The Ways We Move speaks with Angelo Collins on the Future of the Vertical Flight Society

In this episode of The Ways We Move, host Nicolas Zart welcomes Angelo Collins, the Executive Director of the Vertical Flight Society, to the podcast. 

Together, they explore the evolution of air mobility, from traditional helicopters to cutting-edge electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft. 

Angelo shares insights into the challenges and opportunities within the industry, emphasizing the importance of public acceptance and infrastructure development. He also opens up about his journey and motivations, highlighting his passion for helping others through engineering. 

Join us for an engaging discussion on the future of air mobility and the strides being made to make it more sustainable and accessible. 

Don't miss this insightful conversation, learn more about the Vertical Flight Society, and subscribe to the non-profit and our podcast! 

Podcast Chapter

1. 00:00 - Introduction and Host Welcome
   • Nicolas Zart introduces the podcast and the theme of innovative mobility solutions.
2. 02:15 - Guest Introduction: Angelo Collins
   • Angelo Collins introduces himself as the Executive Director of the Vertical Flight Society.
3. 05:30 - Discussion on Vertical Flight Society (VFS)
   • Angelo discusses the history and mission of VFS, including its role in promoting advanced air mobility.
4. 12:45 - Evolution of Air Mobility
   • The conversation covers the transition from traditional helicopters to electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft.
5. 20:00 - Challenges and Opportunities in Air Mobility
   • Angelo and Nicolas discuss the challenges in the industry, including public acceptance and infrastructure development.
6. 30:15 - Personal Insights and Motivation
   • Angelo shares his journey and motivations, including his initial interest in becoming a priest and his passion for helping others through engineering.
7. 40:00 - Future of Air Mobility
   • The discussion wraps up with thoughts on the future of air mobility and the importance of public acceptance and investment.
8. 50:00 - Closing Remarks
   • Nicolas thanks Angelo for joining the podcast and invites him to return for future discussions.

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Transcript

Nicolas Zart: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you are, and welcome back to another episode of The Ways We Move, the podcast that highlights innovative mobility solutions and the people behind them. I am your host, Nicolas Zart, and I bring in 20 years of experience in electric mobility from electric vehicles on the road to AAM, advanced air mobility in the air. And of course, at some point we'll have enough people to even talk about electric boats.

Nicolas Zart: And I also hope railroads because they were the first ones to really go full speed steam ahead. No pun intended with electricity. And today, can you guess if you've been watching this podcast for a while, you'll know that I'm pretty enthusiastic in general. I have another special guest today and truly I can say special guest. And if you see this, you might kind of get an idea.

Nicolas Zart: Where he is today, we talked to Angelo Collins, who is the new executive director after Mike Hirschberg has, as of yesterday, left the Vertical Flight Society, well, left working there, but still very present and will continue to be present. Now, my relationship with the Vertical Flight Society, or VFS for short, is long and fruitful.

Nicolas Zart: In 2014, when I switched over from electric vehicles to what we then called electric air mobility, one of the first things I've noticed is that this VFS group, this nonprofit, was very active promoting advanced air mobility. Of course, at the time, we didn't call it like that. We just called it electric air mobility. In fact, we really only use two terms, UAM, urban air mobility, and eVTOLs, electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft.

Nicolas Zart: And with Mike, had a lot of discussions about what to use, what terms to use. we, you know, of course spoke of vertiports And of course, back then it was pretty naive. thought about jumping from building top to building top, eventually landing on a parking lot somewhere and eventually getting to airports. Now, of course, as things mature and technology always gets better, battery technology gets better. Energy density shrinks.

Nicolas Zart: density shrinks, how much energy and power you can put within a weight and volume of a battery, all of sudden regional air mobility became a possibility. And it was right around that point in 2017 that NASA decided to give it a different name for this eVTOL trio we were talking about. And they came up with Advanced Air Mobility.

Nicolas Zart: Not everybody likes that term because the original idea of advanced air mobility, AAM, also includes hypersonic hydrogen flight. Of course, over here, well, we do mostly electric flight. In fact, we do electric mobility. So the Europeans came up with an interesting way or an interesting twist on it. They call it innovative air mobility. And I kind of like this. I think I'm going to switch over to that one slowly because it means that you keep on innovating.

Nicolas Zart: Advanced or mobility once it's there, is it still advanced? Because well, it becomes a de facto or a standard, right? Anyway, potatoes, potatoes, that's the communicator in me. Today we are going to talk to Angelo We're going to find out a lot of interesting things about this person. First of all, I like him a lot. He is the right person to take over the wonderful work that Mike Hirshberg has done for VFS and also how much VFS has promoted

Nicolas Zart: electric vertical flight. But we're going to find out a little bit more about not only where he comes from, because he's got a really great past and this guy really understands VTOL, vertical takeoff and landing aircraft. He also has a monumental task, is to continue the momentum going forward without neglecting the base. So we will hear a little bit about what he is doing, where he came from, what he is doing.

Nicolas Zart: And you're going to find out a really interesting tidbit about Angelo, especially in his early years, where he was heading in a very, very different direction. Anyway, hope this entices you to watch and continue watching and hearing this. Again, please like, share and subscribe. That is very important to us. We offer all of this for free to you. We are now open to sponsorships, of course, so we would be very happy to sponsor.

Nicolas Zart: your episodes if you are inclined to do so and Write comments. Tell us what do you think advanced air mobility is? What does it mean electric mobility to you? Do you drive an EV? Do you want to talk about it? We'd be happy to talk to you guys about it Are you building an electric boat? Are you converting an electric boat and mostly also? Or do you drive a train? Do you drive an electric train even a hybrid? We want to hear from you guys. So without further ado

Nicolas Zart: Let's hear from our good friend Angelo.

Angelo Collins: Yeah, so it's great to be here and thanks for inviting me. Mr. Zart, so I'm the executive director of the Vertical Flight Society. We've been around since 1943, so we're pushing 82 years, right? I'm the seventh executive director of VFS. Took over in June of 2023. I'm an aerospace engineer by trade. I studied at the University of Maryland and I got my master's of Virginia Tech, but this was an engineering management type degree.

Angelo Collins: and it's very fitting right now and running a nonprofit. I didn't know I'd be handed over the keys. Like, all right, this is a nonprofit, but this is a business. You have to handle payroll, taxes, audits. But that's been a fun element of it. My career was primarily in support to DARPA. I started working there as an intern. And so I'd say at least 10 total years of my career was supporting DARPA fun projects.

Angelo Collins: Some in the SCIF, some fairly public, some a decent amount of VTOL programs, which is particularly relevant to my current role as executive director of VFS. And also worked on the F35 program in the JPO, did S &T for them, and also worked for the Office of Enable Research. And a decent part of that time, as well as some time at DARPA, was working on Uncrewed, optionally piloted.

Angelo Collins: helicopter type programs incorporating autonomy and sensing capabilities to help augment a pilot or on crew a helicopter, decrew a helicopter. And those are efforts that are still ongoing, but there's a lot of potential there. yeah, beyond that, think that's more or less my background, I suppose.

Nicolas Zart: Which is perfect, I mean, it fits really well with the whole idea of VFS. For those who might not know what VFS is, the Vertical Flight Society, tell us a little bit about what VFS does and what its presence is and how important it is, especially when it comes to advanced air mobility.

Angelo Collins: Yeah, so we're a professional technical society. We're a society of members and a decent number of them are engineers, but you don't have to be an engineer to be a member. Igor Sikorsky wasn't a traditional engineer, which we got an engineering degree, but it was one of our founding members. And so we've been around, as I said, since 1943, we were founded in Stratford, Connecticut, when the conventional helicopter effectively took off and went into production. We have about 6,000 members.

Angelo Collins: and we're an international society. We have chapters, just like any other association, we have chapters, student chapters, regional chapters. We have a technical council of subject matter experts and organized into different committees, aeromechanics, acoustics, safety. And one of their roles would be to help review papers, abstracts, because we are a publishing arm.

Angelo Collins: like many other nonprofits, are venue for publication, whether it's through our annual forum that brings anywhere from 11 to 1300 people every year. And we have maybe upwards of 250 to 300 published authors that present their work there. In addition to that, we're a STEM society. We offer STEM opportunities for students.

Angelo Collins: competitions, the student design competition, well as design build vertical flight. That's a drone competition. And we give out scholarships. We give out now $130,000 in scholarships every year, and that's continuing to grow. We have a wonderful and generous base of members, a niche core group of tremendous folks. And they've been very generous with their funds and to support the vertical flight community and the younger.

Angelo Collins: the younger crew and it's fun to watch the evolution of a VFF, Oracle Flight Foundation recipient go through their career. Maybe they become a professor, maybe they're a chief engineer at Bell and they become a fellow and a lot of that catalyst started through VFS and what we could provide to get them to that point and help of course the entire industry. Yeah.

Nicolas Zart: Yeah, it's incredible. For those who actually want to get involved in advanced mobility, I always tell them, check out VFS and that's the first one I talk about because you do have, my gosh, your publications. You could spend a whole lifetime reading everything. You do have also two great publications, Verda Flight and also the technical.

Nicolas Zart: Wow, the technical one, which I never went through it because it is way, the journal is way over my head. This is like pure engineering geek out dumb or geek dumb. And it's really impressive what you guys have under your belt and what you guys offer.

Angelo Collins: The journal. We have the journal, which is quarterly.

Nicolas Zart: So obviously something I tell everybody automatically. But there's something really interesting also that although you are vertical flight and you are vertical flight. So we think of helicopters, obviously something happened late 2000s or something like that. You started embracing the unknown. You started embracing electric vertical flight. So tell us a little bit about that. That's pretty you guys were one of the very, very early precursors there.

Angelo Collins: Yeah. And if we could go back in time, I don't know if we would done things a little differently, not necessarily VFS, but this entire community, because it has been very much. I don't know. And I think it's something we're looking back at, like, is this actually different than a helicopter? know what? You know, like we we are. I don't know if it was a marketing decision at the time. Right. Like this is EVTOL. This is electric propulsion. This is an electric drivetrain system.

Angelo Collins: This is distributed electric propulsion where traditionally helicopters and most of the top platforms either had one or two main rotors. You have a swash plate. You're not using rotors, but at the same time, they're all VTOL platforms. And we've of course had a very large portfolio of non helicopter type aircraft that had vertical takeoff landing capability in the fifties, sixties and later. I mean, even the the Chinook or the C night.

Angelo Collins: or the V22 are not conventional helicopters, right? What a lot of them have in common is a common propulsion system, a turbine engine and shafts and gearboxes. And what's novel about this new push, which was enabled by new efficiencies in electric drivetrain design, maybe from the car and automobile industry, lighter and more efficient motors.

Angelo Collins: course, energy density of lithium ion batteries improved. And so a lot of these pioneers like Joe Ben from Joby and others, like we could potentially, you know, use these enabling technologies to develop an aircraft that's purely powered by electricity. And that was the start. And we had our first transformative vertical flight event, TVF, in 2014. And back then, this was more of a

Angelo Collins: DARPA type domain. And so we had that first event across the street from DARPA and we had about 100 people. And at the same time, in parallel, DARPA was funding some of this research. We had a Shishpigaai who was a University of Maryland grad, the VLARCO there, running that program. And Aurora Flight Sciences was selected to go forward and they had an electric system, distributed electric propulsion system.

Angelo Collins: We didn't mature the technology much within the DoD after that. lot of that was in the private sector. So DARPA and others were kind of like, listen, this private sector is pumping a lot of money here. We don't need to, the DoD doesn't really need to invest in this. We'll track it. And we are still in that position where there isn't really much research in the DoD or DARPA related to this stuff. But of course VFS was there from the beginning because we're the R &D kind of guys, the engineers.

Angelo Collins: We're looking at even the paper studies and the back of the napkin designs and we try to foster and excite people about that. So that's a little bit of background on some of the eVTOL. Yeah.

Nicolas Zart: Yeah, yeah, and you've done a great job and VFS definitely has been at the forefront. It definitely was one of the enablers. I remember talking to Mike Hirschberg who in 2014, 2015, our biggest philosophical questions were, what do we call it? UAM, eVTOLs, eVTOLs only. At the time, we didn't really think too much about Eastolls. They weren't around or anything like that. One thing that I notice and I really enjoyed the fact that you guys

Nicolas Zart: Yes, you are VTOL and that's predominantly what you do, but you don't mind talking about the others, the other friends who have only wings. So I thought that was pretty interesting too, because it is, it's a big ecosystem that we're building here. And then you said something that is so true. If I could do it again, how different would it look like? I remember again, talking to Mike 10 years ago, yes, we'll be flying from building top to building top. And once in a while we land in a parking.

Nicolas Zart: structure well they are and that didn't work out well because they're not meant for that for one thing but as energy density got better with lithium batteries you're right and now power density really more for ev tools now we're really starting to look beyond that obviously regional air mobility and everything but you you said something that was very interesting my background is actually in automotive although you know flying has always been part of my life

Nicolas Zart: But you're right, we had the same problem in 2008, 2009. We were wondering the car or the infrastructure. All of us knew it was the infrastructure. Many went into the cars. Fine. Then we had the charging wars that delayed it for another three years easily. But I'm glad that over here on the what we now call AAM, Advanced Air Mobility, we are focusing on infrastructure and hopefully we're not going to get into another charging war. Please work together. And that's something you guys do really well. You bring everybody together.

Angelo Collins: Yeah, sure. Yeah. Yeah, no, I appreciate that. And I don't know if you pull out your crystal ball, but I think we're probably going to repeat some of the same issues that the industry has always run into, at least in the modern times. Traditionally, I mean, if you look at exactly if you look at maybe the car, right. And at that time, obviously, they weren't looking five or 10 years ahead. It was a much different model back then as far as.

Angelo Collins: Oh, even aircraft like, oh, you need a pilot's license to fly one of these. Yeah, a of people are crashing. Maybe we do that next. And it was reactionary versus what we try to do today. Like, all right, what should the infrastructure look like before the aircraft are even built? And it's a tricky problem. And, you know, like we would have have I'm assuming early on in the automotive industry days. It's like, where do we put gas stations? Right. Like, we need gas stations or do we do like it?

Angelo Collins: who knows what they were thinking? Like, all right, everyone just buys gas from a store and brings it to their house and fills up their car from there. And every 20 miles, yeah.

Nicolas Zart: No, it was every 20 miles. That's what's... Yeah, standard oil made Ford change from electric cars to gasoline cars by promising every 20 miles. Now think about that if we did that in advanced air mobility. Done deal. But you're right. That's a very good point. That's a great point. Yeah.

Angelo Collins: And there's a cost and, you know, even even with like, all right, this makes sense. All right. But who's going to make this initial investment to build all of these like gas stations? And candidly, they make that you probably would make incorrect decisions. Right. Like, all right. Gas stations should all be in the middle of a city. That's where everybody is. like, well, actually, let's put them on near off ramps of main roads. And, you know, like in those trafficked areas because of

Angelo Collins: and put them on corners of streets and major intersections because that's where people are going to want to use them. And who knows? It's hard to move a gas station and it may or may not be difficult to move a vertical port. You once you put the tanks underground, you can't really. That's it. And I don't know as far as infrastructure how how, you know, oh, actually, the vertical port doesn't make sense here. We got to move this electric.

Nicolas Zart: Yes. That's it. That's it. Yeah.

Angelo Collins: electrification infrastructure we just set up to and I don't know what that looks like. So if we are and that's why it's important for VFS and others to have those serious conversations now so that we don't make any of those mistakes in the future.

Nicolas Zart: Yes. Yes.

Nicolas Zart: because it will happen. will. And it's normal to make mistakes. That's how you learn everything. In fact, I'm seeing right now a sort of a second wave of AEM companies out there, startups. it's really funny. All of them say, well, we're not technology driven, for one thing. We're demand driven, which is like, yeah, well, duh, shouldn't we all be, right? And you're right. vertiports now are morphing into multi ports. How can we use regional airports to have Eastals, EC tools, EV tools, drones, you name it, all of that together.

Nicolas Zart: And I think we're seeing a we're seeing a coherent slowly or maybe an integration into into this greater Innovative mobility platform, whatever you want to call it. Strangely enough, know we kind of did away with trains We kind of did away with more let's trying to do away with cars We're doing with everything and also realized no, no, no, no, no, no works really well together Electric boats are taking off too. I really am excited about that part, too. So Yeah

Angelo Collins: Any sustainable transportation mechanism is great. Obviously, even just for the smog. Looking at LA during COVID without cars driving around was beautiful. You could see I've taken helicopter flights in San Bernardino. And they told me, hey, you used to be able to see LA from the San Bernardino region. But you can't anymore because of the little bit of smog. LA is kind of set.

Nicolas Zart: Wow, it was amazing.

Angelo Collins: at the same time, there's not as much circulation out. the air just sits there like some other cities. But yeah, it'd be one benefit of general sustainable aviation, not running on their own internal combustion engines.

Nicolas Zart: Yeah, I, gosh, I remember flying into LA in the 80s and virtually you would hit

Nicolas Zart: a thick layer of fog and it was just this brownish ugly thing. We lived in Long Beach so yeah you're right COVID was amazing, crystal clear skies, it was absolutely fantastic and you know in other words that you're using right now and I'm happy to hear you say because it's such an ugly word these days is sustainability and it's something that I you know for the last few years I've been pushing maybe the boundaries of sustainability. Sustainability is not just green but it's also a sustainable business model. You guys need to have a

Angelo Collins: Yeah.

Nicolas Zart: sustainable business model, you walked away from big companies because you didn't like the business model. You're a startup with something brand new. You need a different business model. So we need to redefine sustainability, that's for sure.

Angelo Collins: There's lots of different definitions depending on the application of the word. If you're talking to the army, sustainability is critical, especially from a financial perspective. And those are things that I'd like to see us prioritize understanding in the future of the army, the future of our military and our use of helicopters and otherwise. We may not see another helicopter introduced for another four years.

Nicolas Zart: Yes.

Angelo Collins: is what I'm saying after now the V280 Valor, maybe the Army doesn't. And with that, okay, well, what do we work on? What do we do? What do we care about? And it is a sustainability model and looking at the existing fleet and how do we reduce the cost of sustaining these aircraft? What projects can we start up? And it even puts a substantial investment behind because there's a tail end down the road. How do we make more sustainable rotor blades? Maybe we look at our different subsystems and redesign.

Angelo Collins: some of them to be more reliable. But specific to electrification of aviation, sustainability comes from not necessarily having to burn fossil fuels to generate energy for transportation. Aviation is tricky, right? Because a commercial jet needs to burn quite a bit of fuel and needs quite a bit of energy to transport goods and people. But we have...

Nicolas Zart: Very.

Angelo Collins: There is a roadmap of how we could get there and understandably even the incumbent legacy electric aircraft, VTOL aircraft, their payload fraction isn't exceptional. As a good aerospace engineer, you look at an aircraft and the weight of the aircraft changes over the flight as you burn fuel.

Nicolas Zart: Yes, absolutely right. Yeah, yeah.

Angelo Collins: That's not a benefit you get in electrification of aviation. You're the same weight regardless of when you took off or land and you don't get to take advantage of some of those benefits too. So those are other factors. Yeah.

Nicolas Zart: On the flip side, you don't need to circle for 10 minutes to dump electrons too. So yeah, I mean, it's, it's, they're pros and cons. Yeah. So there you go. But there are a lot of pros and cons and it's obvious, but I think you're right. What unite us is, is efficiency. You know, we want things to be a little bit more efficiency. You know, you were talking about EVs. I saw some really wonderful numbers. So one third of the gasoline tank that we have in cars ends up actually moving the car or moving the car forward, right? Two thirds is lost in heat and friction. 80 to 92%.

Angelo Collins: okay.

Nicolas Zart: of electrons move a car forward. So that's the kind of efficiency we're all reaching for, especially in the air.

Nicolas Zart: And I'm really glad that we're going after, you know, the 2.5 % of emissions in the world by focusing on aviation. That is the hardest thing to do something about. You know, the maritime world might be almost two-thirds, but that's going to be fairly easy to change. Aviation is a different story. So I'm glad that we're taking on this challenge right now.

Nicolas Zart: Tell us a little bit more about how do you see now the industry today having evolved from this really quaint idea of, we're going to magically hoppity hop on top of buildings to now we have a much more serious infrastructure. We're embracing other modes of transportation. How do you see it from your angle at VFS?

Angelo Collins: So yeah, and I do as executive director, I have a good, what's the word? like above the clouds looking down, excuse the pun, 3,000 foot perspective, and I get to work with a lot of these companies across. I hear criticisms and I hear unfettered support and I'm a realist. I do, and I as a practical,

Nicolas Zart: Yeah, 53,000 feet.

Angelo Collins: practically trained engineer. We can see who is maybe, you know, smoke and mirrors and who is legit, who is legitimately making substantial progress. I don't think people appreciate or understand how difficult designing an aircraft is. And I give a lot of our members credit. I celebrate them. I'm like, listen, my idols are Charlie Command, Igor Sikorsky.

Nicolas Zart: yes.

Angelo Collins: Some people don't even know these names that were Frank Robinson. They've done something that large companies couldn't do. How many aircraft, right? And small companies, how many aircraft, how many helicopters has Boeing designed and produced? I think zero. They went after that Blackhawk contract and they've worked on certain aircraft, but the Apache was designed by McDonald Douglas.

Nicolas Zart: Yes, I know.

Nicolas Zart: Yep. Yeah. Couldn't do it. There were small companies. Yes, that's a good point. Yeah. Yeah.

Angelo Collins: The Chinook was designed by Vertal and so in the V20C was a joint collaborative with Bell. But I'm not trying to, I Bowen's a wonderful member, but I'm just trying to touch on how difficult it is.

Nicolas Zart: Airbus, same thing. Yeah. Yeah.

Nicolas Zart: Yeah, no, no, Boeing is a great member. mean, saying, yeah, same thing with Airbus. mean, Alouette and all of that, it transformed into what we have now, and it's wonderful, but it's more of a consolidation of more than anything, absolutely. right. Yeah, absolutely. No, we're not criticizing Boeing, my God. I think they have enough of that. That's not what we're here to do. Yeah, it's hard. It's difficult. Yeah.

Angelo Collins: and Eurocopter, yeah.

Angelo Collins: Yeah, and it's hard. You have some of these brilliant people, like for example, Charlie Command was a Sikorsky engineer and he was brilliant and he was getting into some disagreements and wanted to do his own thing and he left the company, started his own company, was carving his wooden blades by hand and balancing them himself.

Angelo Collins: and he had a very innovative intermeshing rotor design that was and still is the K-Max is still has the best payload fraction of any helicopter that exists today. no one's been able to, I like to actually look at vertical flight from the misfortune side of it. Like how little progress have we made guys? How much potential is still out there?

Nicolas Zart: Yeah, the K-Max. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Wow.

Angelo Collins: to the point where the private sector can do a lot of this within the, in the eVTOL sector. And we need to change that. mean, as we have the best executive director, there is a lot of still untapped potential in VTOL. And so that's something we're trying to resolve. What was your original question? Kind of went off on a tangent there.

Nicolas Zart: Yeah!

Nicolas Zart: Absolutely, absolutely.

Nicolas Zart: No, but you know what, it got me to another question now that I think of it, which is exactly how we do it, the ways we move, right? We start in one direction and we end up in another, but you're right. So one of the questions was always, and same thing with EVs, right? Are we seeing a revolution or an evolution? I tend to sort of lean on the evolution side of things, despite having a different power train or mobility train.

Angelo Collins: Yeah.

Angelo Collins: Yeah.

Nicolas Zart: it's more of an evolution right i mean we started with chariots and you know on horses, drone carriages and then we you know decided metal wheels on metal rails and the steam engine which is by the way still the most energy condensed motor that we've ever created strangely enough right these little motors can move thousands of tons right but it's still an evolution right because that was an evolution of a carriage and the car is an evolution of a carriage and

Angelo Collins: Yeah.

Angelo Collins: Mm-hmm.

Nicolas Zart: Except for airplanes, guess airplanes technically you could say are an evolution of a flying carriage. But yeah, the more that I think about it, I don't really think it's a revolution. I think it's a technical evolution. Although it is a lifestyle revolution for sure. It's opening up little doors that we just couldn't do with a traditional helicopter, with traditional airplanes. And think of all these little small propellers that we used to have in Hawaii, for instance, right? That was now replaced by 737 A320.

Nicolas Zart: 20s. Oh god, they only go up to 10,000 feet, maybe a little bit more than come down again all the time. Whoa, that's some serious wear and tear that they're not designed for. So yeah, where do we start the revolution? And maybe is it more of an evolution? never, I don't know. I go towards evolution.

Angelo Collins: I think you generally buy yourself into the portfolio of transit because you're a lower cost and more sustainable option. And that's generally always the way, especially a capitalist country would go. obviously the car initially wasn't a better alternative than a horse, even at a cost perspective, but it didn't take too long for the car to, I they weren't

Nicolas Zart: Yeah, that's true. Yeah.

Angelo Collins: And it took decades for them to become more reliable. I mean, I remember even as kid, our car breaking down. And that never happens to the point where they don't even have shoulders on highways anymore because cars don't break down anymore. well, a horse wouldn't break down. That would be a rare occurrence. And so, but at the same time, and this is a general concern I have, but something that we can work towards resolving is the cost.

Nicolas Zart: Wait. Yes.

Nicolas Zart: That's true.

Nicolas Zart: Yeah, a horse wouldn't break down. Yes.

Angelo Collins: The cost of vertical flight is substantial. Not just a little. Forget even retail. The largest operator of helicopters in the world. Who is the largest operator of helicopters in the world?

Nicolas Zart: It is...

Nicolas Zart: I don't know, I was going to say I know the sixth largest, but I'm not really sure which one is on top of it.

Angelo Collins: The United States Army. The United States Army is the largest operator of helicopters in the world, right? It's an entity. Thousands of helicopters they operate. They're enabled by the defense budget and it's not cheap to fly a helicopter. And you need a reason to fly a helicopter, especially in the civil sector. There's gotta be a business model there. It's...

Nicolas Zart: Makes sense, makes perfect sense.

Angelo Collins: you know, there's different consortiums that help support the cost, hospitals that help support the cost if they're transporting patients, this is not cheap. And, you now you're introducing a new aircraft type, I suppose you could call it, VTOL, that do promise potentially some cost savings, but it's still gonna be more expensive than an Uber, right? And so that's where we need to close as well. The business model needs to close. People don't need to know

Nicolas Zart: Yep. Yeah.

Nicolas Zart: you

Nicolas Zart: Yeah, of course.

Nicolas Zart: Yep, potentially.

Angelo Collins: what they're going to be flying in, how they got there. People just want to be able to book a trip and they're not really necessarily want to or care about choosing the mode of transportation. Sometimes an Uber might be the best way in a car. Sometimes you may decide, for example, I flew, did a day trip to California and I was going to UC Irvine and the Uber took about a little over two hours from LAX to UC Irvine. Now, if I was booking a trip,

Nicolas Zart: They don't care.

Nicolas Zart: That's right. That-

Nicolas Zart: That's right.

Angelo Collins: through Delta, through United. I don't say, okay, I booked my flight, and then how do I get to UC Irvine? Delta, does Delta have a, I say, I'm coming from DC, I'm going to UC Irvine, you get me there. And then it tells me, all right, you're gonna do a layover in LAX, you're gonna get on your EVTOL, and you're gonna take you to that report near UC Irvine. And then maybe there's an Uber waiting for you. And that's the trip you booked.

Nicolas Zart: What's the best way to do it?

Nicolas Zart: or high-speed boat or whatever it doesn't really matter the train whatever whatever it doesn't really matter but yes yep whatever

Angelo Collins: Whatever it might be. go to a port, the high speed boat takes you. I see the, I see models all over the place where profitable models like take people from Hyannis port or Woods Hole to Martha's Vineyard in Nantucket. And instead of taking the fast ferry and it's even quieter, right? Cause the fast ferry from Nantucket to Hyannis port, they're starting to cut it off after 6 PM because they sound the horn and

Nicolas Zart: Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Nicolas Zart: Right, exactly. Yeah. Yep. Yep.

Angelo Collins: and people don't like to hear that. they're like, all right, no more boats after six. And they don't want the airports to grow because of the noise as well. And that's a big part of the selling point of an electric aircraft. It's not that loud and you not even hear it.

Nicolas Zart: Nope. Rightfully so.

Nicolas Zart: No, no, no, no, no, no.

Nicolas Zart: It's not that loud. We've seen them fly. They're really way much quieter. The only thing you hear is the chaser. I don't know if Mike told you we want to see Joby fly years ago. So we saw it take off like the S4. And yeah, you can hear a whirl and it was not bad. I I kind of like that noise. But I promise you after two, three hundred feet, you don't hear a damn darn thing. But you do hear the chaser. And then at one point, a big Leonardo came in for landings. And I got to tell you, what was the only thing you heard?

Nicolas Zart: the Leona of course it was riding hard on its rotors right obviously but but yeah I think and I and I think you said it really well it is it's

Angelo Collins: Yeah, it's the quality of the noise too not even this the decibels the type of noise it is. Yeah

Nicolas Zart: It's the quality of the noise exactly and how the noise propagates. It's very different from, you know, propellers give you sort of a funnel, you know, yeah, rotors push it out. It's it's it's what it is. It's it's but I think you yeah, I think you said it. I think there's definitely a push. And I've noticed that the last two years, most of my talks have been more about let's not just focus on Evitols and Vertoports because that is really hard to make sense out of it. Go and look in the railroad industry. Right. Freight makes a lot of sense. You can make a lot of money with it. Passengers.

Angelo Collins: Yeah.

Nicolas Zart: That's a different story. That's why we have Amtrak. also you one thing the SMCF and any other train systems in Europe too, they don't make many that much on, you know, very, very, very razor thin margins on that. So we need to move. And that's what I've noticed in the last two years is we're moving more towards an integrative mobility platform. And like you said, you know, the 20 year olds right now, they just want to tap and be done. You don't care if it's a nuclear submarine. Who cares? They just want to get there. That's all.

Angelo Collins: Sure, margins, man.

Angelo Collins: Sure.

Angelo Collins: Yeah. Yeah.

Nicolas Zart: And yeah, I think that's the one thing that we need to to, yeah, so what we used to to tinker with carburetors when we were younger. Well, no more. Who cares? No, it's modules, modules, modules. So we got to get that mind frame into the whole picture again. Absolutely.

Angelo Collins: Sure.

Angelo Collins: Well, it's a chicken and the egg problem too, because aviation is a very niche market and that aircraft are designed for a specific mission. And if we decide, right, you know, it's automated transport of cargo containers and electric aircraft can do that at a really low price point. You know, I'm told by Beta that they are at a lower price point than the Cessna Caravan for maybe a similar payload. Like that would be exceptional.

Nicolas Zart: Yep, absolutely. Yeah.

Nicolas Zart: That's amazing. Yeah.

Angelo Collins: And with that said, you do want to optimize the design around your application. And so I hope that, you know, we do come to closure on, right, this makes sense. At least right now, this makes a lot of sense. You know, we are spending a lot of money in prototype mode right now and for proof of concept. And there would be continued iterative design changes and even minor changes to your craft could lead to substantial testing, flight testing.

Nicolas Zart: I think, yeah, yes, yes. Yes.

Angelo Collins: And that's a cost. So that's where, you know, it takes generations even for us for the for the regular civil aviation. Like, all right. Yeah. An aircraft is a cylinder with wings and you put them engines on the wings. That's the best business model. It's the cheapest way to build an aircraft and maintain it and to get people around. And that can take decades. We were sticking the engine on the tail. We were sticking the engine and wherever right along the fuselage and like, actually, you know, this is this makes sense. And

Nicolas Zart: This makes sense too, yeah.

Angelo Collins: We're still in that mode with EV tallware. All right, how many rotors, how many turn? What does the fuselage look like? What's the outer mold line look like? What materials are we using? And we can get to a point where we can make anything fly. can make a rock fly. But how efficient is it? What's its purpose? And I was laughing because I was reading an article, or it like it popped up, and it was like, how many?

Nicolas Zart: Right. Right.

Nicolas Zart: Yes.

Nicolas Zart: We can make a break flow.

Angelo Collins: you know, Japanese jets could have been, or not jets at the time, during Pearl Harbor. How many F-35s would it take? How many aircraft could you take out? And like, the answer is like, probably like 10. Because F-35 is not designed to shoot down 1940s piston engine aircraft, right? It's like, kind of get confused, like, no, it's not designed for that. That's not the application. It would have to maybe fly into them, maybe.

Nicolas Zart: right.

Nicolas Zart: Wow, yes.

Nicolas Zart: It's not. No, it's not. It's not. It's not. Unless it kind of went like this, I don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Angelo Collins: because the Gatling gun on the F-35 only has a few hundred rounds and you can carry like four missiles. So you're like, maybe you take out 10. The A-10 though, the A-10 can take out a few, but every aircraft is designed for something different.

Nicolas Zart: That's, yep. Yeah, Ten at one time, at one go. That's, that's, that's a great.

Nicolas Zart: Yeah, and you know, that's actually really interesting what you're saying here is because I'm starting to also see and having spoken to Mark Alman not too long ago at Electra, he was really we were talking about the performance and the envelope of the aircraft. And I started noticing, wow, each of these aircraft, whether you take sky drives, know, no wings, 10 minute, 15 minute hops, perfect two seater, one pilot, two seater, or the bigger ones, four seats with wings and everything, then you get into the Eastall and then you get into Eastall. A lot of them pretty much overlap.

Angelo Collins: Yeah.

Angelo Collins: Yeah. Yeah.

Nicolas Zart: one point or another not to say that they can do the work core work of what the others or the core operations what the others can do but a lot of them can kind of you know overlap and so about a year or so ago I was talking to Rex Alexander

Angelo Collins: Yeah.

Nicolas Zart: And Clint Harper, was like, you know, it's crazy. We've had Stole ports since the 70s. The military has operated Stole ports since the 70s. Why don't we have a, you know, say four or 500 feet East Stole port where you can have two, three T-Lofs in it and then the middle one can have a fatal yay big, who cares? So I think we need to more and more see it more in an inclusive way. And then each of these aircraft has a specific operation that it can do within that. And of course, you know what's going to happen in 40 years, we're all going to go towards one

Nicolas Zart: platform we're going to say this is the most efficient ways of manufacturing it's going to be based on financial realities but at least now we have this splethora of different designs and I'm excited about everything out there. Good lord, have you checked out Fly Now? Did you see how that little one potter is counter rotating rotors? That's it, done deal.

Angelo Collins: I don't think so. I to look that one up. Fly now. Okay.

Nicolas Zart: check it out. had I had we just interviewed Yvonne Winter and and I looked at it and I thought, you know, if I really have to like, you know, go into the future and think of like a futuristic almost jets and niche aircraft, it's a pod. It looks like a teardrop like this. And it has counter rotating rotors. Done deal. The attitude always perfect, whether it takes off or it lands. And I was like, all right, now we're getting into even more efficient and now we're getting down to something that's very

Nicolas Zart: efficient for its type of operation although it can do a few more other things so but it's interesting it's and I thought there's not that many ways of innovating an EVTOL platform anymore well these guys came around and said sure there is and it's simpler by the way and of course we're getting into that more and more so

Angelo Collins: Yeah. Oh, there's still, mean, investment might not be there, but there's certainly still a lot of untapped opportunity in EU VTOL, different designs that could still be on the table. I'm always surprised to see a concept like that. That makes a lot of sense. I would have thought, I never thought of that myself. Me personally, I think it would make a lot of sense to stick electric aircraft in a vehicle and kind of have a combination.

Nicolas Zart: Yeah. Yes.

Nicolas Zart: Yeah.

Nicolas Zart: Yeah. Yes.

Angelo Collins: where it launches off of a car. You get picked up by the truck and it has an E-VTOL in it and then you get in the E-VTOL. It takes you to a safe place to take off and then you land on another vehicle that takes you to your destination. So as an executive or you never have to get out, wait in line, you're just sitting and doing working and you get to point A to point B and whatever the design would have to look like.

Nicolas Zart: Absolutely.

Nicolas Zart: It's...

Nicolas Zart: Yeah, yeah.

Nicolas Zart: That's... Yeah.

Angelo Collins: to fit or fold or bend or to, then, you know, those are engineering problems and who knows what. Yeah.

Nicolas Zart: Those are engineering problems, yeah. You know, it's funny because in 2006, was writing about this fictional fellow who's in, you know, lives in 2075, 2090, doesn't really matter, wakes up in his apartment, goes to his office and all of a he's like, oh shoot, I gotta be somewhere. But the office comes down, the building goes on a skateboard, starts driving, you know, and then it can get into a tub, go on water, a clip on bunch of propellers come on and then, you know, and lift it somewhere else. But yeah, we're gonna get in there, right?

Nicolas Zart: What's the, gosh, what's the movie I keep on forgetting with Harrison Ford, the futuristic movie where he hunts replicates and things like that. I mean, that's exactly it. I mean, I think it's already been written. Blade Runner, thank you. Yes, absolutely, Blade Runner. We've seen those cars flying and it's like, wow, yes, absolutely. And it is slowly happening. Not that Pal-V is doing, Yes.

Angelo Collins: Blade Runner? Is that my Blade Runner? Yeah.

Angelo Collins: It's fun to see the sci-fi. I wonder if they consult. Avatar had some VTOL aircraft.

Nicolas Zart: Avatar had some, but I mean, if you read the original bread, Barry Asimov and everything, they've talked about all that, you know, eating tofu, by the way. Yeah, they already were thinking about that in the fifties. So it's already written. It's just Star Trek wrote a lot of things. In fact, in fact, I was watching a Star Trek on my iPad and then I noticed nurse Chappelle was using an iPad or a tablet of some sort. I was like, wow, they saw it. so yes. Yes.

Angelo Collins: Yeah.

Angelo Collins: Yeah.

Angelo Collins: And simulations make a lot of sense if we can, whether it's in media or in games, people playing games and taking advantage of whether it's transporting people or it's a war game. I'm not sure if we're collecting data from that, if it's relevant or not, but those are all, there are people working on some of that, like simulating, obviously, different flight paths and minimizing the time and maybe being able to generate a cost.

Nicolas Zart: Yeah.

Nicolas Zart: Yes.

Angelo Collins: for certain trips and that's one way that's one good way to do it the forecast.

Nicolas Zart: It's yeah, it's been talked about. don't know if it's been done. I know that the military had its hands into a lot of games, a lot of war games to recruit. But yeah, wouldn't it be great if, know, flight simulator.

Nicolas Zart: Microsoft Flight Simulator, what's the other one? always forget, Plane X or airplane X or whatever it is. But that would be great to really gather some data, of course, asking users if they want to, that kind of stuff. And everything starts in the imagination. I my gosh. I mean, this was something I've lived through three or four disruptive technologies in my lifetime. This was a dream once a long time ago. It's a reality now for 50 bucks, right? So it happens.

Angelo Collins: Yeah.

Angelo Collins: Nah.

Angelo Collins: Yeah.

Angelo Collins: Yeah. yeah. And I think people to do can forecast like I was one of those where I had a pocket PC that was the name of the company made. It's a Canadian company with the parrot on it. But they had a pocket PC that they had developed. He still needed to use a stylist. But this was me in like maybe high school and.

Angelo Collins: before the iPhone came out. And I knew, and they had a, there was an attachment where you could get internet, like, and I didn't buy that, but it technically existed. It just didn't exist in the form function that iPhone, the iPhone was able to do. And that's just as important. It's, you know, we're, we're humans, we're not robots. And sometimes half the battle is just making someone feel comfortable with, with a product or making it ergonomic or

Nicolas Zart: Yeah.

Nicolas Zart: Right.

Nicolas Zart: Yes.

Nicolas Zart: It's just as critical. And that's what we're going after. We're really helping the human here, not technology, not a financial model or anything like that. Ultimately, we want humans to either have a easier life, more productive, ideally, right, or move easier through this, you know, 3D space kind of thing.

Angelo Collins: the human factors element is just as critical as the functionality.

Nicolas Zart: Usually by now we start asking the more personal questions like, you crazy? What are you doing working in this insane industry of hours? Tell us about your motivation. What gets you out of bed in the morning?

Angelo Collins: Uh, you know, you know, I wanted to be a priest, um, when I was younger and I was an altar boy and I had a calling, a little bit of a calling and I'm Greek Orthodox and so we can get married. And actually the seminary in Boston, there's a singles dorm and there's a married dorm because a lot of the guys will get married before they are ordained. You have to get married before you're ordained in the Orthodox church. And,

Nicolas Zart: Interesting.

Nicolas Zart: Okay.

Nicolas Zart: Yeah!

Nicolas Zart: Yeah, I love Greek orthodoxy, by the way. Yeah, absolutely.

Angelo Collins: Yeah. And so I took a tour of the seminary and asked, like, oh, do you have math classes? Do you offer science classes as well? They're like, not really. And I was, I had a gift for the sciences and the maths, right? It's one of the, know, ace of tests, the ace in SAT. And so that was something that I was good at. And so I think at that point I was like, you know,

Nicolas Zart: Yep.

Angelo Collins: Maybe my true calling is engineering or something. Maybe I'll just go to engineering school. But, you know, I'm drawing parallels there because I had a calling to help people. I enjoy helping people and just for altruistic reasons. get whatever I can do to make your life better, to help support you. You know, that's something that I enjoy. And through a nonprofit, through something like VFS, I'm enabled. And that's why

Nicolas Zart: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Angelo Collins: The scholarships have been extremely important to me, helping support the students, STEM opportunities, just help fostering their, just making their life better, making their life easier and track towards, you know, making the right decisions, whether it be in engineering or otherwise, and even financially helping them. Like I created my own scholarship to, like I put my own money where my mouth is. I created the executive director scholarship this year.

Nicolas Zart: Yes.

Nicolas Zart: Yes.

Angelo Collins: And so we'll do that. For as long as I'm not in debt, we'll do better than you. But yeah, I mean, that's part of what I really enjoy about running a nonprofit is just being able to help people. And I do, I go back to our core that VFS is a 501c3. We're a professional society, but we're also philanthropic and charitable. And that's been part of my push because it is, it's not just, you know,

Nicolas Zart: Good for you. That's right, yeah, well, yeah, you have to take care of yourself first. Yeah.

Nicolas Zart: Yeah. Yep.

Angelo Collins: advocacy to ensure the Army sets aside a certain amount of money for this PE and during the palm drill to make sure that Boeing makes whatever amount. I mean, they're all doing pretty pretty well this past year. Vertical flight, not so much. Some of the basic research and university spending is cut a little bit. That's something we're trying to voice some concerns over. But yeah, that's that's me, I suppose, and why I really enjoy BFS.

Nicolas Zart: Yep.

Nicolas Zart: Yeah. Yep.

Nicolas Zart: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Angelo Collins: Yeah.

Nicolas Zart: So I'm kind of smiling because I studied a little bit of Greek orthodoxy and I found out that some of these little faraway island little monasteries are actually very interesting because they do a lot of research into meditation, reincarnation, breathing exercises and things like that. So you might have found, had you gone maybe one or two more islands away, you might have found that one who would have studied, I don't know, astronomy or something like that, who knows. So their loss are gained perfectly okay with that one.

Angelo Collins: No.

Nicolas Zart: But that's yeah, that's really good. And I like what you said. think again with Mike, we visited Ames, NASA Ames a few years ago. And you know, we were in that wind tunnel and all of a sudden there were only three guys and we were about 10 people right in there. And I turned around, I'm like, what the heck's going on? And one of the ladies came in and she's like, we're 62 % strong. And I was just thinking of the whole STEM idea. And I asked her, said, how'd you get involved in that? She goes, that one teacher that changed my life, that one science teacher, that one math teacher, whatever it is.

Nicolas Zart: Ludi from Emory Riddle not too long ago on this podcast. She said the same thing we got to reach them in not kindergarten obviously that would be great but middle school right before high school that's when we can do a lot of good work so I hope that we can start to

Angelo Collins: Yeah.

Nicolas Zart: reach out more and more to these kids to tell them that hey man airspace is wonderful flying is amazing it's actually very efficient a lot of people think that flying is not efficient i'm always thinking where do you get that show me the numbers because i don't know where you're getting those numbers from okay that's not true it's very efficient so so it is yeah we're

Angelo Collins: Maybe not as much as a diesel engine, large freight ships, whatever they're called. Transport per mile out of as efficient as aviation.

Nicolas Zart: No, freight ships are not, yeah, no, no, you know what, actually, no, they're not efficient because they're fighting through constant water. No, the most efficient is rail, right? mean, no friction metal on metal can't beat that. And again, the only thing that draws a lot of diesel into that is the starting of the engines. You know that they run two stroke diesel engines, those locomotives? Don't know why. First,

Angelo Collins: Sure.

Angelo Collins: Diesel engines are very efficient now.

Nicolas Zart: diesel engines are super efficient but two strokes I had never heard and you know the first hybrids was actually GE and the Europeans were making diesel hybrid electric locomotives way back then so we're revisiting it.

Angelo Collins: Sure, yes. that's, yeah. Oh yeah, I mean, there's been, I think it's funny too, because I think people have a misconception about propulsion in general and they see jet or think jet and for whatever reason they think efficiency, a jet engine is very inefficient. Turbine engines are not the best way to generate power. Although their application is their power to weight ratio.

Nicolas Zart: Yeah. No.

Angelo Collins: And for a specific fuel consumption, a specific mass of fuel, you can actually generate thousands of pounds of thrust, which is what an aircraft would need. It's not as efficient as an internal combustion engine or certainly a diesel engine, specific fuel consumption-wise. People kind of like, well, thermal efficiencies are on my... Okay. Yeah.

Nicolas Zart: That's pretty darn important. Yeah. Yeah, I think until we have Star Trek war bubbles right now, I think we're doing pretty good with what we have. In fact, mean, Vertigo Arrow, Eric was talking about, know, at one point, I think he was using diesel and he said, you know, it's the most energy dense, any kind of generator that we have right now. And I was like, wow, and it is a small, I mean, obviously it's bigger than that, but it's a small block. And I was like, wow, that's really interesting what these guys have done too. So.

Angelo Collins: That's interesting.

Angelo Collins: Yeah.

Angelo Collins: And we are very bullish on the hybrid propulsion systems, whether it's diesel or maybe turbine. And that would be even a help. That would be the next step, maybe logical step to at least the military becoming more interested in having some more electrons in their aircraft. I don't know if the military or the army are gonna feel purely electric aircraft anytime soon. And it depends on the application.

Nicolas Zart: Yes. Yes.

Angelo Collins: But they are very much interested in these hybrid propulsion systems. They can generate a little bit more power. And that's something of importance.

Nicolas Zart: Right.

Nicolas Zart: Yes, well, and you and I, without saying any, we're not naming any names, but a lot of our friends in the industry are working with the DoD. We just, by the way, we just had Dash 2 also explain how all of this works, how you go to the DoD and what you can expect and what you should not expect, by the way, because there's a lot of expectations that are not realistic when it comes to the DoD. But yeah, a lot of the companies that we know very well are working with the DoD are...

Angelo Collins: Yeah.

Nicolas Zart: tweaking their platform to adapt for their needs. And Evy Tolzor.

Nicolas Zart: quiet, right? Okay. You can still bring a lot of things to a lot of really hard to reach situations. But that's also good for, you know, excuse me, forest fires for military for police application, ambulance application. And that's the whole thing, you know, it's not dual use anymore. It's like quadruple quintuple use these days. So so we're getting towards the end of the hour here. Is there any kind of message that you would like to leave our listeners and our watchers with? I'll stop at that because if

Angelo Collins: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Angelo Collins: Well, maybe I'll speak to, depending on how large our audience is, but I one of the struggles we've had is public acceptance of certain types of aviation. Here in the DC area, at least in Northern Virginia, one of the number one complaints of our constituents in this district is helicopter noise. And obviously with the incident over the Potomac with the Black Hawk, there's a lot of helicopter traffic.

Angelo Collins: And in particular, I mean, it's more the noise, not the visual pollution, but we have all the air traffic in this region. And I understand that concern. And public acceptance is critical to the future of any type of aviation endeavor. Even the turboprop aircraft, even if they were just as efficient as a turbofan, public acceptance wasn't there. People didn't like to see the props spinning. And that's why you don't really see many turboprop engines in civil aviation. It's not because of

Angelo Collins: any engineering challenges, it was public acceptance of that. And so we want to educate people that vertical flight needs investment. But at the same time, we are seeing some great strides, especially in the private sector. We haven't been dedicating as much investment in vertical flight. Some of the greatest accomplishments we've made in vertical flight occurred decades ago. And we're making some incremental improvements, but there's still a lot of potential.

Angelo Collins: and potential that could alleviate some concerns that folks have, whether it comes to safety or noise, vibrations or otherwise, and even cost. And so, you know, we're begging for help in this industry. love, you know, we have quite a few challenges. That's why I got into engineering. I'm actually not a big aviation buff. I just really enjoy problem solving and a lot of students enjoy. And it's always funny to get the question like, you studied aerospace engineering? Are you a pilot?

Nicolas Zart: Yes.

Angelo Collins: It's like, no, I don't really even like aircraft that much. It's not like I'm sitting at home in my free time looking at pictures of helicopters, right? But it's a very rewarding, stimulating domain. And there's a lot of great problems to solve. And there's still lots of really interesting problems that you can solve and to support that industry. And so, you know, it's maybe my pitch here is

Nicolas Zart: No.

Nicolas Zart: Yeah.

Angelo Collins: to gain and garner more public acceptance of helicopters in general, but also eVTOL. There's a lot of things that they can do. The first time you see a lung being transported by eVTOL to save somebody's life, you see that in the air and it looks like an angel when you really think about it. And if people understood that, then they'd be more willing to accept the great things that eTOL can do. And so we're making strides there and we're trying to help.

Nicolas Zart: Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Angelo Collins: make that message clear. But that's what I would pass on.

Nicolas Zart: Yeah, I think you said it really well. And I think maybe just a little passage from Steve Jobs to move beyond the acceptance into the desirability. I'm looking for public desirability. When I look at an eBitoll, it's damn desirable. I want to be in there. I want to fly that efficiently, that quietly, that more sustainably. So I really want to push that needle out there because it is definitely it needs to be done. Angelo, thank you very much for coming on the podcast.

Nicolas Zart: You have an open invitation to come back whenever talk about whatever we want to hear more also about forums and everything that you guys are doing because these are absolutely terrific your publications and all and just to say we love and when I say we I really mean a lot of us love what you're doing at VFS where you're bringing You know, we're excited about the next 10 years and whatever lies beyond that. So thank you for coming to us Thank you for being with us and for Absolutely. Absolutely and you come back whenever you want. I mean, it's an open invitation

Angelo Collins: Thank you for having me.

Nicolas Zart: will remind you every once in a while obviously right but for those of you who are watching please you know like share subscribe let us know what you thought has Angelo changed your mind about anything has your understanding of advanced mobility change in any ways those are the things we'd like to hear and in the meantime we look forward to talking with you next week again and have a safe flight if you are flying or what do they say safe flights and soft lendings I like that one I'm keeping that one

Angelo Collins: Absolutely.