First conversation with the Federal Aviation Administration & Friendship Bracelets

Hi! Quick update on a Friday night!

1) I just sent the survey to the 354 people that have the $9 “Friendship Bracelet” reward level. In it, I asked everyone to update their shipping information, and let me know what they thought about the experiment, and Kickstarter experience.

2) If you pre-purchased the other jewelry sets (Earrings and/or Necklace) you’ll get a survey on those after we’ve got a handle on the Friendship level.

3) We’ve secured a second location for our experiment site. The property owner thought it was interesting and had a lot of questions.

4) I had a 45 minute chat with our local rep at the Federal Aviation Administration this morning. It was a good conversation, and we know what our next steps are. He was very helpful – but – as it was the first 15 times we did this, Headquarters in Washington DC is going to have to get involved. That’s no surprise.   So I’ll be tackling that, next week. Surprisingly, he was less concerned about the robot falling and killing someone on the ground, and much more concerned about a plane flying into the ‘bot. For me, I have the opposite concerns. This is not a ‘done deal’. This was a good first step in a convoluted process. Fortunately, we’ve some experience with this – and he was glad/relieved that I knew what I was doing, and what I was asking for.

​5) Here’s the map that the FAA sent me, of flight corridors in the Seattle region. Note the thick red line that designates a national security exclusion zone… our proposed balloon site is marked in yellow; just outside that range.

Take care, Mjl  
Michael Laine, President, LiftPort Group