We stopped going to the moon because of cost. If you remember, the US was at the height of the Vietnam War, which was costing a bundle, we were fighting the Cold War which cost a bundle, we were in a recession/inflationary time…which cost a bundle. All of technology is a weave of cost, benefit, and ROI. Pioneers could not nor did not become immune to cost.
The only way to get cost down is have something developed that becomes affordable through large amounts of production. No one has ever developed and produced anything without cost. No one invests in some idea before determining a return on their investment no matter how noble or not the project is.
Now the argument simply becomes of priorities to fund development…which involves cost…of unleaded aviation fuel, or 3 trillion dollars for war, or tens of millions for battery development, or billions on autonomous flying/driving vehicles, Uber copters, synthetic self-cleaning underwear, artificial intelligence, or whatever the political soup de jour of the day is. All of these priorities include costs, therefor ROI, and here we go again thinking we can do it all whenever we want. If we cannot get our pet project funded, we cry foul, because what we want we want now.
The only way to get it now is pay for it now. Besides, we have not spent trillions on anything. We have spent our future income, by borrowing today for what we deem important yesterday. I believe the term is deficit spending…another cost.
NASA and Tecnam require money for them to exist…which involves cost. Tecnam gets it’s money from the sales and production of the goods and services they provide. NASA gets it funded by you and me, the taxpayer.
I would like to have an electric powered airplane. But the reality of getting it to fruition is still there…which involves cost, which involves regulation, which involves investment by somebody before any of this gets off the ground ( no pun intended).
Realistically, I would be happy with unleaded avgas, competitively priced with auto-fuel, available around the country so I don’t have to tanker unleaded, non-ethanol auto fuel to my airplane. That little innovation would improve the aircraft ownership experience for about 80% of the fleet. Until then, I will be watching for battery technology either to develop or go by the wayside depending on who will be funding it in addition to my contribution to NASA.
I am hoping someone outside of government gets a really good return on their investment because if we depend on NASA, my contribution will only be going up with me having not much say so about it. Priorities, priorities, priorities.