I am sometimes flabbergasted by some of the things YC will fund. This is one of them.
I don't know where to start, other than to say I would never make some of these assertions in public. Doesn't YC provide legal support to the startups it funds?
For example:
"Unlike a traditional airplane, it becomes impossible to command the airplane into a stall, a spin, unsafe attitudes, or other bad states."
This is categorically and absolutely false and wrong. There is no such thing as "impossible". Do not ever say things like that or you will find your own words used as weapons against you in the inevitable court case when something does go wrong. Too late now, it's already out there.
Attorney: Sir, your plane stalled and became uncontrollable. The pilot had no controls because you removed pedals and any industry-proven direct control mechanisms. Your company asserted this failure mode was impossible, yet, it happened. Exhibit A, in your own words.
"we can use MEMS gyroscopes that cost <$100 instead of laser-ring gyros that cost $1000 if not $10k"
Attorney: Sir, your aircraft killed all four of its passengers, destroyed three homes, killed an additional three people on the ground --two of them children-- and sent half a dozen others to the hospital in critical condition. Why did you use cheap sensors instead of industry-standard, battle-tested, fully-vetted, qualified, susceptibility-tested hardware?
"We’ve developed our own control surface actuators"
Attorney (following-up to the previous question): Control surfaces failed to actuate controls as required. You used cheap self-designed actuation hardware that did not have extensive engineering design, testing and qualification pedigree as industry-standard products...to save money...
"own radios and GPS hardware (an aviation grade GPS can cost upwards of $10k, but it’s the same hardware as in a $20 consumer grade GPS)"
Attorney: I repeat the question. Your cheap $20 GPS just killed half a dozen people. How could you justify placing such little value on human life?
"The only real single point of failure is the engine."
False! A triple-redundant design, will, at best, mitigate a single failure and ZERO in the case of common-mode failures. Triple modular redundancy requires, at a minimum: Triple redundant power, triple sensing, triple compute, triple actuation and no common-mode failure mechanisms. Once a triple-redundant system experiences a single failure, it turns into a system with two possible sources of truth, which means it is impossible to know who might be right.
My free advice is to stop talking and get out of this business before you kill people. Seriously. You are not at SpaceX with hundred-billion-dollar budgets launching craft that fly so far away from population centers that they could explode and nobody gets hurt. Before Crew Dragon flew for the first time billions of dollars went into evolving the systems that made it possible.
The events of this week [0], sadly, make my point even more relevant.
"it becomes impossible to command the airplane into a stall, a spin, unsafe attitudes, or other bad states."
Nobody who has actually designed, manufactured, delivered and supported anything that isn't trivial would ever think of saying such things. Ever. Your "experience" at SpaceX is irrelevant. You were one of 3000 engineers with a couple of layers of smart people guiding development and a pretty smart dude at the top (who would never say such things, even with billions of dollars on hand).
Talk to legal and scrub your output before you dig a deeper hole. This entire thread should be deleted. It will come-up in discovery if something ever happens. Not good.
The above might seem like a personal attack. It is not. I am trying to help you not continue to make serious mistakes. You lack real-world experience, that's the only way someone makes statements like that. You need to have legal evaluate all of your public output and report back.
Personal example: Four decades ago we were manufacturing a ruggedized product. My attorney scolded me for saying "waterproof". He immediately made us change our marketing material to say "water resistant". Obviously, without the Internet, it was much easier to correct a potentially-serious mistake borne out of inexperience. We just had to throw away a bunch of brochures. We all have something to learn.
I don't know where to start, other than to say I would never make some of these assertions in public. Doesn't YC provide legal support to the startups it funds?
For example:
"Unlike a traditional airplane, it becomes impossible to command the airplane into a stall, a spin, unsafe attitudes, or other bad states."
This is categorically and absolutely false and wrong. There is no such thing as "impossible". Do not ever say things like that or you will find your own words used as weapons against you in the inevitable court case when something does go wrong. Too late now, it's already out there.
Attorney: Sir, your plane stalled and became uncontrollable. The pilot had no controls because you removed pedals and any industry-proven direct control mechanisms. Your company asserted this failure mode was impossible, yet, it happened. Exhibit A, in your own words.
"we can use MEMS gyroscopes that cost <$100 instead of laser-ring gyros that cost $1000 if not $10k"
Attorney: Sir, your aircraft killed all four of its passengers, destroyed three homes, killed an additional three people on the ground --two of them children-- and sent half a dozen others to the hospital in critical condition. Why did you use cheap sensors instead of industry-standard, battle-tested, fully-vetted, qualified, susceptibility-tested hardware?
"We’ve developed our own control surface actuators"
Attorney (following-up to the previous question): Control surfaces failed to actuate controls as required. You used cheap self-designed actuation hardware that did not have extensive engineering design, testing and qualification pedigree as industry-standard products...to save money...
"own radios and GPS hardware (an aviation grade GPS can cost upwards of $10k, but it’s the same hardware as in a $20 consumer grade GPS)"
Attorney: I repeat the question. Your cheap $20 GPS just killed half a dozen people. How could you justify placing such little value on human life?
"The only real single point of failure is the engine."
False! A triple-redundant design, will, at best, mitigate a single failure and ZERO in the case of common-mode failures. Triple modular redundancy requires, at a minimum: Triple redundant power, triple sensing, triple compute, triple actuation and no common-mode failure mechanisms. Once a triple-redundant system experiences a single failure, it turns into a system with two possible sources of truth, which means it is impossible to know who might be right.
My free advice is to stop talking and get out of this business before you kill people. Seriously. You are not at SpaceX with hundred-billion-dollar budgets launching craft that fly so far away from population centers that they could explode and nobody gets hurt. Before Crew Dragon flew for the first time billions of dollars went into evolving the systems that made it possible.
Then again, what do I know? I could be wrong.