"Heavier than air flying machines are impossible."
-- Lord Kelvin


"Flight by machines heavier than air is impractical and insignificant, if
not utterly impossible."
-- Simon Newcomb, Director, U.S. Naval Observatory, 1902


"Aerial flight is one of that class of problems with which man will never
be able to cope."
-- Simon Newcomb, 1903


"The resistance of air increases as the square of the speed and works as
the cube [of speed].... It is clear that with our present devices there
is no hope of aircraft competing for racing speed with either our
locomotives or automobiles."
-- William H. Pickering, Director, Harvard College Observatory, 1910

"The greatest performance improvement of all is when a system goes from not-working to working."
--John Ousterhout

Huge leaps in the performance of the Wright Flyer came from 1902 to 1904.
Humanity made great strides in the 20 years after that and again in the jet age.

Unless the Raptor is planning to create a greater performance leap vs current than the jet age (perhaps they'll invent a practical cold fusion based engine?!), this fanciful project is the horse:

It is concerning that Raptor are childlike in their performance and price claims. Had they been less "ambitious" and toned down the BS, I think they may have been better received. For all that amazing performance, they're saying a new aircraft will cost $120K. Now that alone says to me they have zero idea of what they're doing.

4 pax, 220KTAS @ 8gph and $200K would have been the Holy Grail game changer.

The $3K deposit is held in escrow and will be refunded at any time for a cost of $95.00. So the most you lose is a 100 bucks. This certainly takes it out of the blatant scam zone.

If the engineers at the mainstream manufacturers were allowed to innovate, design and build aircraft on performance merits, as was the case 50-60 years ago, we'd have a better range to choose from. Sadly, marketing and legals control the input into design criteria.

How much does it cost to make an aircraft litigation proof? For a start, there can be no innovation or boundary stretching. So we're stuck with designs which are intrinsically little different to what they were 40 years ago.

Meanwhile, I am tempted to plonk down the $3K deposit as soon as I can manage some due diligence on escrow.com. I don't mind losing $100 bucks to give these guys a crack at showing us what they can do.