Rex Alexander CC: Johnny Doo, NASA Working group #4 [email protected] [email protected] 260 494 0891 Again, I must say, I am jealous of what you have done, and will do, over the next 20 years. BUT… to help YOUR career, I offer the following for your consideration and benefit: 1) Regarding anything and everything VTOL… the highest, top-level issue is the bottom line COST of: development, acquisition, MAINTENANCE, guaranteed operation, piloting, insurance to cover failures, and PUBLIC OPINION. 2) The KEY point of this new tech, in this world run by President Trump (especially in his re-election… no matter what YOUR political orientation is) is: The key point is that anything (EVERYTHING) we must do has to be to generate massive, game changing, blue-collar/unionized-labor population employment increases (defining the world overpopulation), building stuff for EXPORT, going to places where “Global Warming” climate change will happen, but where they will not have the funds, or talents, to deal with all the problems it will certainly bring… E-VTOL is NOT for Billionaire executives in San Jose to move their bodies faster in their aero-taxicabs, jumping over all those who must drive to work… THAT is the worst form of “first mission” application of radical new tech and will guarantee the doom of the URBAN Mobility focus of all this stuff… THERE IS NO MARKET for the dreams of a few billionaires, who are funding this stuff to cover the first $100 billion needed to make that URBAN taxi stuff mentality (UAM) work… RATHER, there will be a trillion dollar/year market for the EXPORT of lots of CHEAP VTOL “vehicles” (not “commercial aircraft” for human mobility) to deal with: wildfires, hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes, tsunamis, jungles, floods, swamps, droughts, desert-sand- dune movements, mountain (land slide) avalanches, riots, famine, mass starvations, pandemics, massive unmanaged migrations of the poorest-of-the-poor, most of whom think dying in any war gets them to heaven faster. Global CLIMATE CHANGE is GOOD (for future of E-VTOLs). We, (VTOLers) are the solution to that unstoppable problem, not by replacing jet-fuel with battery packs, but by redirecting “AVIATION” to “hover”. Climate change will certainly happen; (it certainly did to get the monkeys out of the trees and learn to run on their hind legs between African grass land wild fires 3 million years ago and eat burnt bison), and always has, and will always massively affect life on this planet. There is NO way to prevent, or reverse, the warming of our air/ocean/land masses. So, therefore, VTOLs are to deal with REAL emergencies and tragedies, and not make this crowded, over-populated, mega-urbanized, global economy run faster and faster and farther and farther… If we get the right VTOLs developed, the world will DE-URBANIZE… and people will live in entirely new ways. We no longer need to travel from A to B faster since we have optical fiber, 5G communications, super resolution massive displays to digitally simulate classrooms, retail stores, business offices and MOST of what the world’s government offices do with rather useless people.. (Pushing bits around from one terminal to another). So… when YOU are on the positive side of this stuff, please rant loud and clear that we are building a new industry that is labor intensive, for making products that are cheap (due to obvious, radical technologies) to be exported, or even assembled anywhere in the world. THAT is the killer POSITIVE BOTTOM LINE Economics and Politics!!!! 3) GOD (Generators Of Diversity) gave us VTOL technology, not to go farther, faster from A to B… and also: NOT just to TAKE OFF… from some Vertiport…(yet to operate under standards that you know better than most) … The key, mind-blowing human benefit of going VERTICAL is the HOVER function… and especially for the few minutes in prep to LAND… ANYWHERE, (assuming it can be nearly silent with no Jet-turbine based E-power generator). ANY landing is a good landing… especially if you really don’t need all that “infrastructure” that was created for winged vehicles that crash to the ground when they stop going forward… AGAIN, it is NOT about TAKING OFF quickly, it is all about LANDING in a small space, when/ where needed… It is NOT about LANDING at an FAA/City- Gov. approved Vertiport at some hospital… It is about landing within 100 feet of a disaster event area (people drowning, generating pandemic body counts, just after the bullets stop in a Hong Kong riot of college students)… I live about a mile from a major hospital with a certified chopper landing “pad” and almost never hear a chopper flying over my place which is in a direct flight line to the big city. Seldom does a chopper bring in hurting people; mostly it is for some richer guy going from THIS hospital to some better hospital for extra-special treatments. So… the focus must be on the REASON for flying in the first place, and THAT is to HOVER over something with guaranteed certainty of available flight time, aero-stability in bad weather, very high traffic locations and times… AGAIN, the “V” is for LANDING, not taking off… that should massively affect the definition of everything you can say about “INFRASTRUCTURE”… Excuse me for thinking in terms that you are an expert, (also I hate “vertiports”) 4) Now for the real reason I write this: Sitting on my bathroom porcelain throne this AM, I found the answer to your question about getting HYDROGEN into the “infrastructure” (especially if done in a big city context)… and my ANSWER is based on the design of the craft. In all planes I have flown in: Cessna 172, DC-3, Piper Cherokee, and even an unmaxed 737, the issue of defining everything is based on how much FUEL (over-riding the cargo/payload stuff) you have, how fast it burns away, and how far you can go, and ESPECIALLY how long you can stay in the air near your destination…. SO… the key solution to the Hydrogen fuel delivery issue is the design of a craft that was based from the git-go on a MASSIVE amount of FUEL, (and not how many bodies can be crammed into those uncomfortable seats). Re VTOL, the crafts should not be based on brain-dead battery power, that when it goes OUT… it’s game over. They should be based on VERY LARGE tanks of fuel (really CHEAP fuel eventually), that are NOT designed with the problem of their volumetric space demands that can screw with drag and lift and airspeed, and CG changes, and availability of refueling (in flight or at some ground port). The killer of all that you know about UAM is that FAST recharging of expensive batteries that have very limited life times (re flights before replacement) is a BAD idea (since the VERTIPORTS are NOT filled with hangars like most of the general aviation airports I have flown from). Translating this into the solution… if Hydrogen is the idea fuel (mostly for its energy content per KILO) then there is no reason not to design a craft from scratch that carries 100 times more H2 than needed for a single mission objective. NOT just 5-10 gallons of liquid H2 (good for many Public Service mission statements), but up to 1,000 gallon equivalents of liquid H2 for the NEXT concept of a VTOL… That is: the refueling is done like my car, once a week, and NOT per flight… since the craft could/should be in the air for 12 hours continuously, far from some H2 liquid gas station… So, when H2-based , fuel cell power feeds a smaller pack of batteries, and ultra-capacitors and Cryogenically cold electrical energy storage techniques using super-conducting magnets. And rather than having some emergency parachute strong enough to help a VTOL that is in trouble, the damn craft could have an inflatable bladder that could provide a small H2 buoyancy+ (lift) that keeps the craft in air and off the ground. BUT, I assume you were also thinking that liquid H2 is very expensive, and has to be trucked around to the Vertiport filling stations (not at all VERTIPORTS IMHO)… H2 has to be made from electrocution of water, with the electricity coming from environmental energy (wind/solar)… being generated continuously, and in volumes way beyond the need for several weeks of flight capabilities… HENCE the key NEW tech has to be about how the VTOL vehicle stores hundreds of gallons of H2… hence the importance of CRYOGENIC FLUX CAPACITOR thinking. 5) The BIG DEAL for me about H2, is that in any of those climate change caused mission requirements, referred to above, the first thing to go down is the grid based power line, hence no plug-in Epower to run pumps to transfer petroleum based fuels to feed old tech trucks to haul loads, (or recharge all those electric car/aircraft batteries). My most important experience was in 1968, flying around the Amazon jungle (as a fake co-pilot) in a DC-3 that was more a cargo vehicle, bringing petroleum fuel in 55-gal drums, to power motor cycles deep in the jungle. That was in 1968, GOT IT??? YET, even then I knew that for lots of flights in the jungle, a NEW fuel concept has to be the source of energy to fly from one river over to another in some VTOL like craft. Do-it-yourself FUEL.