Page 61 - Alumni Horae: Vol. 93, No. 2 Winter 2013

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“Technology has changed everything.
X-Plane for iPhone and iPad sometimes
outsells the desktop product. It allows
people to very easily practice flying air-
planes anytime, anywhere. An iPad is easy
to have around a cockpit. If the engine fails,
the pilot can follow Xavion’s guidance for
a safe landing.”
A third project, still in development, as-
sures that the scope of Meyer’s ideas spans
from conservative to wild and, in his words,
“from profitable to almost certainly not.”
“So far, this country has failed to develop
an affordable, reusable space transporta-
tion system,” he says. “If an airliner was
blown away every single time you flew
it, how cheap would airline travel be?”
Meyer is in the testing phase of a con-
cept he believes could be a model for a
reusable space transportation system,
building and flying model rockets to
demonstrate his hypotheses on a “small
but hair-raising scale.”
“We are talking about rockets that
are seven feet tall and can fly up to 400
MPH,” he explains. “There is no limit to
the obsession to detail that is going to be
required to do an excellent job, and you
need to abandon respect for convention
in developing an idea.”
himself until 2000, when sales began to
mandate programming assistance. In 2012,
his financial success combined with his love
for the School motivated him to establish
with his wife the Austin and Lane Meyer
South Carolina Regional Scholarship, which
will award full tuition and fees to as many
as four scholars at a time.
Meanwhile, Meyer is not resting on the
wings of X-Plane. Just recently he wrote
and released Xavion, an iPad app that can
guide pilots into safe landings on runways
in the case of engine failure.
“It’s breaking the rules of what a computer
can tell you in an airplane,” he explains.
PHOTO: JEFF AMBERG