It's wonderful to be here today and to see you all.

I'm going to talk about something perhaps a little different than most people might

because I'm an economist.

I'm not an engineer.

So I look at the ideas of what makes sense from an economic perspective and my focus

is going to be on cargo.

I realize there are passengers and that's a very different market, but I'm going to

talk about cargo and the economics of this.

So to start off with, we have to recognize that the freight demand is derived.

Nobody sends the cargo on a trip to enjoy the trip.

It's always to get someplace, so it's always a derived demand.

And it's a very perishable product.

If you don't ship it today, you can't stockpile and ship that trip tomorrow.

Nope, it's either now or gone forever.

So it's a very perishable product in transport.

There's also a question of value.

Shipping things one way may be more valuable than shipping things the other way.

And this applies to all forms of transport and we call this the front haul being the

valuable route and the return trip the back haul.

Although they are only names, not necessarily directions.

But what we're saying is locations are the same in terms of economics.

It's always specific to the geography and what you're moving.

And there are many economic tradeoffs.

You can go faster or slower.

Even as we think of solar power, the question of the weight of the solar panels on the airship

may mean you carry less freight, but you have free energy.

Well, what is the benefit?

Is it better to have the free energy or to carry more weight?

This is something that has to be worked out from an economic perspective as well.

And of course, the number one priority in all transport is always safety.

If you're not safe, you're not going to be allowed to operate.

So this is an area where we always have to have a lot of attention.

There are many sub markets in terms of transport and also for the airships.

No one type of airship is going to do everything.

We're going to have specialization.

I've often thought that maybe there will be at least six different types of airships

when this industry matures, and some of which will only be for passengers and tourism, some

which may be for exploration, some which will be for freight, and of course, other things

that we look at.

So if you think about what are the attributes of the airship, one of them, of course, is

they're very big.

And because they're big, you can carry big things.

So one of the attributes of the airship is capacity, and especially over dimensional

products.

Many times we're thinking about wind turbine blades.

This is a very good idea for the airships because they're so difficult to move on the

ground and of course, the bigger they are, the better they are.

And they're also delicate.

You have to be very careful how you move them so you don't damage them.

So certainly higher speed, urgent delivery.