Cargo airships could be big

Eli Dourado · 30 Jan 2023

Eli Dourado did not write this page.

Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.

Our reading
Building a manufactured object at a high enough rate pushes its cost down toward the cost of its inputs.

Their wordsA high rate of production tends to drive costs down toward the cost of inputs.
Our reading
Some physical technologies cannot be developed by iterating on a small prototype, because at small scale the thing you want does not make physical sense.

Their wordsA small rigid-body airship for good physical reasons should not exist.
Our reading
Certification, not engineering, is what gates revenue for a new aircraft company.
Mental modelBottlenecks

Their wordsFAA certification is required before you transport anything for money.
Our reading
Designing a physical product for a small beachhead market is a distraction when every new model has to be certified separately.

Their wordsDesigning your aircraft for the beachhead market is a huge distraction, particularly when there are certification costs that have to be paid for each new model.

Keep reading

The other pieces are the ones whose claims are worded most like this one's. That measures language, not agreement: they may argue the opposite.