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Regional Air Mobility: Why we don’t plan to operate flights under 20km

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Re: Regional Air Mobility: Why we don’t plan to operate flights under 20km

#111

Post by FireBeyond »

Hovertruck wrote: post #107

> If we imagine for a moment that you work in an office in Palo Alto, you could now choose to live in Hayward (5 min flight, $25), downtown San Francisco (10 min flight, $50), or even San Rafael (15 min flight, $70). This is a strange example to include in here – that's a pretty expensive (one-way?) commute.

Right? Because SF isn't already expensive enough without having to compensate employees for $700/week ($36,000/yr) in commuting expenses. (Or for employees to be able to justify that on their own dime...)

Re: Regional Air Mobility: Why we don’t plan to operate flights under 20km

#112

Post by xnyan »

noir_lord wrote: post #49
baxtr wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe that’s exactly what someone said about cars in 1900. BTW: In 2019, 39k people died in car crashes, in the US alone.

I wonder what would happen if the car (or something similar had never been invented) and someone came out with a modern saloon today. "It'll revolutionise personal transport but we estimate it'll kill 40,0000 people in a horrible way per year" Like many things that are harmful in some way cars got grandfathered in (as did alcohol and tobacco) - if someone came out with an equivalent of alcohol with the same side effe…

>banned any drug with a set of side effects

The word you are looking for is pleasure. The only types of drugs that are 100% illegal are drugs that have no purpose besides making you feel pleasurable sensations. Horrible side effects (e.g. chemo) and high chance of addiction (opioids, amphetamines, etc) and more are all allowed as long as the purpose of the effect of the drug is not (solely) pleasure.

Alcohol, and increasingly in some parts of the world Cannabis, are the exceptions (I understand both of these substances have real and potential uses in healthcare, but they are perceived as recreational). These are legal or quasi-legal only because they are both already in wide use and getting society on board to enforce a ban is difficult to impossible (depending on the society, a few do) . Tabacco is also on the list, but seems to be falling off somewhat.

Re: Regional Air Mobility: Why we don’t plan to operate flights under 20km

#113

Post by tmh79 »

ordinaryradical wrote: post #5

This to me is a true moonshot and venture-worthy idea. Some of these concepts may be technically or economically infeasible—it's a major risk—but the pay-off for human wellbeing is phenomenal. I wish we celebrated more companies like these, but it seems like most of them are met with (well-earned) skepticism rather than genuine curiosity. The world of atoms is harder than software, but it's awaiting disruptions like…

I dunno man, im getting kind of jaded as I get older. "True moonshot" to me seems more like cheap clean water for everyone, or a real way to sequester carbon, not a way for rich folks to get to their country cottages faster.

Re: Regional Air Mobility: Why we don’t plan to operate flights under 20km

#114

Post by notatoad »

looping__lui wrote: post #93
lisper wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Private pilot here. Yes, aviation innovates slowly, but it's not nearly as bad as you make it sound. Cirrus aircraft have been a game changer, as has the Garmin G1000 avionics. I can fly just about any instrument approach entirely on autopilot. The only thing I have to touch is the throttle and the flaps. I get real-time traffic information via ADS-B, real-time weather via Nexrad. I do my flight planning in five minu…

Yes, but let us not compare a 50k used Cessna to a 500k Cirrus? They rely on a Continental that was developed in the 80s (so quite new) - but doN’t you still have to adjust the mixture manually (e.g., manually adjust the air to fuel ratio)? I mean, the cool stuff you are describing can easily end up at 500k-2MM USD with a fully trained private pilot...

>let us not compare a 50k used Cessna to a 500k Cirrus?

why not? the original post was that innovation can't happen in aviation because of regulation. if we're shifting the argument to innovation doesn't happen because it's expensive, that's a much more solveable problem.

Re: Regional Air Mobility: Why we don’t plan to operate flights under 20km

#115

Post by ogre_codes »

Looking at their proposed map and one of the destinations is the Yosemite Valley floor.

Not just no... fuck no. I absolutely do not want what is an already awesome place to be fucked up even more by someone installing an airport (vertical or not) in the middle of the valley floor.

Re: Regional Air Mobility: Why we don’t plan to operate flights under 20km

#116

Post by protomyth »

praveen9920 wrote: post #38
Jabbles wrote: post #35

I would have thought any new transport technology would be heavily automated - from a brief look these require 1 pilot per 4 passengers. Not that it would be easy, I'm just surprised something so ambitious doesn't also include automation. At first glance I would have thought automating a small plane would be easier than automating a car - for one thing there are fewer things to crash into.

One word: compliance. FAA has lot of restrictions to allow a planes to fly with pilot in it. Imagine convincing them that without pilot.

In limited situations that is happening now: https://www.garmin.com/en-US/autonomi/

Autoland has achieved FAA certification. It’s now available on select G3000® flight deck-equipped aircraft. And it’s coming to more soon.

Re: Regional Air Mobility: Why we don’t plan to operate flights under 20km

#117

Post by bobthepanda »

technofiend wrote: post #65
mangecoeur wrote: post #51

Can an American please explain how a 3h41 minute car journey to Tahoe turns into an 8h49(!) train journey? Are your trains pulled by horses or something?

We don't have separate high speed rail tracks like Europe does; we have a single rail system used for slow cargo trains that take priority over passenger trains. Imagine driving everywhere with giant cargo trucks driving 80 km / hr in every lane with no way to pass them and you'll get the picture.

One other important thing is that in many places railroads used to have more features like more tracks and electrification.

The interesting thing about American railroads is that unlike all other forms of transportation in the US, railroads pay property tax. Therefore, to reduce tax bills and improve their books for mergers, many railroads tore up their improvements.

Re: Regional Air Mobility: Why we don’t plan to operate flights under 20km

#118

Post by microcolonel »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #90
GekkePrutser wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there no push for this to be stimulated again? In the EU there is a lot of talk about stimulating high-speed rail. Currently it's a total mess though, with each country still having their own standards, high-speed tracks having non-highspeed portions through cities, and simply not having sufficient capacity to support anywhere near the amount of passengers that are carried by air. But I really hope some day the EU…

California is building a high speed rail line. But there is an enormous amount of reflexive opposition from NIMBY's, Conservatives, and Libertarians. To tell you how bad it is there are 100 year old train tunnels between New York and New Jersey that must be replaced and Republicans have killed the projects to replace them _twice_ simply because they are rail projects and passenger rail is 'bad'

> California is building a high speed rail line.

Allegedly.

> But there is an enormous amount of reflexive opposition from NIMBYs, Conservatives, and Libertarians.

The greatest obstacles to California's high speed rail project are vote-buying politicians and the voters who do not pay attention or understand what they are doing.

Conservatives and libertarians may have a lot to say about it, I gather that's because it has been such a colossal money pit boondoggle affair; but you may have noticed that conservatives and libertarians don't exactly hold a political majority in California, so I doubt that their objections are a major obstacle to its completion.

The plans they actually began to build with won't even produce much of a service, the target speeds are disappointing and there are so many detours from any meaningful corridor; and we haven't even seen the reality of it yet, which will probably be even more disappointing than the low expectations.

> ...Republicans have killed the projects to replace them _twice_ simply because they are rail projects and passenger rail is 'bad'

Well, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that was probably not why they excluded that project from the budget.

Re: Regional Air Mobility: Why we don’t plan to operate flights under 20km

#119

Post by rklaehn »

looping__lui wrote: post #40

I love innovation and stuff. Radical ideas. But the aviation market is one of the most heavily regulated - bureaucracy beyond comprehension. Did you ever wonder why Piper or Cessna airplanes look EXACTLY what they did 50 years ago? And why the engines used in these planes (e.g., Lycoming) are referred to as “Lycosaurus”!? If you go for a sightseeing flight with a local aeroclub - you will find the pilot spending 30mi…

If US and EU are so buerocratic that innovation is impossible, there will still be a big market for viable VTOL electric planes in the rest of the world.

Just like most 3rd world countries these days have better 4G coverage than supposedly 1st world countries like Germany, or rural US.

Re: Regional Air Mobility: Why we don’t plan to operate flights under 20km

#120

Post by mytailorisrich »

They are investing a billion dollar to develop a plane from scratch in order to launch a taxi service.

This strikes as quite an odd thing to do and my bet is that either one of the big guys (Airbus, Boeing, etc) will launch a competing aircraft and kill them, or they will be acquired. Even if they continue as an aircraft manufacturer I am doubtful about the mix with being a taxi company.

It also seems an awful lot of money to develop one small plane.

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