121–130 of 223 posts
Small aircraft on short routes are quite a niche market right now, but electric aircraft have a very good value proposition there, reducing both fuel and maintenance costs drastically. Depending on how things work out, in 10 years we might see a lot more flights in 10-30 seat electric aircraft, e.g. as connecting flights to tiny airports.
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It's all connecting to bigger flights. Plus 78-119 miles means either paying a lot of money for a cab, paying gas & parking fees for the duration of your trip at the bigger airport, or asking a friend/family member very nicely to take that trip to drop you off/pick you up. The smaller cities in question for these routes aren't going to have any sort of usable bus service for making a flight on time. To answer your ca…
> Plus 78-119 miles means either paying a lot of money for a cab, paying gas & parking fees for the duration of your trip at the bigger airport, or asking a friend/family member very nicely to take that trip to drop you off/pick you up. How about trains for those distances?
Example: there is a train between Milwaukee and Chicago and it stops at MKE, but it will never stop at O’Hare, because that would be the end of MKE.
Technically you can take the Blue Line from O’Hare to downtown, making dozens of local stops, and then walk a few blocks with your luggage to Union Station, but by the time you get downtown you could be in Milwaukee already on a connecting flight. And those few outdoor blocks are a big deal in winter, dragging soft sided luggage through the slush is not fun.
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> Develop software that can fly the planes autonomously from strip to strip (I assume this is the really hard part, but I am under the impression that autonomous flying is a much easier problem than autonomous driving?). As a software developer, this part is what I don't like. We're still quite a ways from fully autonomous driving cars (as in: don't rely on a human taking over for backup). A bad bug in an autonomous…
Point of information; certified autoland systems appeared on airliners in 1968. Yes, we're a ways off from the level of automation for a fully pilotless system as proposed here, but I think it a matter of a few years, perhaps a decade.
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Wouldn't landing be the hardest part?
Totally possible, though I was under the impression that the UAVs used by the military already land autonomously. But I agree that the autonomous flight part is almost certainly the hardest part here. I am mainly curious if the general physics and economics of the idea are remotely feasible, assuming the software is solvable.
I recently had a pie-in-the-sky business idea and I would love for someone who knows more about the industry why it will definitely fail. I assume it's unworkable for a lot of reasons, but it is just plausible enough to be a fun idea for a sci-fi novel. Get a fleet of 2-4 seater unpowered glider planes [1] Get a bunch of rural properties spaced ~100km apart. Put little glider landing and launch strips on each propert…
Let's suppose for a moment that air travel today worked the way you described it, with gliders, 60 mile range, electric winches etc.).
Then someone comes along and invents the motorized plane and now all of a sudden you can start and land a plane pretty much anywhere you want, you're no longer dependent on weather and, in addition, you multiply your range by a factor of 5x to 10x.
To me that sounds more disruptive than the other way around, so your idea would unfortunately fail the reversion test.
I recently had a pie-in-the-sky business idea and I would love for someone who knows more about the industry why it will definitely fail. I assume it's unworkable for a lot of reasons, but it is just plausible enough to be a fun idea for a sci-fi novel. Get a fleet of 2-4 seater unpowered glider planes [1] Get a bunch of rural properties spaced ~100km apart. Put little glider landing and launch strips on each propert…
> Develop software that can fly the planes autonomously from strip to strip (I assume this is the really hard part, but I am under the impression that autonomous flying is a much easier problem than autonomous driving?). As a software developer, this part is what I don't like. We're still quite a ways from fully autonomous driving cars (as in: don't rely on a human taking over for backup). A bad bug in an autonomous…
We're (much?) closer to Fully-Self-Flying planes than FSD cars because the problem space is - perhaps counterintuitively - MUCH smaller to tackle. And we have a lot more experience tackling it.
Additionally there could easily be remote pilots as backup in case of catastrophe (See remote piloted military and border patrol UAVs)
And pulling a parachute at 1000'+ altitude actually has quite a bit of precedent (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirrus_Airframe_Parachute_Syst...)
Now... There's probably a lot of cultural and regulatory reasons why the "string of automated glider ports" idea will never come to fruition.
But... As far as technical hurdles go, there's not much new technology that would need to be invented here.
I recently had a pie-in-the-sky business idea and I would love for someone who knows more about the industry why it will definitely fail. I assume it's unworkable for a lot of reasons, but it is just plausible enough to be a fun idea for a sci-fi novel. Get a fleet of 2-4 seater unpowered glider planes [1] Get a bunch of rural properties spaced ~100km apart. Put little glider landing and launch strips on each propert…
Some problems with this scheme come to mind quickly but these are the first few:
1) Weather. It exists and basically makes this plan totally unworkable on any practical level.
2) Physics. An unpowered glider would have at best 1/100th the potential energy to fly distances like the ones you describe assuming perfect weather. Remember there are hard limits on altitude (due to oxygen) and speed (need to not rip the wings off) and those plus weight are the variables in your equation that tell you how far your glider can get unless it’s able to exploit unpredictable thermals.
3) Refundancy, or lack of it. The failure mode for the slightest miscalculation is certain death for your passengers and maybe a few on the ground. Unpowered flight leaves essentially no margin for error which makes it a non-starter.
I wonder how lengthy charge cycles will affect the viability of fast turn times, especially for the short-haul segments that they're targeting for these new airliners. It seems like they'll need to either have extremely fast charging or be prepared for significant downtime between flights; where will the planes be stored while they're charging?
It's important to both invest in and appear to be investing in the future, but even a soft commitment of 100 planes seems like quite a bit, especially in the very competitive and cost-focused short-haul space.
0. https://www.npr.org/2015/06/28/418147961/the-man-who-saved-s...
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It's all connecting to bigger flights. Plus 78-119 miles means either paying a lot of money for a cab, paying gas & parking fees for the duration of your trip at the bigger airport, or asking a friend/family member very nicely to take that trip to drop you off/pick you up. The smaller cities in question for these routes aren't going to have any sort of usable bus service for making a flight on time. To answer your ca…
And it’s usually much nicer checking in at the smaller regional airports. Less chaotic and shorter lines. Downside is that the services aren’t usually nearly as good.
One of the things that helped Southwest dominate in the short-haul space, particularly in the Texas Triangle, was optimizing "turn-time" with a target of less than 10 minutes to both deplane and board passengers (10 minutes!)[0] I wonder how lengthy charge cycles will affect the viability of fast turn times, especially for the short-haul segments that they're targeting for these new airliners. It seems like they'll n…
Alternatively, maybe they could swap out the bottom of the fuselage or wings.