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Cora – Kitty Hawk's prototype air taxi [video]

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Re: Cora – Kitty Hawk's prototype air taxi [video]

#201

Post by gambiting »

raducu wrote: post #60
danielvf wrote: post #47

Contrary to almost every comment here so far, this is both innovative and energy efficient. Let's talk energy efficiency first. Once it's up in the air, it's has a similar profile to a normal single engine airplane. A Cirrus SR22 can go 1,200 miles on 80 gallons of gas. That's roughly speaking 15 miles per gallon - better than many pickup trucks or large SUVs. And that's while going 180 mph. Slower is more fuel effic…

Imagine being able to live 90 miles from a town and commuting in 30 minutes regadless of peak hours. As for the noise, if it can land vertically, I can immagine it making a steep descent on top of a tall building, unloading passengers and then autonomously taking off to pick somone else some other place.

Nope - NYC used to have a lot of air taxi traffic and after the horrendous accident on the helipad on the top of Pan Am building all air traffic was banned inside the city. Helipads are only allowed along the river. I imagine other cities would impose similar restrictions.

Re: Cora – Kitty Hawk's prototype air taxi [video]

#202

Post by fastball »

akerro wrote: post #28
Quanttek wrote: post #17

I must say I'm against this development. First of all, even if electric, this is certainly a very inefficient way of transportation that will 'waste' a lot of energy to transport maybe 4 people. The resulting price of this technology will result in the 99% stuck on the ground while the only te 1% can afford the fare. And even if it becomes a regular mode of transportation, do you really want these planes to fly over…

I'm personally against it because I don't want anything to fall down into my garden or on my head in case of a failure.

You realize someone can probably crash their car into your garden, right?

Re: Cora – Kitty Hawk's prototype air taxi [video]

#203

Post by product50 »

CodeWriter23 wrote: post #142
product50 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Typical cynical hacker news comment. Have you seen any numbers wrt mileage? Do you know if this will be debuted as a taxi which can transport users vs. something one can own? Have you seen any wrt emissions vs. a normal suv which carries a family of 4? I am amazed how you can come to this conclusion without knowing anything about the product.

I’m amazed you missed the parts where everyone in the video referred to it as an “air taxi”.

I did not. The person who was commenting before me did.

Re: Cora – Kitty Hawk's prototype air taxi [video]

#206

Post by ju-st »

fouc wrote: post #62

I had to check it's not April 1st. Especially after watching the youtube video. I'm still skeptical that it won't turn out to be an april fools prank.

I'm developing a paranoia that the Alphabet moonshot projects are just PR to obfuscate the data privacy issues of Google's advertising.

Re: Cora – Kitty Hawk's prototype air taxi [video]

#208

Post by nharada »

nl wrote: post #41

Finally the 21st century gives us flying cars, and all that happens is people complain about it . HackerNews indeed.

"We know almost nothing about the vehicle, price, performance, or details, but as someone who has never worked with aircraft or lived in New Zealand let me tell you why this is the worst idea I've ever heard and why the people building it are dumb idiots."

Re: Cora – Kitty Hawk's prototype air taxi [video]

#209

Post by nickbauman »

danielvf wrote: post #47

Contrary to almost every comment here so far, this is both innovative and energy efficient. Let's talk energy efficiency first. Once it's up in the air, it's has a similar profile to a normal single engine airplane. A Cirrus SR22 can go 1,200 miles on 80 gallons of gas. That's roughly speaking 15 miles per gallon - better than many pickup trucks or large SUVs. And that's while going 180 mph. Slower is more fuel effic…

Maybe remove the rose-colored glasses?

1) 15 minutes? If you flew in a small aircraft regularly, you would know it takes 40-60 minutes to prep a plane from park to airborne in zero traffic.

2) Estimating what the fuel consumption of a small aircraft will be is much, much harder than a surface vehicle. Consider 90% private aviation disasters are a result of pilot error. And 90% of pilot error is in fuel consumption estimation.

Re: Cora – Kitty Hawk's prototype air taxi [video]

#210

Post by mnw21cam »

fastball wrote: post #184
sjs382 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The image/graph you're referencing illustrates "United States total primary energy consumption by fuel in 2015". Total, not electric. You were discussing production of electricity, which is shown in the table I linked on that page to be 32%.

Wait, how does that make sense? What kind of energy if not electrical is coal being used to produce?

Blast furnaces, heating, other chemical processes.
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