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

lilium.com

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

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Let me rephrase: The innovation you describe (which is cool and needs certification) bumped the price for a new airplane from about 50k in the 70s (I guess we may be talking 200k in today’s money) to close to 1MM USD. And that innovation is “just” glass cockpit, and some more advanced avionics. Not changing the principles - you fly a bit faster, a bit safer but still need a license and do all the preparation and chec…

You only pay the R&D costs once. All you're saying is that you have to put a lot into R&D, but that's all on the I side of ROI. It was the same with SpaceX, the I part was huge. The question is whether you can make the R part work. And if you have scale, then the R part moves differently.

It's the same with the first car you build. The first Tesla Roadster cost tens of millions to make. The second Tesla Roadster cost half that.

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

#152

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…

I'd argue that some of the difference between a pilot license and a driver's license would diminish if the difficulty of a driver's license more accurately reflected the challenges of operating a heavy vehicle in close proximity to pedestrians and other vehicles.

At the current standards, apparently the only hard requirement is a pulse.

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

#153
I don’t quite see how you can spend only $10 million in capex and get 1 million passengers per year. With 4 passengers per flight that’s about 700 flights per day or about 1 flight per minute. That’s a lot compared to existing heliports that handle 50 or so flights per day. Even with a 15 minute turnaround time you will need parking space for at least 15 aircraft.

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

#154
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

True. This kind of technology would be a game changer for poorer rural communities with limited infrastructure and vast distances. Places like Greenland or East Congo. But this article did not mention this benefit at all. All they seem to care about is getting rich people between places they already can.

To be fair, this is how most technology proliferates.

In the mid-20th century, airline travel was an endeavor strictly for the rich. Today it is also accessible to those in the middle class.

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

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And a ballistic parachute is not super safe in mountainous areas where the ground is not flat. With the typical ballistic parachute there is zero control on where you land. And even in the best circumstances the landing is pretty rough, it's more like a last resort. However engine failure can also occur on fuel-powered aircraft. And at least this thing has a whole lot of engines so it could afford the failure of a fe…

>However engine failure can also occur on fuel-powered aircraft This. Why would a battery powered aircraft be more susceptible to failure than another engine type?

Because we have decades of experience with the existing engine & fuel types, but very little experience of battery powered aircraft?

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

#156
post #113

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.

That sounds like a "true green revolution". Moonshots are, to me, technology projects supercharged by heavy investing to bypass present market forces.

Sure, perhaps your age may indicate a preference for that kind of project but DDE was 70 when he started the moonshot so it's less likely to be age and more likely to be a predisposition to that sort of thing.

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

#157
post #113

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.

This type of vehicle could be a game-changer for emergency response and rescue though.

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

#158
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until you invent anti-gravity, VTOL will always be (i) very energy intensive, and (ii) and very disruptive to the surrounding environment. This is both in terms of noise and air turbulence. Self driving is something that may be solved and can become practical for popular use with current and near-term foreseeable technology. Everyday mass use VTOL is not. Sorry, the Jetsons lied to you.

Black hawks are quiet enough for specops teams to use them in urban raids like the Bin Laden one.

It wasn't that quiet, it was fast and below radar

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

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me rephrase: The innovation you describe (which is cool and needs certification) bumped the price for a new airplane from about 50k in the 70s (I guess we may be talking 200k in today’s money) to close to 1MM USD. And that innovation is “just” glass cockpit, and some more advanced avionics. Not changing the principles - you fly a bit faster, a bit safer but still need a license and do all the preparation and chec…

> “innovation has a horrible ROI” This may be so, but I don't think you've really substantiated it; you're just talking about part of the "I", without any reference to the dollars of "R". Sure, $1m puts a plane out of almost everybody's recreation budget. But for a piece of transportation infrastructure with high utilization, it might not be prohibitive. (I mean, a jumbo jet costs hundreds of millions to build, invol…

What kind of analysis are you looking for? How much these features are worth is subjective and the general aviation market is super small and not exactly growing. Don’t get me wrong: everybody I know loves his SR20/22.

My comment was not dismissive of the innovation by Cirrus (which I think is great).

It’s about the costs getting it into the market and having it certified.

Imagine you buy a car for 50k USD. Now, you want an airbag and a better infotainment system. Not a problem. Price is now 250k. Is an airbag and a better Infotainment system worth that premium to you? I can’t answer that for you. But this is what we are dealing with in general aviation.

And it is not 1MM USD in Capex... It is 1 MM USD premium per PLANE.

And again: there is a reason why you have the B747 and 737 for like 40 years... Because exactly of that certification nightmare of new airplanes.

Now talk autonomous electric vehicles with passengers. How should the math ever add up?

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

#160
I'm curious if there will be a market for this--plenty of current production aircraft can work perfectly well as air taxis, but the service has only caught on in niche markets (island-hopping float planes, some helicopter services, arguably a lot of bush flying). Decreasing the cost by an order of magnitude might go some distance to open the market up--I can't see this succeeding without a drastic advantage in operating costs over traditional aircraft (I think the jury's still out on whether electric propulsion is a significant advantage here, and VTOL requirements are a big disadvantage).

The case for VTOL in particular becomes a lot less convincing when you're primarily looking at the kind of regional travel Lilium mentions here--why not just electrify an existing FW aircraft and operate out of existing infrastructure (https://www.harbourair.com/harbour-air-and-magnix-announce-s...)? Small airports are pretty ubiquitous, and going through an FBO largely eliminates long waits for security and boarding (not to mention alleviating some of the last-mile transportation issues).

I can't stress enough that nothing is simple about VTOL--even if this aircraft lacks complex hydraulic, fuel, and oil systems, any failure in the (electromechanical?) control actuation systems will likely prevent transition to/from hovering flight. It looks like the control surfaces may be designed to have multiple, independent segments (hopefully with redundant actuators) to mitigate these kinds of failures (aside: it's fascinating to see a GA aircraft designed to be dependent on TVC for basic stability and control), but a loss of even one of these segments might not allow a safe power margin for a vertical landing near max gross weight, and it doesn't look like the wheels were designed at all with roll-on landings in mind.

All that said, I wish the engineers working on this thing the best. The current demonstrator is a great-looking machine, and it'd be awesome to see this kind of thing succeed.

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