@Victor Bravo Thank you, those are all great points! You've summarized perfectly why these aircraft should be hauling cargo until they have enough hours to be established as credibly safe.
Late reply...forgive me.
I like your article, but I respectfully disagree with some of the premise of your piece, as you only focused on one solution without defining the real problem.
Automation will not bring back GA in its entirety, but may stimulate but a few segments of it. Most of us here like to fly real aircraft, not a flight simulator or a drone. Taking the human pilot out of the loop will not magically lower the costs, which is the real adversary. Does automation and UAS have a place? Sure does, but not necessarily in light aviation.
Legacy aircraft, like the Cessna 172 et al, are increasingly expensive because of their age. More age means more inspections and maintenance...and parts & labor aren't cheap. More age means higher likelihood of failure, hence higher insurance. New ones off the line are prohibitively expensive, yet are only modestly improved in the powerplant and avionics areas. While Cessna, Cirrus, Piper, Lycoming and others have the ability to develop something amazing, the extreme costs of certification far outweigh the expected and anticipated financial return to their shareholders. It is a negative feedback loop that only accelerates.
That is where our E-AB movement comes in. Every day, we are developing ways to lower costs, increase efficiency, sustainability, performance & safety...all while advancing the state of the art. Some solutions may include automation, some not. Some will include solutions none of us have even thought of yet. The skies are the limit.
Within our movement lay the tinkerers, the inventors, the disruptors.
They had names like Wright, Horten, Northrop, von Braun, Hughes, Johnson, and within our lifetime, Rutan and Musk.
When interviewed during the SpaceShipOne program, on the topic of his efforts versus the NASA establishment method of decades-long effort with small returns, Burt Rutan put it best:
"Unless people like me go out there and do this, it will never get done...ever."
Lowering the costs of going flying is the end goal, not eliminating the pilot.
This is the Way