In my mind, Skyhook has been an on-going, developing concept. My enthusiasm for it continues to grow, as I continue imagineering, and discovering its many possible uses, and accumulating further rationale for building it. Skyhook is a truly futuristic vision. It is a bold, daring - even audacious matter, just for suggesting that we ought to attempt it. And if we do (as I believe we should) there may be no better place to do it, than Wichita. In fact, I believe there may be nowhere else on Earth this bold and daring adventure might be pulled off more readily. It's an ambitious undertaking, but its the kind of thing whose time has come, "ready-or-not". I believe it could supply quite a few new Wichita jobs for my many friends there, and it means jobs with a future, if it truly lives up to my expectation of a 20-year product life-cycle. For the immediate future, I think it's an appropriate project to occupy the time of the folks at the National Aviation Research Center at Wichita State University.
There should many more Wichita (and Western Kansas) jobs, as the skyhook paradigm comes to fruition. The building of skyhook vehicles entails some fairly broad-based requirements. Skyhooks which use smaller jet engines could be built by Cessna, or Learjet. Learjet's parent company (Bombardier) has CFM-34 expertise applicable to the construction of mid-size skyhooks, because it builds RJs. Boeing has the expertise to build a Skyhook vehicle using the CF6 (or larger) powerplants, and Raytheon could build the specialized electronics required for the loiter vehicle.
Skyhook could be operated by a joint venture involving some existing airline, but it is probable that the best approach for the adoption of the skyhook in its commercial application may to build an entirely new company in Wichita, sub-contracting as it must, among the others. Building a new organization may be the best way to manage the project's coordinated activities, minimizing the red-ink, through professional project management, and telescoping the events in the project "critical path".
Critical Path
Before you begin broadcasting, you have to have the vehicle(s). Before you build the vehicle, you have to design it (or, them). When you finally begin broadcast operations, you will need trained operators, so you must begin several years early, to provide their training. Before you finish the vehicles, you must have software to control vehicle launch and recovery. For that, you need to write the software - and it is no easy task to write the software for highly-automated operations, employing robotics.
building an inventory of these machines may not be all that difficult
perfunctory part of the task may be designing the airframe
and building the prototypes
adequate power-plants of various types are languishing in non-cost-effective airframes in aircraft parked in desert bone-yards
may be readily available by removing them from these aircraft.
an organization with the will to accomplish this.
Truth to tell, many radically new ideas never make it into reality through a hide-bound, already-existing organization. More often than not, new technologies are brought to market by small, maverick organizations, which later are subsumed into the larger organizations (and become the only things to save them). In fact, that's a reality recognized through the phenomenon of the internet "dot-com" boom of the 90's, where new dot-coms were intentionally "built-to-flip". Few dot-coms of the 90's ever really did "flip" as expected of course, and many didn't ever make it into the black so long as they existed - but hardware success do flip, because to advance to wide success they simply have to. It's just my opinion, here, but I believe skyhook ought to be a paragovernment corporate entity like the built-to-demise entities of the RTC, but built to "flip" into the public sector, at such time deemed appropriate for mandating its IPO (Initial Public Offering).
But that's not the only area in which I'd like to offer opinions about how this project should be dealt with, in public policy. Certainly our government's regulations maintain order, but they often impede progress. Skyhook is an ambitious undertaking, and there may be many vested interests that oppose it, because of its intrusions into their markets. Such interests could lobby for regulatory obstacles, but I think Skyhook should be championed - and to implement it quickly could require fast-track authorities.
Some of these I'd suggest in particular: The FCC - for the communications aspects of MAHALO operations. The FAA, who governs flight operations, sharing of airspace, and defining the issue of who must assume responsibility for the avoidance of collisions. Typically, the FAA permits military formation flying - as in MRSA (Military Assumes Responsibility for Separation of Aircraft). It's possible that FAA would want skyhook under military control, which I suspect would mean the Marines, the Navy, and the Coast Guard, but I would advocate a special skyhook MRSA authority for the Merchant Marine as well.
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