It’s been 50 days since the launch of the Boeing-sponsored GoFly Prize, and we’re excited to announce that more than 1,000 innovators from over 70 countries have signed up to take part in our challenge to design and build a safe, compact and quiet personal flying machine capable of being flown by anyone, anywhere.
This interactive map shows where our international community hails from. We are thrilled that the prize has created so much international excitement, motivation, and engagement.
Our forum is full of great questions and eager competitors working together to prepare for the first phase of the prize, highlighting not only technical questions, potential collaborations, and new ideas, as well as sharing excitement about the opportunity the challenge presents. A little more than a month in, there are 745 forum posts across 75 threads and counting:
“The personal VTOL transportation vehicle is the best solution to the global gridlock of ground vehicles that will be coming in the not too distant future.”
—Stan, GoFly Community Forum
“I personally like how Go Fly is attempting put some kind of technical requirements out there for everyone … I’m hopeful that something good for human flight emerges.”
—Paco, GoFly Community Forum
The collective creativity and experience of so many curious minds will make the next big challenge in aviation truly achievable.
Within the past month, we’ve brought on new Masters to help guide these Teams and kicked off the Master Lecture series, in which industry experts share their insight and answer questions from competitors. Additionally, over 20 leading aviation and STEM organizations have partnered with GoFly to help spread the word. We’re pleased to continue to grow our network and provide support to our innovator Teams. Find our full list of partners on our homepage.
The aspiration of flight extends beyond our core group of engineers, inventors, and aviation professionals who have accepted our challenge and make up our 447 officially registered Teams so far. Students from over 60 top universities across the globe have already registered to take part and will put up some strong competition. We have also received countless messages from ambitious students who fall just under our age requirements, but who want to be a part of the future of flight. To that end, in 2018 we’ll be rolling out a series of mini-challenges for those K-12 students so that they too have the opportunity to join in our network and shared future.
We are thrilled that the competition has elicited so much excitement from the community, and we’re looking forward to many more months of collaboration, team-building, and innovative design.
With 140 days left to enter Phase I of the competition, there’s still plenty of time to get involved and submit a competitive design. Rules can be found here, and you can register here.
Ready, Set, GoFly!
