Ernest Christley wrote:
Evan Carew wrote:
Section 8,

Interesting use of words there. In my experience, "the tragedy of the
commons" is common jargon for lawyers. I however, work in the computer
science field and am familiar with the Linux OS phenomenon. In that
case, an entire OS & suite of applications was created out of love.
Granted, the cost of such a creation is much lower than for aircraft
structural design, however, I'm guessing that most of us in this news
group have enough tools and materials to put together such reference
structures as we are talking about here.



I'm also a lover of Linux, and OS/2 before that. I am deeply inbedded
with the Open Source philosophy. I'm also building an airplane. The
difference here is that on Linux, a single person can design a file
system or a sound driver all by themselves, and it can be integrated
with the whole. You can't design a rudder and stick it on any ol'
airframe. An efficient aircraft has to be designed as a whole. Each
aircraft is a single set of compromises flying in formation, and for the
most part, you can't mix compromises.

The closest you'll get to an Open Source aircraft design is to create
something in its entirety and then present it to the community for them
to tell you what's wrong with it. After spending several thousand hours
on development, most people will push back at the criticism.


Almost all homebuilts before the Rutans', and many factory built light
aircraft, were designed by rule of thumb, cookbook, That Looks About
Right, and modelmaking experience, with AC 43.13 and its predecessors
as execution guides.

A "smart CAD" system could be used to be able to generate a number of
designs from certain elements. Keep in mind most successful lightplane
manufacturere used a given assembly, structure or design in multiple
aircraft. The T-34 is a Bonanza, the -34C adds (IIRC) Baron main gear
and structure. The Cessna Bird Dog uses a 195 vertical tail and rudder
(actually, rudders are the most fungible part of subsonic aircraft
design.) The highwing fabric Pipers and their clones the Maules are
basically Chinese menu airplanes.

If you are certifying to a "consesnus standard" such an AI system
could be used to verify a large number of possible configurations.