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Originally Posted by Pangloss62
Perhaps, Maggie, but I've read that about 20 guys have died in about 4 different accidents in the development of that thing, and billions and billions have been spent.
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There was one prototype lost at Wilmigton because a mech wired the controls backwards. There was an inflight fire because drains on the rotating cowlings weren't properly designed. There have been I think two lost due to problems with pilot technique; the tiltrotor configuration has some unique failure modes; if you decend too fast without sufficient forward airspeed, for example.
But the advantages to tiltrotor are considerable: how about a commuter airliner that can operate from a helipad in a downtown area, for example?
Developing a completely new kind of aircraft does involve both risk and money. Ask Wilbur and Orville,Sikorsky, Mort Taylor, the crews of Apollo 1 and 13, Challenger and Columbia.