431–440 of 632 posts
I am surprised you don't mention fuel efficiency. Flying a small airplane is much less efficient than driving a car, especially on shorter trips due to take off and landing.
And cars are already burning too much fuel, so...
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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…
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I live in a suburb near a county airport. I cannot fathom a life with Tesla owners flying over where my kids and I bbq. This idea is great, but people should still be licensed for the real safety protocols e.g. radio and not crashing into others.
This is such a common argument for everything NIMBY. Your point remains valid, but the argument you've presented comes across uninspired. What if you had no way to stop or from happening; what do you think might be reasonable mitigation steps that regulators could take to minimize the risk to your BBQ? If something becomes an inevitability, you probably should be prepared with an argument that is accepting of that in…
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> Even if you had to make the auto trip 400 km because roads aren't as direct, this comes to 51 kg CO2. What if there's a sogging great mountain range in the middle and I literally do need to drive 2-3x as far, because (rail) tunnels take something between 2 and 3 decades to build and won't be finished before 2040, if any are even planned to begin with?
That's exactly the case. Driving from Bucharest to Vatra Dornei, Romania. No highway yet, the one in construction (A7) is still going around the Carpathian mountains for 370km, it will make the drive faster but not shorter. Also driving highway speed takes more gas.
Hmmm, in my experience, highway speeds are conducive to ICE efficiency and use less gas than city traffic stop and go results in. It also disperses pollution outside the areas people work/reside in.
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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…
Yet despite airlines not being able to do it, it happened.
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I do believe that’s a factor (and mentioned it further down) but there are shockingly few companies that build planes. The regulatory cost is amortized over the number of planes built. If people bought planes the way they buy cars, they’d cost far less. Hence the chicken/egg problem I mentioned.
> but there are shockingly few companies that build planes. Because the ones who try go bankrupt twice before they manage to certify their planes? If ever.
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I think that was his point. To calculate if you are going to stall in a final, you need to know your weight and flap setting to see if you will exceed the critical angle of attack when doing the turn, exactly because the speed isn’t constant.
No, you just need an angle of attack sensor. These are increasingly available for small GA planes.
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I’m willing to bet the major barriers are money and time.
A $500k aircraft that still requires a PPL solves neither of those, and getting the PPL is contingent on passing the medical, both inititally and at regular intervals thereafter.
I think 90% people who aren’t older than 60 or so would get the medical without a problem. If you would remove the medical requirement, you wouldn’t suddenly have double the private pilots. If planes were 1/10th of the price they currently are (both in purchase and operation), you would. Medical isn’t the main blocker to private aviation.
> The problem is that small airplane technology hasn’t innovated and is stuck in the past. Flying a small airplane is complicated, mentally taxing, and dangerous—about 28x more dangerous than driving a car. I am surprised you don't mention fuel efficiency. Flying a small airplane is much less efficient than driving a car, especially on shorter trips due to take off and landing. And cars are already burning too much f…