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Launch HN: Airhart Aeronautics (YC S22) – A modern personal airplane

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Launch HN: Airhart Aeronautics (YC S22) – A modern personal airplane

#441

Post by epolanski »

system2 wrote: post #382
dartharva wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't take a train to anywhere you want. Tracks will always be less accessible than roads or the sky.

It is not the #1 reason. #1 reason is being in the same train with other human beings. Nobody wants to deal with public transportation anxiety. Trains are so relaxed and loose security compared to airplanes.

I've never ever had anything happen to me on a train in 37 years of life.

My SO takes the train everyday to go to work, literally every day (we live in Colonna, near Rome, and she works in Rome center) and this has never happened to her.

There are downsides, trains might be full at peak times like 7.30 AM and you get to stand in middle of many other people, but what would the alternative be? Twice the amount of time and a magnitude of order more of stress to get there by car? She doesn't even need to buy a car, we only own one in our household and it sits in the garage most of the time.

Re: Launch HN: Airhart Aeronautics (YC S22) – A modern personal airplane

#442

Post by wazdra »

DandyDev wrote: post #356
b-side wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, trains for passengers can only work for tiny low-population countries like China and Japan.

Trains work very well in densely populated areas, even if its logistically challenging. I live in the Netherlands and despite what detractors would tell you, it’s impressive how on time the Dutch railways can keep such a complex schedule.

Indeed a great system, but oh so expensive...

Re: Launch HN: Airhart Aeronautics (YC S22) – A modern personal airplane

#443

Post by creshal »

yunohn wrote: post #434
AdrianB1 wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

There's three speed categories as far as the EU is concerned:

- highway

- not highway, not city

- city

The 90-110km/h limits of regular roads tends to hit the sweet spot of engines more reliably than the 130+ of highways, a lot of smaller European car engines are uncomfortably close to redlining at 130+, especially older ones.

Re: Launch HN: Airhart Aeronautics (YC S22) – A modern personal airplane

#444

Post by Tade0 »

dagw wrote: post #405
b-side wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's a train line close to me which runs on tracks parallel to a freight line.

The company maintaining the latter was asked several times if their infrastructure could be used, but they refused each time, so the passenger line, which was always there, just in a state of disrepair, had to be refurbished at great expense.

I'm happy with the result though because like in every track having just one line, the trains are amazingly punctual.

Re: Launch HN: Airhart Aeronautics (YC S22) – A modern personal airplane

#445

Post by 9dev »

ctoth wrote: post #185
9dev wrote: post #158

I understand the excitement on a technical level, and your plan sure sounds neat; and I definitely have a lot of respect on a personal level. On the other hand, humanity is rolling head-first into a climate crisis, won’t stop emitting way too much CO2, and people generally refuse to adapt their lifestyle even a modicum in face of an exponentially growing list of problems. Do we really need even more personal aviation…

> Do we really need even more personal aviation in the situation we’re currently facing? Yes? What's to stop them from using the fly-by-wire tech on a battery-powered, solar-powered, or hydrogen-powered airplane as they become viable? What in particular does the motive power for the prototype have to do with global warming? Is flying inherently bad even if carbon-free? I certainly don't think so! Mad props to the eng…

> Is flying inherently bad even if carbon-free? I certainly don't think so!

No plane is ever going to be carbon-free. The energy source doesn't even matter—producing and transporting the constituent parts and involved people has its own, big, footprint. If a single employee drives to the factory, it's no longer carbon-free; you've just externalized the cost.

If your house is burning, you don't use an induction stove instead of gas and say "everything is fine, this thing doesn't ignite as easily, and I'm really hungry"—you focus on extinguishing the fire first.

So instead of decomissioning planes and radically cutting emissions that destroy the biosphere, apparently we'd rather build new planes so more people can fly and destroy it even faster. Marvellous creatures we are indeed.

Re: Launch HN: Airhart Aeronautics (YC S22) – A modern personal airplane

#446

Post by danielschonfeld »

lovecg wrote: post #352
danielschonfeld wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While some base to final stall accidents are as simple as you make it sound a good chunk of them happen when you try to come OUT of the turn at an already slow speed increasing the angle of attack on one wing alone. The stall and subsequent spin catches the pilot entirely surprised unaware of why they’re even stalling and with very little escape bandwidth. The FAA has been trying for better angle of attack instrument…

That makes a lot of sense, interested to learn more about this, any statistics you’re aware of on this topic?

I don’t have those I’m sorry. Not that much into it.

If you need a better understanding look for a video of a pilot I think in South Africa or Australia who took a cameraman and his wife and stalled shortly after takeoff.

It’s interesting to see how many warning signs throughout the whole video are glaring at him yet he keeps flying all the way into the crash. What’s also interesting is that that’s it. Just warning signs but if you really try to put yourself in his shoes it’s entirely hard to accept the warnings as everything on surface level understanding seems normal, controlled and flat. Very very very flat.

I think the biggest problem with real life stalls as compared to training world ones are that they are either more benign or entirely out of left field and believing you’re about to go into one doesn’t even begin to enter the pilot’s mind let alone correct recovery techniques.

Re: Launch HN: Airhart Aeronautics (YC S22) – A modern personal airplane

#447

Post by sdeframond »

this15testingg wrote: post #440
sdeframond wrote: post #431

> 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…

but you get to "beat traffic"! lol

Joking aside, that's an interesting point actually, since it would probably be a common argument for this this type of transportation.

However I doubt it would work for the masses due to Jevon's Paradox https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

Re: Launch HN: Airhart Aeronautics (YC S22) – A modern personal airplane

#449

Post by frankdenbow »

Congrats on launch! Definitely interested to see where you go with this. What I was looking for on the site was more about what the differentiators are compared to the standard planes in the category. A bit more about that and the mission would go a long way (some of what you say here should be on the site). Live reaction here: https://youtu.be/oklA3qnTbsc

Re: Launch HN: Airhart Aeronautics (YC S22) – A modern personal airplane

#450

Post by Tade0 »

epolanski wrote: post #239

It's insane the length we go as humans (in the US at least) to not invest in the easiest, most cost-effective and environmentally friendly mode of transportation: trains. Hyperloops, wider and wider highways, now personal airplanes. Anything but goddamn trains. It's mental to me. Wish the best to the startup, after all they are filling a void someone else would, but still, not happy with the direction transport is go…

It's not actually cost-efficient if you take into account one factor: demographics, or specifically: staffing.

A crew member of a train has a very demanding job. The shifts are highly irregular and you may have to spend the night far from home. In this regard it's even worse than flying.

Someone has to maintain the infrastructure, which by its very nature can also be in remote places.

Particularly busy railroad crossings also require staffing, even if they're ostensibly in the middle of nowhere.

Very few people in our ageing societies want this sort of life and you have to incentivise them to do it, which adds costs.

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