Maybe this is why its being trialled in Dubai where the guy in charge of the place can just say make it so.
Doesn’t make it safe of course. Its why you need to regulate your media.
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The roof pad is just for dropping off the passenger. It’s not for parking fixed-wing any more than it is for parking choppers.
Yes but even then there will never be enough roof space to drop one or two passengers from each air taxi. A large city center will absorb a million people every morning. Each pad will require one or two minutes to drop their passengers. Think of a heavy rail station with passengers pouring out of trains. I just can’t see it happening with air taxis.
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I, for one, welcome the repurposing of infrastructure dollars so that the rich will not be inconvenienced.
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Think of the fun when one of them flies through the down-blast of another above it, and if they have multiple layers of traffic lanes the ones on the bottom will really have to compensate.
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Oh I expect they will have some clever software for that but with a handful of landing sites there won’t be any reason to have more taxis than can actually land at their destinations without a delay, so a commuter will spend most of their time on the ground at home, complaining about there not being a taxi to take him to work.
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Yeah, seems like there are a number of new ventures that would otherwise be stymied by regulatory issues that are being trialed there for that reason. Also, there’s a potential customer base of super-wealthy people to use the service. Still, there is that issue that there’s not enough roof space (or air space, really) in urban areas for this to work for any significant number of users.
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Millions? Of course not. There won’t be that many coming in from their estates upriver.
These are the people who, per a cocktail conversation reported by Krugman, don’t care about road conditions because they commute to the City by private helicopter.
Instead of “ejection seat”, substitute “ballistic parachute”, and it alters the math…
… Not nearly enough to make a real difference. I agree, this is going to sell like the Edsel.
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I concede that is a better term, and seems to have overtaken ride-sharing, albeit with some curious geographic variation:
https://g.co/trends/qexEn
Speaking of “humorless, utterly uncompromising physics ducks,” any ideas on how this might match up against a flock of geese/swans/gulls? I don’t see this thing weed whacking through such heavy birds, tbh.
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It can be a luxury service but I think most major cities have a no fly-zone policy since 9/11. And resident wouldn’t like the perspective of one of those thing crashing on their head.
A really good point for them may be the noise, I guess it’s more quiet than a small plane but like all those tech companies there is no actual data on their website.
“We’re flying through a flock of a few thousand doves. Don’t worry M’lords, the props should chew them all up in no time.”
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Test flight 6 months ago? No further news?
Have the Dubai authorities bought any monorails lately?
They are also claimed to have invested in Flying Police Motorbike technology, although the claim is coming from the Russian conman who sells Flying Police Motorbike technology and should be rated accordingly.
https://edition.cnn.com/2017/10/13/middleeast/dubai-police-hoversurf-flying-motorbike/index.html
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the balancing of opposing almost dihedral angled props is very wasteful of thrust , energy , range , etc , for no discernible reason ; totally unrealistic and almost silly engineering
not lately , but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_Jumeirah_Monorail
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… and one of the stations is Dubai Trump Tower, which is denoted on the map by an orange symbol.
Small world.
Quite right about the number of airplane companies with promising ideas that hit the shoals. But even where there are huge resources to try to build a new airplane segment (e.g., HondaJet), it takes a long, long time to get there.
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I think you’re right, overall, to be skeptical of this project, which is so like so many other dead projects before it, for several of the reasons you list.
But: Did you know the first autopilot - for powered, heavier-than-air, fixed-wing aircraft - was invented 106 years ago? That the first automatic trans-Atlantic flight, from takeoff to landing, was 71 years ago? A very high degree of autonomous flight has been a reality for many years. Autonomous flight is a much, much easier problem than autonomous driving.
Vertical-landing craft like helicopters also have some special abilities where dealing with catastrophic failure is concerned. When automobiles were adopted in large numbers, they were a lot less safe than modern automobiles are; I don’t think the barrier to entry in the safety department is likely to be as insurmountable as all that.
I’ve been following the USMC adventure with the MV22 Osprey, and they still keep having inexplicable deadly crashes after all these years of tinkering. For them, the mission envelope is so crucial that the routine fatalities are considered worth the risk.
I doubt a civilian craft is going to somehow outperform the Osprey over the long run.
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