Fort Langley, March 2026 – Just because you CAN do something doesn’t mean that you SHOULD do it. I learned that as a child holding a snowball. That maxim also applies to engineering development projects. Just because you can build an electric helicopter doesn’t mean that you should. If it is a boon for society, then great. If you are just holding out hope that people will like something they never asked for, then maybe it’s a selfish vanity project. Shaking aircraft wings until the ice falls off, on the other hand, is a great thing to do. Not only does it hold the potential to lower energy use in a necessary procedure, it’s something that is far from obvious. Unconventional thinking has the additional benefit of inspiring further unusual ideas. It’s a more impressive way of collaborating than my adherence to the suggest-a-bad-idea-in-the-hopes-that-it-will-inspire-a-good-idea way of brainstorming.
If you are funding a project yourself because you think it’s cool, then great. Money doesn’t do us any good unless we spend it at some point. (One exception is that a certain amount of money that we don’t spend may allow us to sleep better at night knowing that we could spend it if we really had to.) (Or you could just buy softer pillows and a more comfortable mattress.) If you’ve got the money, why not spend it on something that you think is nifty? On the other hand, if you are spending someone else’s money, like an investor’s or the government’s, then it’s a bit irresponsible to do it without a vision and plan un-enhanced by too vivid an imagination.
That thought may be valid for private, commercial development projects, but what about publicly funded research like at universities? The Ig Noble Prize highlights research that appears at first glance to be frivolous. However, we all benefit from basic research that doesn’t have an immediate, profitable product, but that lays a foundation for subsequent, more practical work. It should also be noted, at the risk of abusing a metaphor, that sometimes foundations are multiple stories deep. Also, risking more abuse: sometimes poorly thought through foundations just fill up with water.
I’ve given university lectures on designing for risk, based on risk being likelihood multiplied by consequence, or the expected loss over time. However, I’ve spent far less time teaching about potential reward. In order to accept any amount of risk, there should be some commensurate benefit, or at least the chance of benefit. If fundamental university research has little immediate pay-off, it may still be worthwhile since tenured professors have little risk associated with the research. Another often-overlooked aspect of risk is the opportunity cost. Even though the potential gain may outweigh the threat, that doesn’t mean that is the best thing to do with the resource. Spending time and money on one project means that we can’t spend that time and money on something else. Money may not grow on trees, but neither does time. Even thyme doesn’t grow on trees; it grows on little shrubs.
So should we, as society, think that eVTOLs are a great thing? I suggest that the answer should be yes, provided that investors are convinced their probability of gain compensates for the financial risk they are taking, and that they don’t just believe the hype of the promoters. I, on the other hand, no longer being 9 years old, don’t plan to invest in electric flying cars. I’m more cautious now that I don’t get an allowance anymore.
- Martin Fandrich, BASc, PhD, PEng, FIMechE, CEng, FEC
Flying pig image source: Kgbo, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons