2000 as Seen in 1910 (23 pics) • Hacker News Board

Post by treeface » Tue, Mar 01, 2011, 5:55 PM UTC

Nagyman wrote: post #98

treeface wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Cessna 172 is no more complicated than an economy car. Not trying to sound snarky here, but have you ever piloted an airplane? The pre-takeoff checks take a little while, require a good bit of technical expertise, and are absolutely required if you want to be pretty damn sure that your airplane won't fall out of the sky. Safety is, at times, overemphasized, but then again your car won't fall from the sky when it st…

172's were introduced in 1956. I'm certain if personal flight were more mainstream, flying could be quite as easy as hoping in your car. Further, it's easier to automate flight because of the vertical space available for traffic separation. The hard part is space for taking off and landing. I personally don't agree that safety has held personal flight back. It's just not practical except for longer distances.

I actually agree with you, but I have also yet to see a relatively inexpensive autopilot system that can successfully navigate all of the many horrible scenarios that could arise. We're probably already (or nearly) there tech-wise, but in the current Cessnas, you still need to be able to land and take off, and if there's even a minor crosswind on landing, this requires a very good bit of training and understanding of the technical limitations of the airplane. Not impossible for people to learn, but certainly a lot more difficult than "gas = go, break = stop, wheel left = turn left, wheel right = turn right".

As far as safety goes...I agree that personal flight has a great track record. But it's difficult to say if this would continue (absent a beautiful autopilot system) if we gave out pilot's licenses to 90% of 17 year olds and filled the sky with millions of small aircraft.