I see Electric flight "taking off" to for small airplanes, right here in my backyard in Europe. I've been on a few flights and the adventages are huge,l. Range is still an issue. But for small stuff, I wouldn't bet on jet fuel anymore.
Launch HN: Airhart Aeronautics (YC S22) – A modern personal airplane
401–410 of 632 posts
Re: Launch HN: Airhart Aeronautics (YC S22) – A modern personal airplane
#402What are the environmental implications of transitioning people traveling by car/train to small planes? In addition to being louder and dispersing pollutants over a wider area, don't small planes generate significantly more GHG emissions than cars over the same number of miles? Also, given that planes are not nearly as easy to electrify as cars and trains (energy density is significantly lower in batteries than liqui…
Hard to tell. I have a frequent route that takes me ~ 2 hours of flight (13 liters/hour, 26 liters in total) or ~ 10 hours to drive with around 50 liters of gas. Flying means burning 50% less gas. But for others there may be better driving, how to calculate that?
The solution for most people is not to have frequent trips to a destination that's 10 hours' driving distance or to use high speed rail. Comparing rocket fuel to airplane fuel may look one option look favorable but that's not the whole picture
Re: Launch HN: Airhart Aeronautics (YC S22) – A modern personal airplane
#403Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, it’s frankly absurd and wasteful how much freight Europe moves by truck instead.
Do you have a source for that claim? Preferably a study that shows that the USA uses fewer trucks and more trains for the transport of goods than Europe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_freight_transport#Statist...
"Within the U.S. railroads carry 39.9% of freight by ton-mile, followed by trucks (33.4%)...Railways carried 17.1% of EU freight in terms of tonne-km, compared to road transport (76.4%)"
Re: Launch HN: Airhart Aeronautics (YC S22) – A modern personal airplane
#404Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn't want to make a snarky, unabashadly NIMBY comment until I read this response. For every dollar you lower barrier to entry in aviation, I'm going to be calling my local government representatives to raise it back up by two with taxes and fees. The solutions to environmental problems aren't to grow markets with technology we know is bad so we have the money to make it less bad. The solution is to make it so exp…
I take it from your attitude that you don't drive, fly commercially, buy resource-intensive consumer goods, use electricity produced from nonrenewable sources, or eat food produced from large-scale agriculture then, and agree we should make those so expensive for the average consumer that it's uneconomical to do these bad things at all? Because otherwise your comment sounds more like hypocrisy.
Perfect is the enemy of good. I fly on rare occasions and I'm against flying unnecessarily. I drive a vehicle (shared with partner) because I don't want to be a hermit, yet I'm against driving in general (of course there'll need to be exceptions for when you're moving or too old to walk to/from public transport) and rather in favor of building out the more sustainable alternatives we have already today. That's not the whole solution because we will still run out of lithium etc., but it's the best we can do today even if it's not perfect
Re: Launch HN: Airhart Aeronautics (YC S22) – A modern personal airplane
#405Earlier quoted context omitted.
Trains are for freight, and they are exceedingly good at it.
Indeed, trains for passengers can only work for tiny low-population countries like China and Japan.
Trains can work great for either passengers or freight. The problems arise when you try to do both at the same time (on the same line). If the US was to dramatically improve its passenger service it would have to either build an entirely new set of parallel tracks (which would be very expensive) or dramatically worsen its rail freight offering, which would greatly increase the number of trucks of the road.
Re: Launch HN: Airhart Aeronautics (YC S22) – A modern personal airplane
#406> In the US, trips that are 50-300 miles are almost all done by car because that distance is too short for commercial airlines and too far for public transportation. About once a month, I make a 90 mile (180 round trip) drive to see family. The drive is usually 90-100 minutes. Would GA really save time? It's half an hour for me to get to a GA airport, and then roughly half an hour to get to my family from the other G…
You will also need to account for the time to pre-flight the plane, and fuel it up, possibly wait on the taxiway, and possibly divert around weather (including to an entirely different airport if necessary).
Makes a lot of sense.
Also, I have kids. They all puked in the car when they were babies, and needed sudden pee breaks when they were potty training.
You can't just pull over a plane.
Re: Launch HN: Airhart Aeronautics (YC S22) – A modern personal airplane
#407Earlier quoted context omitted.
So your plan to reduce aircraft pollution is to… have more aircraft in the sky? Come on…
Innovation doesn't come from nowhere, and demand for air travel is not going away. So if there is a small, personal, innovative platform that makes it easier to test new propulsion technology at scale (in contrast to large commercial airliners that are less innovative), it seems entirely possible that could help with aircraft pollution in the long run
I'm sure that's what tobacco companies tell themselves also
There is also the option of not being part of the problem and finding a different job. Not an option for all employees, full ack on that, but this founder/ceo figure can absolutely make that choice
I see what you mean in that flying will always be something humanity does. We're not going to outlaw it, I have no illusions in that regard. Way too convenient and economically beneficial. Working on making it more accessible when we haven't made it even close to sustainable (with most of the solutions here today, it just needs to be scaled up and rolled out) instead of working on sustainability or alternatives to flying under a pretense of "it'll be better eventually!" is what I object to
Re: Launch HN: Airhart Aeronautics (YC S22) – A modern personal airplane
#408Earlier quoted context omitted.
A million times this. Modern and efficient train networks are the best way to travel, even for longer distances of a few thousand kilometers (night trains). Sure, there are still use cases for flying, but the dismissiveness of people who have never experienced great train travel against it just shocks me.
Hmmm I just flew from Bergamo, Italy to Liverpool, UK and it was basically four hours door to door from where I was staying to where I was going in Liverpool, and for less than €100. The train can’t do this.
Airplanes can't do this either. The reason you paid 100€ is that your ticket did not include paying for cleaning up the mess the plane has left behind
I'm happy for everyone to fly to and from work if they'd also pay for cleaning up the pollution it causes. We have several options, carbfix and olivine weathering come to mind but there's also at least one company who turns atmospheric CO2 back into fuel, we just need to start doing it after realising that what we're doing is only possible because the climate hasn't caught up with current habits yet
Re: Launch HN: Airhart Aeronautics (YC S22) – A modern personal airplane
#409Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only in the beginning and it's not linear. One track can be used by an infinite amount of people with very little to no congestion, unlike roads.
You also can't travel anytime you want. What happens when a doctor has to reach his hospital for a critical emergency but the next train is scheduled in half an hour?
That is why you have rosters.
Re: Launch HN: Airhart Aeronautics (YC S22) – A modern personal airplane
#410Earlier quoted context omitted.
>We don't have trains If you take optimizing transportation options as a holistic problem, rather than focusing on any individual user who needs to travel those 50-500 km distances, more trains is a far more straightforward and efficient investment than flying cars, no? >We also have a much larger airport infrastructure and a complex airspace system that handles the issue of flying over populated areas and flying app…
> If you take optimizing transportation options as a holistic problem, rather than focusing on any individual user who needs to travel those 50-500 km distances, more trains is a far more straightforward and efficient investment than flying cars, no? maybe. But people are still tied to the trains schedule and don't have the "get in a go" freedom that they do with a car. I don't know the details of what it actually ta…
I don't feel tied to train schedules when they go between cities every 15 minutes and between countries every two hours or so. That's the situation near me currently and that's sufficient to not look at a schedule for short trips but just show up, and for the holiday-distanced trips you need to plan it anyway and leaving an hour later is not going to make any difference