It seems this is becoming the norm these days. Astra, Joby Aviation, Lucid Motors, Archer and a few others in the aerospace/automotive industries have done this recently.
Thanks for the response, y'all sound like a cool group of people. Wish you the best of luck, and I might sneak an application in once you get that hiring page up.
1. I know there are a few other startups/companies working on similar technology. What differentiates y'all? I think Turion is the only one I've seen come out of YC though.
2. Don't see a careers page on your website. Are you hiring?
When commercial airplanes started out, people said the same thing about it being for rich people only. That's how these expensive things start.
One day, the cost of these flights will be much lower, to the point where you and I can afford them. Hopefully that day is during our lifetime.
For sure, you're right that compared to a jet engine there are fewer parts. The caveat is you're comparing a large engine (and aircraft) with a much smaller one. Electric aircraft of today can't go anywhere near the range of jet engine powered aircraft, and hence the engine sizes are similarly sized. It's not a fair comparison, but you are right.
Modern turbofan/turbojet/turboprop (really, any engine) has a ton of SW involved. Engine controllers [1] literally control the engines. Your point is completely wrong, I've worked on this software and they go through many forms of verification for things to work. Look at the failure rate of avionics and compare that to other industries.
Sure you or your friend may have had a bad experience at that company, but the big players generally won't let software bugs through.
Same here but only in elementary school. At least back in 2004. We moved from Logo -> QBasic -> Visual Basic -> HTML -> Java -> C before graduating high school.