First Open Source Airplane Could Cost Just $15,000 | Hacker News Reader

First Open Source Airplane Could Cost Just $15,000

wired.com

95 pointsrmason44 comments

I was wondering if the word "open source" is being used correctly in the context of aeroplane parts.

Dictionary.com has 2 definitions:

1. Computers. pertaining to or denoting software whose source code is available free of charge to the public to use, copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute.

2. pertaining to or denoting a product or system whose origins, formula, design, etc., are freely accessible to the public.

I guess the latter definition could apply, where the components can be produced (e.g. 3D printed) from detailed "open source" blueprints? However, I dont think the plane will be built from 100% "open source" rendered components. Generic or branded components may need to be purchased as well.

The final cost of an actual airplane usually covers a lot of testing before going to market. It involves special test pilots that are ready to risk their lives while testing it. If we can find/fund a test pilot for this project, the price point can become a reality.

It's a light sport aircraft, akin to a "kit plane," so the person who builds it is the test pilot who is holding the risk.

But the design itself has been tested by the manufacturer, it's just your implementation that's untested.

Also you will need FAA inspection once it's been built if you are in the US.

In the UK you need to get a permit to fly, as you can't get a CoA (Certificate of Airworthiness) because its an unlicensed build.

Apparently (I've no first hand experience) these are rather thorough.

However my concern with this is the traceability of parts and such. There is a reason why a single rivnut costs a fortune for a plane.

In Canada, for a homebuilt LSA-equivalent you need to have the aircraft inspected and first flight performed by someone certified by Nav Canada. And no way he's going to risk his life in-flight unless he's pretty damn sure your aircraft is airworthy.

I'd argue that the OpenEZ/OpenCanard project was the first... sadly it appears to be gone (the website, anyways).

This sheds some light on it: http://www.homebuiltairplanes.com/forums/general-experimenta...

Note: This was based on the LongEZ, originally designed by Burt Rutan... a pioneer in homebuilt/plansbuilt aircraft (and the winner of the Ansari X-Prize).

If bugfixing those planes will be as rigidly pursued as with some open source software, maybe the phrase 'buying a ticket' gets a totally new meaning ;-)

I did not get it. Please clarify.

I think it refers to the Hunter S. Thompson quote:

"No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride."

Basically meaning you may be getting in over your head, but you'll probably have a good story to tell if you don't end up dead. Similar to the idiom, "in for a penny, in for a pound."

I'm more inclined to think they were drawing a comparison between buying a ticket to ride a plane vs placing a bounty on a ticket/bug to be fixed.

I'm inclined to agree with you. The bounty part of it didn't cross my mind.

Or the plane ticket / bug ticket distinction.

This is great, I've been wanting to get into aviation for some time but the barrier of entry is steep.

Using their plans as a guideline for building an ultralight instead of a light sport aircraft would reduce the cost dramatically. Ultralights have much lower limits but don't require any formal training/licenses.

In the end you could probably build an ultralight for the cost of a pilots license.

> In the end you could probably build an ultralight for the cost of a pilots license.

...but not know how to fly it.

Ultralight aircrafts are amazing and there are some of them more capable than a cessna in almost every aspect. But if you are going that route, please take in to account that they are very light and they flight very low, so you don't have too much energy to get hold in case of engine failure or bad weather (energy is EVERYTHING for a plane). There are too many people dying on light aircraft because they think they can fly like a top gun at 80 knots and 50' from the ground. Just look for a good instructor and if possible tale a couple of hours of aerobatic training, it will teach you how aircraft respond on low energy situations.

> This is great, I've been wanting to get into aviation for some time but the barrier of entry is steep.

There are some hobbies where starting without any prior knowledge and learning through a process of trial and error is fun and rewarding.

IMHO aviation is not one of these hobbies. It tends to be rather unforgiving of the "error" part of the equation, especially if the error is something like "wings not correctly attached". :)

It may be legal to fly an ultralight with no formal training, but I would strongly recommend against it. Attempting that is an excellent way to get yourself killed.

The barrier to entry for aviation is not steep at all if you approach it with the attitude that flying with an instructor is still enjoyable flying. People often think that you need to drop a few thousand bucks on training before you can fly. But not so! You'll be flying right from the start. You'll be doing it with an instructor, but if you pick an instructor whose company you enjoy, that can be a bonus, not a drawback.

Why not paragliding?

Learning to fly a glider is relatively inexpensive. It's a very different skillset than flying with an engine, but it sounds like a lot of fun. There are glider clubs in many cities where you can learn. I'm hoping to start sometime soon!

http://www.ssa.org/WhatIsSoaring

I was always told that new planes were so expensive because manufacturers had to tack on a huge amount to the price for expected lawsuits.

What I thought was original in this approach was how can you sue the manufacturer of a kit plane over its design if it's open source? Course lawyers will surely try so it has to be tested in court first.

Tangent: predictions on a "3D printed plane"? Push a button, wait, result needs little more than an engine installed?

git clone http://github.com/open-source-airplane

Damn, that didn't work.

For those unfamiliar with planes, you can buy a used ultralite plane for under $10,000 in working condition. Something that has been proven to fly reliably.

In the United States, the restrictions on an "ultralight" are rather severe:

> The governing regulation in the United States is FAR 103 Ultralight Vehicles, which specifies a powered "ultralight" as a single seat vehicle of less than 5 US gallons (19 L) fuel capacity, empty weight of less than 254 pounds (115 kg), a top speed of 55 knots (102 km/h or 64 mph), and a maximum stall speed not exceeding 24 knots (45 km/h or 27.6 mph). Restrictions include flying only during daylight hours and over unpopulated areas.

My point was, the biggest barrier to flying is not the price of the plane, but the desire to jump through all the hoops to get the license, to spend time/money on maintenance, to spend time on driving to the airport.

Don't forget the relatively high risk of general aviation.

It's not a high risk mode of transportation.. It's about as "deadly" as driving a motorcycle. Sadly, if people paid more attention to motorcycles on the road, then motorcycles would be exponentially safer and if people stopped flying into bad weather then airplanes would be exponentially safer. With that being said, there is no "Relatively high risk of general aviation".. there are lots of careers and hobbies with a much higher risk.. in fact, if I remember correctly more people die of boating accidents going out on a lake than GA aircraft.

Of course more people die in boating accidents than in GA aircraft, there is way more boating.

Motorcycles are relatively high risk too.

GA is not some super-dangerous activity that's guaranteed to kill you. But let's not pretend that it's perfectly safe, either. Such an attitude does a disservice to all involved.

A GA pilot is still much more likely to die in bed than in his airplane, but the risk is substantially elevated compared to the average.

This is intended to be a light sport aircraft so the comparison is not completely valid.

LSA has 2 seats, take off weight 1300lb (600kb), max speed 120knots (138 mph), no specific fuel limit.

An ultralight is good for fun, but not practical for transportation. An LSA can be used as transportation - it's about 3 times faster than a car.

This comment misses the point and doesn't compare apples with apples. This is a 2 seat aircraft designed to operate in the Light Sport category which is very different from an Ultralight. Light Sport aircraft cost $70k and up.

There are reasons why LSAs cost $70k. They're not looking to fly anything until 2015, and that's lots of time for reality to seep in. I wouldn't be surprised if they discovered that $15k was optimistic by a factor of about 5....

You can buy a recent Quad City Challenger kit for much less than that, and even fully assembled by someone else you're looking in the $30k range http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quad_City_Challenger#cite_note-...

I'm assuming they're planning on making it a partial kit, and if you're expected to 3d print some of the parts $15k for "other" supplies (mostly avionics and engine) sounds pretty reasonable to me.

You can purchase a Cessna 150 for under $15k. And that's not a light sport.

You should also point out that's a 20 year old Cessna 150.

The last Cessna 150 was made in 1977 so it would be at least 35 years old.

And so what! The engine certainly would be more modern. I just had some excellent fun flying in a Piper Cub on Sunday, it's about 3 times my age. Planes are not like cars, entire chunks of them are replaced on a regular basis materials prone to rust and similar corrosion aren't normally used.

It was my first time flying such a primitive old plane and honestly I hadn't had such fun since my first solo. I was walking round with such a grin.

Old planes aren't bad at all. They are tried and tested, meanwhile this design doesn't exactly look as modern as a Diamond or similar cheap to run glider-come-airplane so it's hard to be excited in all honesty.

Agreed. It's amazing the conditions of some of the Cessna's that come in to where I work... It's often insanely difficult to tell how old it is just by looking at it (Though not every aircraft is taken care of the same).

Or you could buy a certified cessna 150 for $15k. Much less likely to kill you or have an engine failure.

Anyway this isn't really anything new. You can already build your own plane from plans, and the plans only cost about $100 (a very small portion of the cost of building):

http://www.quickheads.com/index.php?option=com_ixxocart&Item...

In fairness it should be mentioned that the first Cessna 150 was made in 1951 and the last was built in the mid-70s so we are not talking about "late model" aircraft by any stretch of the imagination.

Agreed, but a 50 year old 150 is a lot safer than most homebuilts (especially if the engine is homebuilt too!)

In theory it may be possible to build a safe aircraft for $15k, but it really depends a lot on the builder.

I don't buy into that. For one, I've never seen one go that cheap (but then it's been over a year since I looked). Back when I was looking, typical prices for a 50 year old Cessna 150 was >$50k, unless it needs $30k worth of work done to it. Hard to believe they'd drop that much in only a year or so. Beware planes being sold in areas that have flooded (TN, LA) too, as they require tear-down inspections.

Also, to debunk the "they're unsafe" line:

"How Safe Are Amateur-Built/Homebuilt Aircraft?

Studies by FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) show that Amateur-Built/Homebuilt aircraft have an accident rate less than one percentage point higher than the general aviation fleet. In fact, the accident rate for Amateur-Built/homebuilt aircraft is dropping. The total number of registered homebuilt aircraft is increasing by about 1,000 per year, while the total number of accidents has stayed virtually the same. Another good barometer of safety is insurance rates. Companies that insure both homebuilts and production aircraft charge about the same rates for owners of either type of airplane. That indicates a similar level of risk."

http://www.eaa.org/homebuilders/faq.asp

Edit:

"Safety data on experimentals show them slowly approaching accident rates equivalent to those for small factory-made planes. And with some 25,000 experimental aircraft in the FAA's registry and another 1,000 added each year, more amateur-built than factory-built airplanes have been registered during each of the past five years, according to Bob Warner, executive vice president of the Experimental Aircraft Association."

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3686445/ns/technology_and_science-...

I'm not sure where you're looking, but you'd need to be insane to pay $50k for a 150. Have a look on controller.com and you'll see prices range from about $15k to 30k. You can buy a perfectly safe and flyable 150 with a high-time engine for $15k.

As for accident data: I think the EAA statistic is misleading. I believe they are looking at total number of accidents. However amateur-built planes comprise only 10% of the GA fleet, and their fatal accident rate is 3-4 times that of the rest of the GA fleet per flight hour:

http://www.avweb.com/avwebflash/news/NTSBCompletesHomebuiltS...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com