David_Wartofsky
Years ago I had a personal certified helicopter, an Enstrom. I thought it would be fun to be able to land on some parking lot roofs at fancy hotels and restaurants in Cambridge and around Boston.
Reply was either “no way” or “we need $25m of liability insurance before you do.”
That’s when $25m was a lot of money.
Needless to say there were just a few resorts and hotels that would invite a private helicopter to land on the lawn.
It’s been awhile since I had high school AP physics. I do recall the basics: Would someone (who is bored) please calculate and review the energy to raise 1 lb 1,000 feet, then hold it there for an hour, then lower back down? Assume 100% efficiency for starters.
Then add energy density of batteries into that. Then add energy conversion and aerodynamic propeller losses, etc.
Think how nervous passengers are in small certified aircraft with certified pilots. My guess is a few of something will be made, at huge cost to shareholders, with poor economics, and end up as expensive amusement park rides.
The publicly traded holding mergers being used these days remind me of what we’re railroad scams in the early century. Anyone could issue a press release they were building a railroad from San Fransisco to Hawaii and start issuing stock certificates. A few layers of speculators would flip the stock until…
Lastly, these mergers remind me of another dubious way marginal companies would go public: Find some thinly traded publicly traded shell, which had gone through security registration in some obscure state years ago when it was a real company. Then merge that shell with the company trying to raise funds for insiders to get liquid.
Insiders would buy the shell stock low and… whoosh, …out the door once trading volume and price was up.
And then, soon enough, it would become another shell for the next one in line….
What, me cynical?
