy. Okay.
Because I have had people listen to that and ask me, and I don't know if they just missed it or we didn't go over it or whatever else. But again, if you want to get the book, email me. People have been emailing me, and I've been trying to forward that on to you. People are interested in learning that.
And if you're not interested in learning that, there's something wrong with you or reading it. Tensil, I have your answer. I think, Patrick, what the real appeal is on this is that it's a book that is based not on theory but actual practical experience in the field. And I've gotten a lot of good feedback, and the missing portion of the book is what tends to appeal to people the most.
You know, you were out there. You were in this environment. You were required to do this, and you flew that, and this was the outcome of it. You know, it's nothing about theory and whether it should work or would work.
This is what did work. And this is what we use in the field, and this is how we use it. And I think when you get right down to the ball pack, that's what people are really, really looking for. It's, you know, give me the quick start guide on how to get into UA.
And I know that's kind of a funny thing to say about getting into UA's because it's never an easy task to jump off into something that can be as complex as this. But you don't have to go through a whole bunch of theory to get to the point where you can actually use a remote sensor or use a UA with a digital engineer in it, if you know what I mean. Oh, absolutely. And I think that the applications that you're talking about and the empirical knowledge that you bring to the table here is really what's going on is you're saying, Hey, I've distilled it down.
This is the size of aircraft. Here's what you can do. This is what this aircraft can bring to a search or police department or a fire or whatever. And then, you know, I just want to flash on that real quick.
That was one thing that I tried to impart on this reporter that I just did this news story for. And I said, you know, really, we're getting caught up in all the minutia of privacy and, you know, the FAA is coming in here. Oh, my God, the sky is falling. You know, which is, it bothers me, you know, the GAA pilot sitting in the cockpit.
For some reason, his eyesight's magical. He can see infinity. But, you know, I'm a UAS pilot and I'm on the ground and I can only see the 1500 feet. I can only de-conflict 1500 feet of airspace.
That's my BS detector pegging right there. And it bugs me, but, you know, all of that aside, this technology can change our lives for the better. People say, oh, that's a broad brush, man. You're saying, that's pretty, wow, you're way out there.
No, not really, you know. It's going to save municipalities money. It's going to save farmers money. And we're going to up crop production, animal husbandry, you know, or ranching or whatever else.
There's a lot of applications that this is going to save people money, time, and farm inputs, whatever else. And it's going to be better for all of us. So let's get it out there. Let's start using it.
And I think that that's what your book has in there. This is a case study. So you cannot deny this. This has happened.
And, you know, the safety record that you were talking about. So I'm glad to see that that was the second most popular show with 5,000 plus downloads. The other thing is, you know, you're probably getting, I don't know if this has occurred to you or not, but since you did an EPUB, because I had actually done the numbers on the little EPUB that I did, that compilation of stories and editorials. And I even wrote an article, two page article for Unmanned Technologies or Unmanned Systems magazine, the AVSI magazine.
And we were interested, Unmanned Systems, we were interested to see how many sales I had after a two page article in that magazine. Over at Amazon, I had six downloads that month. And the book is a dollar, which is a lot of money. But, man, if you find it, it's over there on Google, I had like 1,200 downloads.
So believe it or not, I think, you know, your book is probably getting passed around. Did you think maybe it's getting fired a little bit?
I don't know. What do you think?
Yeah, I think that since we didn't do the tricky password protection and things like that, it tends to tick people off because they have to enter a password every time you open the thing, which really bugs me as well. We did. We just kind of left it open and let folks download it. And I, without a doubt, I know of a couple of folks who have already contacted me and said, you know, hey, this is great and want to talk to you more about it.
And they didn't say, well, let's get the book. Right. So, you know, it's not that big of a deal. I wasn't trying to do, to get rich or to do anything like that, become a bestseller or more, not let stuff.
But more than anything else, it's to get the information out and to let folks know that it could be done. And it could be done for a reasonable amount of money and that it could make a difference. That's why it was so specific to search and rescue and to law enforcement. Well, and, you know, the other thing is you might not get rich on the book, but when we open up this flight school, you know, I think that that's where the money is.
And if we can get the kind of money that these other companies, these, let's say, established vendor companies are getting a seat for training, it'll all be worth it. So we'll see. You know, and I think it's good, too, that you got the information out there. I think that really it was a milestone and you were doing a service for the whole community.
It'd be nice to realize some remuneration on that. But, you know, hanging in there, I think it's good. It's definitely good. And then that leads to our third most downloaded show was the inaugural show that we did, the SUAS Search and Rescue.
And we had about 2,300 downloads on that. So people are definitely interested in this topic. And I think that's all good. The other thing I wanted to talk about, and I know you have, you probably don't want to talk about this, too, and let's talk about our favorite shows.
And I'll let you go first. Which out of, this is show 15, but out of that, what was your favorite show, G?
I've got to say that I was most fascinated with the polka-bearing show. Me, too. And the things that they were doing to promote the science and technology of not just bearings, but to use rotating things, to use things that, you know, need to be friction to get things going. I thought that was so fascinating.
And then the giveaway, a 3D printer. I thought that was so cool. I agree. I thought it was great.
It was also that American success story. And, you know, his dad wanted to get into this thing. And, you know, it takes passion to stay on the phone with somebody for 45 minutes, and walking them through something. I liked that whole deal, small business.
I thought it was fascinating. I went over there. I checked out some of the projects. I don't know if you did, but, you know, that sphere he was talking about, that walked like a crab and could climb and roll.
And, you know, I was like, wow, it's pretty amazing. Yeah, that's a perfect thing. I want to help them out next year. I will say, though, that unfortunately that is our lowest performing show.
The least amount of downloads. It is. I thought it was a fun, uplifting show. I didn't, we didn't, there was no Debbie Downer in that.
It was all good. It was kind of interesting. But I liked that one, too. I also liked the driverless car thing.
I think we got a lot of information out of that as far as product liability moving forward with commercializing this technology, but whatever. I enjoyed the global update with Peter von Blanberg. It was a little bit of feedback and echo in that one. But Peter's a very interesting guy, very passionate fellow, very knowledgeable about what's going on.
And I thought that that conversation was pretty good, you know, gave people a pretty good overlook of what's cooking. Yeah, and the interesting thing about that conversation was is that over there across the pond they're dealing with the same issues that we're dealing with. And it's a little disconcerting to me that they are moving so far ahead and that they are making progress. And it makes a statement to me as to what our process is doing.
And I wish we could get that pushed off the top dead center. It just kind of brought that out to me. Did it to you?
Well, I agree. I think that what we have here is the difference in procedure. Now, I'm not going to say that you don't have large military vendors in their process, which they do, but the Europeans are doing something totally different. And the Europeans, the EU, if you have a company like your company, and this is the difference here, like your company, you can actually get money from the European Union to develop your business, you know, and you also have countries where it is legal to fly, okay?
That's not what's happening here in the United States. This effort is being suppressed, and the only people that are getting money to develop projects are the military vendors. And the people really riding this one in are the vendors. And again, you know, I'm going to beat the drum, and people sitting here, you know, their apathy, it's like, you know, is it Jonah's fault?
You know, he allowed himself to get eaten by the whale, and you're going to sit in the whale's belly and whinge? Or are you going to do something?
And, you know, over there in Europe, you've got a lot more participation from small business, maybe because they have some money because the EU has put money in their systems. But that kind of also kind of chaps my eye, because here we've got to sit a deal where when this deal goes legal in the United States, and you've got the systems from China and Europe, and these guys are flush with cash, because they've had the money inflows
and been able to sell, and then there's a guy like you sitting over there who's been hanging on by his fingernails for years waiting for the FAA to come up with, you know, I don't know if you're going to call it common sense regulation.
I mean, is it a proposed envelope that's going to come out when people see this, and this really hits the streets? You know, the small U.S. arc recommendations that were put out in April 1st of 2009, which is the date that's apropos, I think people are going to be blown away of how silly it is. It took you, you know, you're going to come back and go, oh, it took you eight years to come up with this, huh?
I mean, it'll be, besides shame, it's going to be embarrassing. And if it isn't embarrassing, then I think some people have been inside the beltway for too long. Oh, neat. Because, you know, and I was going to bring this up later on in the show, is basically what's happening here is the FAA is handing off the goods that laid the golden egg.
Okay? To the Chinese. And the other thing I'm going to, I'm going to go on the record. I'm going to go on the record with this one.
And this is getting off of the show topic, but since we're here, you know, people talk about the first major mishap that happens with unmanned aircraft here in the U.S. And they talk about that, and it's going to put the industry back years, and oh, it's going to go in the tank, and, you know, will it ever get off the ground?
I contend that the first big mishap has already happened. Okay?
And it's happened at the hands of the FAA. And I'm going to go further and say, because they know that thousands of people are out there flying, and remember it was all about safety and do no harm. Somebody read a bumper sticker, and it was cute. And we don't, you know, we can't risk the safety of the NAS.
We can't do this. We can't do that. All the numbers are made up on the safety numbers. You know, the contractor that did the report for the NTSB will tell you basically, NTSB did a report, the numbers are worthless for the VGA.
Like 10 to the minus 6, that's made up numbers. And we could make up numbers like that and be as safe as them or safer. Anyway, the point of this diatribe is when the first loss of life happens with unmanned aircraft, you know, that scenario they talk about where it goes in and hits the airliner and goes down and all the rest of that, I'm laying it directly at the feet of the administrator of the FAA. Right now we have an acting one, but the buck has got to stop somewhere.
The inanity has got to stop somewhere. You cannot go on for eight years, seven, eight years and say, well, we just, you know, we still need to collect some data and we got to come up with a plan. We got to, you know, sorry, not going to happen. You know, it's been out here.
They know it's been happening. FAA in Washington told people how to operate back in 2001. So what are we now? 11 years?
Yep. We got nothing. So and they know what's going on. And then it's any.
Okay, here. Okay. I'm going to I'm going to state this once more for the record. Anyone over at the FAA who hasn't been on the Internet and doesn't have to use the Internet or Google, just Google aerial photography and see how many thousands of websites come up of people that are using RC aircraft, unmanned aircraft, autonomous aircraft, whatever, to do aerial photography and all these other jobs that we've already talked about.
There's police departments out there using it. Everybody's doing it. And just in case you missed it. But my thing with that is if you're in that office and you have missed that and you're not aware that this is going on out here and the tens of thousands of people flying around weekly, you might want to look for another job.
That might sound harsh, but you know, if you can't use the Internet to discern what's going on in your NAS and the NAS that you're trying to get all the safety on, you might. This may not be your call. I don't know. But anyway, all that aside, I first mishap directly at the feet of the administrator.
That's all I got to say on that. And you think I'm out to, is that an unlawful outlandish or what do you think, Gene?
No, like you say, it's harsh, but gosh, the blind eye that's being turned toward the NAS in so many different areas, not only unmanned, but manned as well, we've seen that. It kind of gives one cause for cause. So we'll see how that plays out. I don't know personally.
Well, I mean, I just looked at the other people. Oh, you just can't rush these things. You know, it's all about safety. It's all, you know, we got to do, there's checks and balances and there's this and that.
And I say horse, pucky. And it can be done and it can be done swiftly. And all one has, and I'm not making this stuff up. All you have to do is look at light sport aircraft.
And, you know, I mean, if you look at light sport aircraft, the feet, they're holding our feet to the fire to match the FARs for commercial aircraft. You can light sport aircraft. You don't even need a driver's license is good. And to add insult to injury, again, go back and I've asked this question.
You can teach people to fly in a light sport aircraft. And again, the anytime you own a dollar, that's commercial. So that commercial, I thought you couldn't do commercial in LSA. But anyway, LSA got pushed right on through that one.
They produced the skids and that one ran through. And they keep pointing to it. Well, they don't point to that anymore because I think it's embarrassing. They, in the beginning, remember at ASDM, look at LSA, you know, look at F-37.
Look what they were able to do. They don't point to that anymore because we're still out in the lurch. And then also I'm going to go to commercial space flight. You know, look at the commercial space flight thing.
That thing is so loose and fast that the only thing holding that back is commercial liability insurance. No one is going to indemnify them. Nobody. There is not an insurance company anywhere that's going to do that.
And they have an aircraft that weighs a lot that could come down from a great altitude at a high velocity somewhere in the NAS. Well, and not only that, when you get the first, you know, space plane load of passengers burn up on reentry, you know, we're going to have to reincarnate Shelley Winters, man, because it's going to be, you know, one of those disaster movies and, you know, what happened here and looking around. And I know they're trying to pass some legislation to indemnify themselves because they can't get insurance.
But those are two examples. Look there. You're going to see examples of getting stuff done when you're motivated. But anyway, we're coming down.
We have passed two-minute warning and we're getting down to the under 60 seconds. And again, I was thinking, man, can we talk about this for 45 minutes?
We kind of got off the track. But anyway, I like this podcast program. I think we've got some stuff in the future. And it's only up from here.
And, you know, we need to get folks thinking about what they would like to hear on the podcast so they can contact Patrick directly and let him know what they'd like to see. Monetization, new uses, whatever. Throw them out there. We'll see if we can get them on.
Well, I did have someone say that they wanted to hear how to make money in this field. And I did tell the gentleman that it would be an extremely short show. I could probably run it down in the last 15 seconds we have here, but we'll save it. We will talk about that.
We've got some other topics in the future. But again, yes, Patrick at SUASnews.com. And we'll try and get that on the future. Again, Gene, thanks.
And I'll be talking to you soon, buddy. Okay. Sorry I was late. I'll be better next time.
That was my fault. No problem. See you. See you.
Bye.