Why Is Kitty Hawk's Flying Taxi Taking Off in New Zealand Instead of California?
reason.com
reason.com
New Zealand is a small nation of less than five million people. It's a competitive advantage to be able to offer greater and more nuanced accomodation. Anything New Zealand can test at a smaller scale and prove out, that larger countries can then learn from and adopt, is a win all around.
The government system of New Zealand is radically smaller and you can interface far more directly and easily with it accordingly. Their government is ~1/90th the size of the US Federal Government + States. For something like Kitty Hawk, it makes a lot of sense to prove the concept first before engaging a bureacracy the size of the US Govt + States (California in this case). If a country like New Zealand does things right, that will always be the case no matter how hard the US tries.
It's true our government is simply too big. Most of the serious problems we have, stem mostly from the inherent scale. We would be happier and better-governed if the Union were broken up in about ten pieces.
I'm sure these would do fine in Auckland or Christchurch, but they'd be grounded most of the year in Wellington. For people who are interested, look up videos of pilots landing in Wellington on high wind days. My airlines require separate training programs for that airport.
Wellington is just a badly placed airport.
Just as an FYI, going off the pictures from their website I'd place the test flights ~20km from Methven from the scenery in the background.
Maybe the drone guys should just start strapping cannons to the wings, then they'd be classed as assault rifles and there'd be no regulation at all.
Well, they'd need to become a Type 7 and Type 10 FFL, subject to numerous regulations by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, meaning every design would need to be subject to approval by the government only after they've ensured that it isn't easily modifiable by consumers.
If you actually do manufacture an assault cannon, it's a destructive device of greater than half inch bore, meaning it wouldn't be eligible for civilian purchase at all, so your clientele would be limited to government.
You'd be subject to paying applications fees, renewal fees, design submission fees, approval fees, etc. You'd be subject to routine inspections by the government, who can choose to disallow any product you'd like to make. Your clientele would be limited to government only, and you'd be subject to literally thousands of pages of regulations.
Smugness aside, your strategy is very flawed, as adding firearms to your device would add immense heaps of regulation, and doesn't help avoid any, whatsoever. And of course, you'd still be responsible for all the regulatory hurdles of building a drone too.
I really don't understand people that say this. Have you ever tried to buy an actual "assault" rifle, meaning a select-fire battle-ready rifle?
Even for semiautomatic rifles, the regulations are quite long. Maybe no one should own an AR-15 (though I doubt banning specifically the AR-15 would do anything since its not even the most effective gun for what people illegally and terribly use it for, people just happen to do it because its popular and in Call of Duty), but to call it "no regulation" is just silly.
That said, the regulations for purchasing a plain-old semi-auto rifle are not a particularly high hurdle. In my state (VA), you walk into store, point at gun, hand over 2 ID and a credit card, fill out a background check, and wait a few minutes for the NICS check to complete, then walk out with the gun. If you buy the gun from a private party, you get to skip the ID and NICS portion - just hand over cash and walk away with gun.
an "assault" anything, just means it looks badass (or scary).
the problem is when AR15s are used to shoot fish in a barrel, aka people in school corridors.
machine guns are very well regulated on the contrary.
>Nobody wants to wake up to an autonomous vehicle crashing through their roof, but it's possible to prevent that without driving companies overseas. Requiring passenger services to secure a hefty amount of insurance is one approach—strict regulations would exist, but would be drafted by insurers.
Unless I am missing something, that would not avoid the drone/whatever to crash through one's roof, maybe the insurance will add a further layer of safety precautions, and the damages would be covered but initially doing flying tests and testing service where there are less roofs/people seems to me like a very good idea.
Similar to automotive safety features. Extra air-bags or ABS systems reduce accident, lowering premiums, driving demand for those features.
Sure, I understand that, but it's not the same thing.
An extra air bag still doesn't prevent at all the crash (it may minimize fatalities and reduce injuries of the people inside the car).
An ABS system may - in some cases - i.e. as an example on slippery roads, prevent incidents.
If a car swerves and hits a cyclist the airbags and ABS won't do anything (for the cyclist), and having a separate, protected cycle lanes (not allowing cars were cyclists are) or not allowing cyclists on trafficked high speed roads seems to me anyway a good idea.
An insurance - as said - may increase safety requirements, and each added safety requirement may (or may not) contribute to less crashes, but it's not like it will directly prevent incidents, that is what sounded "odd" to me.
Did the article say insurance would directly prevent crashes? That's not the way I read it. I read it as one approach to reducing the likelihood of crashes is to require hefty insurance coverage, which shouldn't sound "odd" to you at all unless you misread it.
"Nobody wants to wake up to an autonomous vehicle crashing through their roof, but it's possible to prevent that ..."
Further, Pearse admits he was not the first to achieve flight.
"In two letters, published in 1915 and 1928, the inventor writes of February or March 1904 as the time when he ‘set out to solve the problem of aerial navigation’. He also states that he did not achieve proper flight and did not beat the American brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright, who flew on 17 December 1903."
But, I wonder what the energy cost / carbon footprint is for such flying devices?
Risk management has to be part of the choice of test location. The US is lawsuit-happy compared to other jurisdictions. And, the sponsor of this project has what lawyers like to call "deep pockets."
The type of aircraft - essentially an electrical multicopter - is so new, that you would have to fear some failures in testing.
Applies to innovation too, and to California.
there's a bit of a bottleneck getting from the south island to the north island.
but maybe i've underestimated the size of the country.
How is it in any way better than this?
> Why is Kitty Hawk's flying taxi taking off in New Zealand instead of California?
> Why Is Kitty Hawk's Flying Taxi Taking Off in New Zealand Instead of California?
What was it before?
There are titles where it doesn't make a difference, some are so-so, and some are really bad. But I'm fairly certain there is no case where it makes it better (easier to read).
Not a single reply in this thread addressed the issue at point. People are just defensive, because that's what they are used to, and don't like it being called stupid (even though no one can say it isn't).
PS: It's not the hyperbole that is being downvoted either. People are touchy every time I bring this up.