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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

#31

Post by tick_tock_tick »

errantspark wrote: post #9
rvnx wrote: post #3

Small planes and helicopters are so unstable that I wouldn't enjoy riding this vehicle at all. High-speed train is so much more comfortable. Most people taking the plane everyday hate it. It's a so-so idea.

I this is a solvable problem and moving from current propulsion methods to a whole bunch of very small individually controllable BLDC motors with one moving part and low inertia is definitely a step in the right direction toward increasing the stability of low mass aircraft.

Wonder if the mass is low enough for a parachute to be used as a final failsafe.

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

#32

Post by kart23 »

pdelbarba wrote: post #19
tschwimmer wrote: post #16

To me this marketing just looks like a slightly less expensive helicopter. It's great that we can travel to our ski trips or vacations a bit faster but it's not going impact the mobility needs of 95% of people. Why isn't anyone working on improving commutes through dense cityscapes? It's obviously a much harder problem but it's also a more important one.

I absolutely guarantee this will be anything but less expensive. You can get an R44 with better range and payload for a couple hundred thousand. This will be an electronic nightmare requiring extensive certification and maintenance efforts. Cessna can't even sell ridiculously old designs for reasonable prices due to certification overhead.

The operating cost per hour of an r44, according to some quick googling, is $190. The cost after ownership is too high, and probably the reason that everyone still has cars instead of helicopters in their garage. Reliability and maintenance will be the most important thing here and will determine their success. And that's notoriously tough in the aviation market.

https://www.aneclecticmind.com/2010/12/28/the-real-cost-of-h...

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

#33

Post by Alupis »

errantspark wrote: post #9
rvnx wrote: post #3

Small planes and helicopters are so unstable that I wouldn't enjoy riding this vehicle at all. High-speed train is so much more comfortable. Most people taking the plane everyday hate it. It's a so-so idea.

I this is a solvable problem and moving from current propulsion methods to a whole bunch of very small individually controllable BLDC motors with one moving part and low inertia is definitely a step in the right direction toward increasing the stability of low mass aircraft.

Most of the "uncomfotrable-ness" of smaller aircraft is how easily they are blown around in the wind, which is not insignificant at safe operating altitudes.

This aircraft proposal will not be able to negate the effect. Think small boat on a lake - even with azimuth thrusters, still bobs up and down back and forth with the waves. Larger boats don't experience the effect as much, due to mass - same with large airliners.

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

#34

Post by nlawalker »

pdelbarba wrote: post #19
tschwimmer wrote: post #16

To me this marketing just looks like a slightly less expensive helicopter. It's great that we can travel to our ski trips or vacations a bit faster but it's not going impact the mobility needs of 95% of people. Why isn't anyone working on improving commutes through dense cityscapes? It's obviously a much harder problem but it's also a more important one.

I absolutely guarantee this will be anything but less expensive. You can get an R44 with better range and payload for a couple hundred thousand. This will be an electronic nightmare requiring extensive certification and maintenance efforts. Cessna can't even sell ridiculously old designs for reasonable prices due to certification overhead.

Yeah, what I'm not clear on is: what's the cost to fly from SF to Lake Tahoe in a helicopter? If it's a lot more than the $250 that Lilium is promising, what is it that makes Lilium cheaper? Is it just the up-front investment in scale and the route network?

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

#35

Post by Jabbles »

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.

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

#36

Post by hristov »

giarc wrote: post #4

I can't remember who said it or on which podcast, but they basically said that VTOL is the real game changer, not autonomous driving. Sure autonomous driving might be able to shave some time off of your commute, but you are still in a car and still driving on roads. VTOL is what really allows you to experience what the ultra wealthy with access to private jets and helicopters have experienced. Getting out of the city…

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.

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

#38

Post by praveen9920 »

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.

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

#39

Post by jmercouris »

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #31
errantspark wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I this is a solvable problem and moving from current propulsion methods to a whole bunch of very small individually controllable BLDC motors with one moving part and low inertia is definitely a step in the right direction toward increasing the stability of low mass aircraft.

Wonder if the mass is low enough for a parachute to be used as a final failsafe.

It absolutely is!

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

#40

Post by looping__lui »

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 30min pre-checking the aircraft, checking the weather, reading NOTAMS etc. Not to mention the potentially pretty intensive communication with ATC et al. required to make sure everybody stays safe.

Getting a pilot license is magnitudes more work than getting a drivers license, proficiency has to be continuously demonstrated, maintaining airworthiness of an airplane isn’t exactly cheap either and pretty heavily regulated.

And all that should be “automated”, certified and approved?

Not saying things can’t be automated - but no shit, the spark plugs in a Cessna are like 50$ each for that “aviation certificate”...

Even if there ARE rules and guidelines how to certify autonomous vehicles like that - like how does anybody imagine that a novel aerial vehicle like this actually IS CERTIFIED within a lifetime?

Pilots still walk around a multi-million $ fighter jet or aircraft equipped with the most sophisticated avionics because “a bird nest in the engine intake is hard to detect and difficult to resolve mid flight”.

Investing in one of the most heavily regulated, difficult to scale and extremely expensive to operate industries is brave... Even more so when this industry is low margin and “kept dying every couple of years”...

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