On Jun 20, 4:27*pm, "Neil Gould" wrote:
GA is a small market. Too small to warrant specialized development of much
of anything, which is why most of the components are either used or
spin-offs from other areas of aviation. Comparing it to the _general_
automotive market is completely off-base, as even a single model of a
single brand in a single year will have more units in the market than all
of GA.

It's a Catch-22. The FAA, NASA, DARPA, CAFE, and other organizations
are trying to make it not a small market, so the assumption is that,
if a PAV were created, it would be created for a mass market.

So, to think that a body of expert programmers will somehow collaborate on
systems that, at best will be less reliable than the pulley and wire that
they replace is an unrealistic fantasy.

A bit of a stretch.

BTW - if you think that "the material costs of software is $0", let me
know where you're getting your language compilers and hardware to create
and test your code. And, don't tell me about "Open Source" options,
either, unless you want to increase your development costs by a factor of
100 or so.

Accountants define material cost to be the cost of the components from
which the system is synthesized, not from the tools used to design or
create the system.

For example, the material cost of an iPod would include its hard disk,
RAM, ROM, resistors, capacitors, dials, faceplace, battery holder,
wires, mounts, shock absorbers, etc. It would not include
dehumidifier, blower, oscilloscope, spectral analyzer, or other factor
equipment used to manufacture the product.

The material cost of software, if sold in a store, would include the
cost of manual, the disks, and the packaging.

Compilers and hardware do not factor into the material cost of
software any more than an oscilloscope factors into the material cost
of an iPod.

To determine what components are considered "material", move the
product over a large distance. Whatever components move with the
products, those components are considered material. Those that stay
behind are something else.

-Le Chaud Lapin-