- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
cross-posted from: https://lemy.lol/post/52477761
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Air travel is considered to be among the safest methods of travel.
…but thats only because historically we only let experts operate those vehicles. You thought it was bad to drink and drive? Wait until uncle Randy has 250 hours logged to get a liscense, and he drinks and flies!
Not to mention that the frequency of inspections even for the kind of planes amateur pilots fly is insane compared to cars.
Something like a Cessna 152 (common single seat, single prop, plane) has in addition to the annual inspection another one every 100h of flight, plus of course before using it the pilot has to conduct a pre-flight inspection (which is mostly visual).
Imagine if before starting your car you had to check that the steering wheel actually turns the wheels or that the brakes actually work and every 100h of use you have to take it to a mechanic for a more thorough inspection, plus the engine only lasts 30,000h and you have to replace it after that.
And also a huge QC culture. If we let the auto industry make aircrafts for the general public, we’ll soon wish we were flying Boeing
You can become a private pilot with an airplane or helicopter rating in 40 hours. 250 is for commercial pilots.
I am not looking forward to random idiots falling from the sky onto my property.
the flying “car” in question. Just seems like a quadcopter to me, but I guess that’s why I’m not in marketing.
It comes with a car carrier.
Ya would think a flying car would at least have wheels. The marketing is doing the heavy lifting lol
People have enough trouble driving on roads, which place at least some limits on what you can do with a vehicle. Give them a flying car with no limits on where they can go anywhere in the X, Y, and Z axes and all hell will break loose. This crash, with two experienced “drivers”, is a perfect example, and they ostensibly knew what they were doing.
The pilot has always been the limiting factor for flying cars.
People are always saying “it’s the future, right? Where are my jetpacks and flying cars?”. And the truth is, there have been many prototype vehicles over the years that could be called flying cars, we’ve already done it. The reason everyone doesn’t have one in their garage comes down to two factors.
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Price. The reason cars are as affordable as they are is mass production. That is to say, still quite expensive, but within reach for most people in developed countries. With mass production you get that economy of scale, but most people simply don’t need a flying car, so it will be hard to ever reach that level of mass production.
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Skill to operate. A “flying car” is simply an aircraft that you can park at home. It’s an airplane or a rotorcraft of some variety. As such, you’ll need a pilots license to operate it, as well as (probably) a special certification for VTOL vehicles. Obtaining a pilots license is not as simple as a driver’s license, there’s just a lot more to know and the consequences of being underprepared are more severe. This isn’t within reach for everyone, not everyone should be a pilot. That fact makes mass adoption near impossible and that exacerbates the first issue, not being able to utilize economies of scale.
The way I see it, people can’t be expected to operate flying vehicles safely in congested areas, it’s just not a realistic expectation. But I do think there is a route to this Jetsons future. When we actually master self-driving vehicles, when it’s a mature and reliable technology, an expected feature on every new car, when it’s demonstrably safer than any human driver, and when you no longer require a driver’s license to operate the vehicle, at that point we’re finally ready for flying cars; the rest of the technology is already there waiting for us.
- Restricted airspace. They’d never fly in the immediate DC area, for example - it’s mostly a no-go zone with exceptions for National Airport and College Park Airports. The restricted zone actually extends beyond the beltway - which excludes the space where traffic is worst and flying cars would be most useful. (Freeway airport in Bowie has a section of the restricted zone carved out for it, but the airport is closing.) Even if you are authorized to fly into the zone, it’s not as simple as, “Hey today I need to drive to Georgetown.”
DC might be an extreme example, but I assume many cities have restrictions on flights above them.
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Low and slow is the most dangerous kind of flying you can do.
Flying cars are also inevitably less efficient and heavier than a dedicated counterpart, meaning the flight envelope is small, and your aircraft is less responsive.
(lower power to weight ratio, less efficient use of the lower,)
Also, any real pilot would be able to explain why flying cars are a bad idea… so they’re probably not all that experienced.
Also, any real pilot would be able to explain why flying cars are a bad idea…
Every helicopter pilot can explain why helicopters are dangerous. But they’re all still getting up in the morning to collect a paycheck.
Flying cars are, inherently, more dangerous than that.
Helicopters have loads of systems and design features that minimize the risks- and just to clarify, they’re less likely to be involved in an incident than GA aircraft to begin with. they’re absolute shit at gliding, so a loss of lift results in- at best- a controlled crash- where a plane has time. They’re also more likely to be in the situation where they do not have the altitude or airspeed to glide even if they weren’t dogshit at it, which combine to make them more dangerous to be in an incident with, but still not necessarily “unsafe”.
Flying cars would be significantly worse than helicopters, as they have the same glide profile, presumably the same propensity for low-and-slow flight regimes; and probably an inability to autorotate as well (depends on the design. most of the ideas I’ve seen lately are some form of multirotor.)
Though that comment had nothing to do with their inherent lack of safety. It has everything to do with hybridizing land and air vehicles like that never actually works out well. They’re going to be significantly more expensive than either specialized counterpart, less efficient, and less useful. This is why we’ve never seen them come off with commercial success before, and why we’re likely to never see them work, ever. The mechanical nature of something that can both drive on a highway and fly is insanely complex.
And even with all that, they’re also going to be significantly less safe than helicopters are today, probably spending far more time in the low-and-slow regime which makes incidents dramatically more unsafe, and given the usual argument of “reduces traffic” almost certainly going to be flown in areas with significant human presence (making them more likely to crash into someone.)
Okay but the only other option for making transportation better and faster is trains–trains are old, and not new, and not shiny.
So c’mon, let’s all grab our ceremonial daggers and dig out the altar to Moloch…
Anyone who does actual flying knows the enormous amount of knowledge and skill is required todo so.
Now imagine a whole collection of “hurrr durrr my daddy has a lotmof money” idiots taking to the sky
Enjoy the fun of the constant roaring of engines and propellers that randomly whizz by?
IF this shit ever hits the roads (enormous if), then the only way to do this well is when you apply the rules of aviation and within no time there will be rules limiting where you can take off and land and where you can fly and basically it all makes it that the flying car will be just another airplane
Autonomous avoidance seems like a good idea…
In theory, sure.
In practice, a large number of autonomous vehicles traveling at high speeds might not be able to keep clear of one another consistently.
They should try coding and algorithms.
That reminds me of something my flight instructor told me as a teenager. If you lose your engine at night, aim for a dark patch, because lights mean structures. Set up for an emergency landing as you usually would, and as you get down to short final altitude, turn your landing light on. If you don’t like what you see, turn it back off.
Flying cars are more dangerous than ground cars. Maybe we should just do flying mass transit with trained drivers instead.
