Five new ships were released at this year's IAE, yet all are missing a practical, quite useful element: downward-facing landing lights. Why has this critical element been overlooked in ship design?

I think it depends what context we're talking about, because if the practical purpose of them is the same reason people wanted really, really powerful headlights and lights on the ship, it's to help them navigate in the dark, so it's easier to land on dark surfaces. When we kept extending the range of the headlights, it didn't work well. It was really unperformant, and when you got a group of ships together and they were all pointing at each other, it was impossible to see anything. It was like driving down the highway with everyone's high beams on. It was too much. But people need a way to actually navigate in the dark; absolutely, that's something that's needed. So we do have plans for a solution. It's a system called LAMP. I didn't pick the name. The entire purpose is light amplification, to let people fly and navigate at night. It's currently in early stages. We don't know exactly when it's going to be going out, but what it does is put light amplification on all of the canopy glass, so you'll actually be able to see what you're doing in the dark.

If people have used the FPS scopes with light amplification, it's an expanded version of that for your cockpit glass.

So that's the solution to help you navigate at night. Now, if the question was because it's cool... yeah, it is cool.

I still want an underneath landing camera, though.