Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

551–560 of 632 posts

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

#551

Post by eddyzh »

lutorm wrote: post #458
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…

The downfall of trains is that they require track, which require rights of way. Trains are cost-effective if a lot of people make the same trip, and that's after a massive investment cost. No one in their right mind would fly their small airplane between two cities that were connected by high-speed rail. But if you're going from somewhere small to somewhere else small, trains will never be a cost-effective (or effici…

Many European countries disagree. In the Netherlands (40k km2) there are about 400 trainstations and all of them cost a fraction of any reasonable airstrip and can go to the heart of the town.

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

#552

Post by bombcar »

danielschonfeld wrote: post #236
aeternum wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excellent points, it's really these other aspects that get pilots into trouble. For example it's crazy that most pilots are still taught to calculate W&B using printed charts and approximate takeoff performance. I think you could save more general aviation lives with a fairly minimal system. A gas gauge sensor that calculates whether you have enough fuel to get to your destination + reserve. Avionics where you input…

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…

The FAA also has the NTSB investigate every crash and accident, and if it was something as simple as "change the airport patterns to be larger and faster" or "make more airports straight in" it would have already been done.

Fancier aeronautics has a way of letting the plane get ahead of the pilot even faster.

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

#553

Post by FabHK »

indymike wrote: post #454
mattmaroon wrote: post #98

I was shocked when learning to fly how much GA tech was stuck in some weird pre-World War II era state. Everything seems so needlessly complicated. Even small aircraft cost so much that I couldn’t imagine a computer controlled system and fly by wire would be cost prohibitive. Even a new C172 is close to $400k at the low end, and anything you’d actually want to fly is much more. A few grand in electronics seems worth…

> I was shocked when learning to fly how much GA tech was stuck in some weird pre-World War II era state. This is accurate. Between regulations and insurability, pilots have the choice of newer, less expensive, and more innovative experimental aircraft that are expensive to insure, or FAA-approved aircraft that were not even state of the art in 1952. It's so bad that most people are flying refurbished 1970s model pla…

It's not quite as bad. The Cirrus SR20 and the Diamond DA40 are basically from around 2000, the Tecnam P2010 is from 2011 (all fully certified).

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

#554

Post by _jss »

limitedfrom wrote: post #270
_jss wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take a look at the more economical modern GA aircraft. A Cirrus SR22 can run at 10 gallons per hour, with a ground speed of 160+ mph. Yes, it’s more total fuel consumption than a car (but in an hour covering 2x the distance, and allowing to travel more directly) but not at all close to turbine or turboprops. At the extremely cheap (accessible to more pilots) side for pressurized planes, fuel burn is going to be 40gph…

You can argue for its convenience/speed/fun, but fuel efficiency does not look good for GA aircraft. Even for your modern GA aircraft example, it literally comes to 16 mpg. This is as bad as worst of the trucks out there. While it's great if existing use cases of GA aircrafts would become more efficient, adding demand in this area (more hobbyists, more rich people shuttling use, encouraging people to live in very rem…

All that is true, but it’s also getting better. And 16mpg over shorter routes (a 100nm flight vs 200 mile drive is not unusual) makes it harder to compare apples to oranges.

We don’t really have hybrid planes yet, which will likely help in the most inefficient parts of flying (climb).

My comment is to add more information to the discussion to consider many aspects, not to make claims that it’s a fuel-sensible method of travel. I am excited for innovation here, just like I am excited for the continued improvements in hybrid and electric cars.

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

#555

Post by bluGill »

n_ermosh wrote: post #546
bluGill wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think he can get the required certifications and charge a reasonable price for this plane. There are not enough people interested in a personal airplane at any price to support the costs to bring a new one in the air. You can rebuild all current airplane's (most built before 1980) for much less than the costs to certify a modern replacement, and only then can you start asking what it costs to build that repla…

There's an interesting dynamic here--we (the industry today) are more okay with flying rickety airplanes from the 70s before flying something built with more modern engineering and production techniques. > As I understand it the idea here is to expand the market and spread certification costs out over more planes. exactly. > There are not enough people interested in a personal airplane at any price to support the cos…

I'm not wishing you bad luck, but I remain pessimistic about your ability to get something certified and charge a reasonable price.

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

#556

Post by FabHK »

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…

A Diamond DA40 does around 28 miles per gallon (The environmental impact is not the main issue here.

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

#557

Post by volkk »

bluerooibos wrote: post #424
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…

Absolutely agree. Really quite tired of living in a country which focuses on individualised transport and car centric infrastructure. It's an absolute delight to get around in a country like Japan where I don't have to rely on a car at all.

i actually wonder what the statistics look like across the entire country of whether people actually like cars vs its the only way to get around. HN is a bubble including most of city folk. Most people I know love their cars, including myself. I love the freedom of leaving whenever i want, going wherever i want. However, i also adore trains. Both have their place. I think a personal (ideally extremely safe) airplane sounds like a dream to me. I also think we should have trains! The more the merrier! Choice is important and while you may not care for cars if you have all of the public transit possible, others do. I still find myself going for drives and I'm someone who lives in NYC with probably the best transit system in the US.

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

#558

Post by FabHK »

callalex wrote: post #282
n_ermosh wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yep! lots of interesting stuff indeed! Our plane will be ~7 gph at cruise burning unleaded fuels and fly ~170mph over the ground (with no wind)

That’s only 25 mpg which is widely considered to be unacceptably unsustainable even in the short term.

So, reducing car emissions by a just 1% would be way better for the environment than entirely removing all piston engine aviation.

There are about 15m cars sold in the US every year, but around 1500 piston engine planes. That's a factor of 10,000. There are some 210m cars in use in the USA, but around 150k piston engine planes. That's a factor of 1400 (reflecting the fact that planes have a much longer life than cars, further contributing to their lower environmental impact).

Every day, cars burn more fuel than light airplanes burn in a year.

This project is a minuscule rounding error in climate change drivers.

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

#559

Post by FabHK »

entropie wrote: post #517
lutorm wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Don't confuse gallons per hour with gallons per mile.

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

#560

Post by dyauspitr »

rangestransform wrote: post #525
bluerooibos wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely agree. Really quite tired of living in a country which focuses on individualised transport and car centric infrastructure. It's an absolute delight to get around in a country like Japan where I don't have to rely on a car at all.

At least for me, getting around by train in Japan is preferable because of how convenient and fast it is, not because of any inherent advantage of public transport, and definitely not because I want to bear a cross for the greater good of society. Japanese society also contributes to how pleasant public transit is there, in comparison to the dregs of society that use NYC public transit. If I could have a 300kph auton…

How is the pod going to get you to your door. You would need a rail line leading to every home which is ridiculous.
Post reply on HN