On Sat, 03 May 2008 20:23:48 -0700, Bob Fry
wrote in :

Shamelessly ripped from The Atlantic. A great article about
alternative air travel. See if you still think NASA or the FAA had
much to do with this company's success...

May 2008 Atlantic Monthly
Taxis in the Sky
by James Fallows

True, a cover story I wrote for this magazine seven years ago,
contending that the era of tiny, convenient, and relatively affordable
jet airplanes was at hand, ... [balance of story snipped]

Thank you for sharing this insightful story.

While I still believe that the SATS project was the catalyst for the
nascent successful revolution in air-taxi operations, it would seem
that the dot-com ant-farmers and mathematicians have fleshed out SATS
with economically viable structure that enables its success. But it
was SATS that inspired Eclipse to produce the aircraft that DayJet
needed to succeed.

At any rate, it's an idea whose time had come decades ago, but no one
had the guts to implement. At last the time thankfully has arrived.

And in addition to aiding air travelers, these successes in air-taxi
operations make a compelling club with which to beat recalcitrant
mayors and city supervisory board members into abandoning their greedy
little plans to launch the equivalent of a midnight bulldozer raid on
their municipal airports at the rate of one a week. And those mayors
and supervisors whose malfeasance has already converted into strip
malls the real estate upon which their once priceless airports stood
will soon be attempting to use their eminent domain powers to oust
their residents from their homes, so that they are not left out of the
air-taxi network.