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this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
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I'm curious how the public funding element of this works. Does the government end up owning/profiting off of the company or earn some form of royalties if this concept takes off?
How it always works: someone keeps it and the public gets nothing, with the military getting a new toy they can spend more public money on.
Same with medical research. You could argue that the the public having access to an otherwise unattainable medicine is the benefit even though we are charged out the nose for it, but I feel like medical company profits beg to differ.
While it’s true that often military developments eventually make their way to civilian applications, imagine that money was spent directly on development of in this instance a new type of civilian aircraft.
The military could still adapt the frame to their needs, and it would most likely result in a cheaper and more useful vehicle outside of helping to kill people on another continent. This would also mean much earlier and more widespread adoption than yet another patented concept locked away because the military wants to keep it for themselves for a few decades (until it’s obsolete).
And even if that development somehow ended up being less optimized than one the military would make, it would most likely still be leaps and bounds better than the eventual commercial derivatives again sold by private entities, optimized for profit.
While I see your point, it’s also important to point out that a lot of technological advancement in human history has been spearheaded (ha) by military advancements, which eventually get developed at a far more reasonable cost for civilian use.
So the takeaway here: yeah, they’re throwing a few hundred million at this, but in terms of developing a brand-new, clean-sheet transport airframe in a style that’s never been done before - and which, if successful, will potentially lead to a diametric shift in civil aerospace design - it’s really not that expensive, and there is real potential benefit here.