31–40 of 218 posts
>We noticed that you're using an ad blocker, which may adversely affect the performance and content on Bloomberg.com. For the best experience, please whitelist the site. Yeah, ok Bloomberg.
What problems do flying cars solve? I know it looks cool but is there some huge thing that would get solved with this?
Helicopters and small planes already exist. We might have autonomous helicopters and small planes in the future, but flying car concept is flawed and not because it's hard to build one. - Preflight checks and flight safety. Larry should first build normal small aircraft that can do without constant manual checks before flight. This is actually good subgoal to work with even without flying cars in mind. Reliable infra…
Your first point makes sense, but if the flying cars are fully electric then I'm not sure how much of the work to make existing small aircraft totally reliable would be applicable to such a different machine. I guess that leads on to the question of, why not start by making an electric self-maintaining self-flying Cessna?
Turboprops are efficient and reliable. They have good power-to-weight ratio. Currently electric motors are good only for things like gliders that need relatively little power.
Deliciously ironic considering it represented the fact that mainstream culture had all but written off the idea entirely.
>We noticed that you're using an ad blocker, which may adversely affect the performance and content on Bloomberg.com. For the best experience, please whitelist the site. Yeah, ok Bloomberg.
I think that autonomous vehicles make flying cars possible. On one hand, learning to fly is difficult (the problem has a dimension more than driving on the surface) and people really do not like wreckage falling from the sky. So one needs a highly trained expert to pilot any flying vehicle, or a fully autonomous autopilot. The second thing is energy, a plane needs to handle a lot more energy than a car, simply becaus…
> The second thing is energy, a plane needs to handle a lot more energy than a car, simply because it flies A cessna gets between 15mpg and 22mpg. http://www.cessna150152.com/faqs/performance.htm
>We noticed that you're using an ad blocker, which may adversely affect the performance and content on Bloomberg.com. For the best experience, please whitelist the site. Yeah, ok Bloomberg.
Also by performance being affected perhaps they are referring to the 5 extra secondtheys make you wait.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your first point makes sense, but if the flying cars are fully electric then I'm not sure how much of the work to make existing small aircraft totally reliable would be applicable to such a different machine. I guess that leads on to the question of, why not start by making an electric self-maintaining self-flying Cessna?
Energy density of jet fuel and gasoline is something like 45-46 MJ/kg. All rechargeable lithium-whatever batteries have less than MJ/kg. Turboprops are efficient and reliable. They have good power-to-weight ratio. Currently electric motors are good only for things like gliders that need relatively little power.
It seems like a fuel cell could be a viable option in the not-too-distant future, but still comes with a good number of trade-offs...
What problems do flying cars solve? I know it looks cool but is there some huge thing that would get solved with this?
I work around dozens of pilots. Most of them used to own, co-own, share, or lease a plane. Only a few of them actually have a plane they could go fly right now. Maintenance, upkeep, costs, and regulations are obvious reasons why some would be deterred from owning and using a private plane. But most everyone of the pilots said, if you want to go to the beach, in general, the best way to get there is a 6 to 8-hour driv…
These folks are also not lacking for disposable income.
>We noticed that you're using an ad blocker, which may adversely affect the performance and content on Bloomberg.com. For the best experience, please whitelist the site. Yeah, ok Bloomberg.