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

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

#511

Post by dolmen »

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 feel much more anxious about car traffic (which is about massive number of people in metal boxes) where I rely on all the other drivers to be careful than about public transportation where the driver is a trained professional and everything is highly regulated for safety (much stricter rules than for personal cars).

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

#512

Post by bluGill »

dartharva wrote: post #392
yard2010 wrote: post #372

Earlier 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?

>the next train is scheduled in half an hour?

Fire your transit leadership. Trains should be running every 5 minutes all day every day (and also have a backup option for night service while you do track maintenance). Incompetent leadership isn't doing that.

For a bus you are sometimes forced to do cost/benefit and run as little as every half hour, but if you have trains that means you have enough demand to run every 5 minutes (if you don't that means you shouldn't have a train at all - a bus is cheaper).

It isn't just doctors that sometimes have an emergency. People have places to be, trying to figure out when the transit system is coming shouldn't be a problem.

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

#513

Post by Tade0 »

wiether wrote: post #487
Tade0 wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cross…

> It's not actually cost-efficient if you take into account one factor: demographics, or specifically: staffing. Cars and planes are cost-efficient if you *don't* take into account their environmental and human cost. Otherwise bikes and trains are crazy cheap.

Doesn't change the fact that you're increasingly hard-pressed to find anyone willing to do it.

Same goes for any type of public transport. The problem is exacerbated in regions of the world which can't rely on immigrants, like mine. I live in a city of 650k inhabitants. The local public transport authority says that they would need an additional 100 drivers to cover all the routes. No takers for these roles and it has been like that for two years at least, despite incentives.

It's crazy because inadequate public transport causes people to choose cars instead, which in turn produce traffic that further hampers mass transit.

Railways have been winding down for decades now and it got to a point where flying between cities in more accessible, punctual and cheap.

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

#514

Post by Tade0 »

dolmen wrote: post #505
Tade0 wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cross…

> A crew member of a train has a very demanding job. The ratio of staff on a train to the count of passengers is much lower than on a bus or in a plane. Even less for freight. > 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. This assume either long distance trains or slow trains. This can be solved Why would have shift to be irregular. Tr…

> I recommend to come to Europe

I am European and on my side of the continent railways have been winding down for years now - partly due to the reasons I mentioned.

> for a trip in the TGV. Paris to Marseille (650 km) in 3 hours from city center to city center.

That's great, but wasn't it in France where the government made a (botched) attempt at making flying less attractive by increasing its cost?

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

#515

Post by jay-barronville »

EncomLab wrote: post #508
jay-barronville wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good for you. Why didn’t you answer my question though? > Have you considered that maybe Airhart and its founders have thought through those inevitable hurdles and decided to push forward anyway? Do you genuinely think you’re the first person to tell them all of the reasons why they’re going to fail? Wouldn’t it be much more useful to try to understand, in good faith, why they’re pushing forward with this venture any…

Have you considered that a significant number of companies that are presented - in good faith - as revolutionary startups that will open aviation to the masses are just investment schemes? I understand that they are pushing forward with this venture and are actively seeking investments "despite the hurdles" - what is your play in this?

> Have you considered that a significant number of companies that are presented - in good faith - as revolutionary startups that will open aviation to the masses are just investment schemes?

So you’re suggesting that Airhart is just engaged in an investment scheme? Do you have any evidence to support that?

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

#516

Post by bluGill »

morsch wrote: post #128
purplerhino wrote: post #69

What 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…

It's not just a question of whether they generate more GHG per mile, it's a question of whether they generate more GHG per hour . You wouldn't make a thousand mile trip over the weekend by car, but people don't bat an eye doing it by plane.

> You wouldn't make a thousand mile trip over the weekend by car, but people don't bat an eye doing it by plane.

You wouldn't take that by car? I would and I'm not an outlier in the midwest - many of us do it all the time. There just isn't a better option for a family. Flying would cost thousands of dollars more and you risk missing a connection and the trip taking even longer. The train doesn't really go many places in the US and isn't cheap. Just get in the car and travel on your own time - it is relaxing after a while. If you get bored stop to see some small town attraction for an hour and continue on.

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

#517

Post by entropie »

lutorm wrote: post #375
entropie wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For my part, I find it questionable to invest in and develop a transport technology that consumes seven times as much fossil fuel as a car. You give consumption of 7 gallons in cruise mode. I don't want to know what is burnt during take-off or landing.

How do you get seven times? Takeoff constitutes a negligible part of the total fuel consumption. Climb to altitude uses more, but you get that back when landing since you're then using your stored potential energy. Small-aircraft GA is a vanishingly small fraction of total fossil fuel use, and it will be quite easy to replace that with some renewable fuel solution (compared with the huge amounts of fuel consumed by t…

> How do you get seven times?

I asked chatgpt what the average consumption of a car is; the answer was 0.5-1 gallon on a highway.

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

#518

Post by EncomLab »

jay-barronville wrote: post #510
Stevvo wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at their staff; all engineers, nobody there who has ever got anything past the FAA.

> Look at their staff; all engineers, nobody there who has ever got anything past the FAA. So what? When the Collison brothers founded Stripe, they (1) were young, (2) had no experience at all in the domain, (3) weren’t even U.S. citizens, (4) were entering a highly regulated space, and (5) were about to compete with some very powerful institutions that have existed forever worth billions and billions of dollars. In…

Are you seriously comparing a payment processor to an airplane manufacturer? Are you aware that Stripe received VC funding from Musk, Thiel and Sequoia in order to keep it from competing with PayPal and to provide a second-source provider to protect PayPal from accusations of monopolization of online processing fees? Are you aware that the storyline you are promoting is in fact a specifically curated myth?

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

#519

Post by krab »

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…

Since the railroads are heavily regulated, it's not easy to innovate there.

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

#520

Post by jay-barronville »

EncomLab wrote: post #518
jay-barronville wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Look at their staff; all engineers, nobody there who has ever got anything past the FAA. So what? When the Collison brothers founded Stripe, they (1) were young, (2) had no experience at all in the domain, (3) weren’t even U.S. citizens, (4) were entering a highly regulated space, and (5) were about to compete with some very powerful institutions that have existed forever worth billions and billions of dollars. In…

Are you seriously comparing a payment processor to an airplane manufacturer? Are you aware that Stripe received VC funding from Musk, Thiel and Sequoia in order to keep it from competing with PayPal and to provide a second-source provider to protect PayPal from accusations of monopolization of online processing fees? Are you aware that the storyline you are promoting is in fact a specifically curated myth?

> Are you seriously comparing a payment processor to an airplane manufacturer?

Clearly, my comparison had more to do with the regulation aspect than actually comparing payments and airplanes. Did you read the comment I was responding to?

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