Uber’s Flying Taxi | Hacker News Reader

Uber’s Flying Taxi

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> Use that expertise to build a tilt-rotor commercial plane.

They have, it's called the AW609. And like its predecessor V-22, it has crashed and killed the occupants early on and is nowhere near commercial readiness.

Uber's estimates of commercial VTOL flight on an untested airframe by 2023 is total garbage, and they have to know it. The US military has sunk $50 Billion dollars into this problem over the last 30 years and still aren't there.

My guess is that Uber simply wants to maintain some hope of future growth, particularly with their autonomous car program in shambles.

PS I sincerely hope I'm wrong.

Came here to say exactly this. I'd add that of the non-aerospace tech companies that have tried to build planes, I'm not aware of any that have launched commercially and I can only think of one that has ever flown.

Turns out that building commercial aircraft is still hard.

making flying things is easy these days

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQK9m_OBVgY

>The US military has sunk $50 Billion dollars into this problem over the last 30 years and still aren't there.

Bell X22 ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arXpHn9DPYo ) was technically pretty successful from the start. The only disadvantage vs. V-22 is the speed - that speed though comes at the cost of lesser stability and safety and higher complexity of V-22. For commercial application the priorities would be different, and thus i think the multirotor, being more easy to develop, would come cheaper and sooner than that while any commercialization of V-22 is doomed from the start.

The X-22 was in no way more stable or safer than the V-22 it had just as much problems at start and unlike the V-22 which was based on the XV-3 and XV-15 those problems were not mainly in manufacturing.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_XV-3

Haha, yes. Glad you said this. I don't know the exact requirement on FAA approving a new airplane / VTOL whatever, but I do know it takes a lot of time... Same reason I thought the supersonic company was a bit ambitious on their timeframe as well.

Development of a new airplane takes a long time. Trying to certify a plane by similarity usually takes 4-5 years, clean sheet design would take even longer.

Dassault's Falcon 6X (largely derived off the 5X that was cancelled due to design issues from the engine supplier Safran) was only just announced and isn't scheduled to go on sale until 2022, and a good portion of its design work has already been completed.

> The US military has sunk $50 Billion dollars into this problem over the last 30 years and still aren't there.

And that's not the whole cost and time; they've been working on tiltrotors since the 1940s.

Uber's new slogan: We can kill you on the ground, we can kill you in the air.

It sounds like the typical corner-cutting Uber.

Sarcastic humor, but the fact of the matter is that Uber has a history of ignoring inconvenient laws, and the FAA really doesn't approve of "move fast and break things" in their jurisdiction.

> My guess is that Uber simply wants to maintain some hope of future growth, particularly with their autonomous car program in shambles.

They also benefit from future free advertising. Everytime you'll see a bit of news talking about autonomous drones, flying taxis, or the like, you can bet that the writer will mention Uber, thus giving them free Brand recognition. The same happened with Amazon's delivery drones, or Uber self driving cabs.

I missread that as "self driving crabs" and now I want to see that. :-)

You jest, but cybernetic implants to remote control cockroaches and flying beetles is a thing, and even normal people can buy the former (RoboRoach Bundle is about US$160), so I wouldn’t be very surprised if someone makes a crab-based delivery cyborg.

Wow. That's actually mind blowing... I never would have thought that neural interfacing could be so cheap and affordable

Neural interfacing is not that complicated. It's just a microcontroller with two of the GPIO pins connected to antenna nerves, at most $5 worth of hardware.

In similar fashion, you can "mind control" a cat with a laser pointer.

Um, all crabs are self driving when alive.

Bell is also currently working on the V-280 Valor which is more of a direct successor to the V-22.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_V-280_Valor

Not only is it an untested VTOL airframe that'll be commercially available in 5 years, it's an electric plane that will have 60 mile range and 5 minute recharge time. I'm shocked that the articles writing about this thing take all these ridiculous claims at face value.

> The US military has sunk $50 Billion dollars into this problem over the last 30 years and still aren't there.

I suppose by "this problem" you referred to tilt-rotor technology. If so V-22 is combat ready, and has been deployed since 2007. Not sure what "still aren't there" means.

The next generation, Bell V-280 is in active development and already made the first flight [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_V-280_Valor

The V-22 also known as the "elevator of death" [1]

[1] https://medium.com/war-is-boring/your-periodic-reminder-that...

Worth noting that after the initial problems the V-22 turned into the safest rotorcraft that the marines have to offer.

[1] http://www.lexingtoninstitute.org/v-22-is-the-safest-most-su...

Also worth noting is that a bit of searching found this connection between Boeing and Lexington Institute:

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/lexington-institutes-w...

"The Lexington Institute, in fact, is the one receiving money from a narrow corporate interest — Boeing."

EDIT: The only reason I looked for this connection was beacause the GP article was nicely written, long, and detailed, while the Lexington Institute seemed fluffy.

"[Uber's] electrically powered [concept aircraft] with two rotors for vertical flight and one for horizontal flight [...] is reminiscent of the V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor, where the propellers transition from vertical flight to horizontal – the difference being Uber’s rotors are fixed."

Whut the funk??!? How is this in any way similar??? Uh, correct me if I don't see something, but to me this is like saying something like: "Tesla Model 3 is similar to the Caterpillar CS-533E drum roller [1] — the difference being Tesla has 4 wheels"...

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caterpillar_CS-533E

I'm in no way an aircraft person, but if I were to try to look for similarities to something, the following are more like what I'd think of:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrodyne

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autogyro

Similar in the sense that they have the same manufacturer I guess so there might be some shared tech. But other than that I agree with you, the Osprey is a tiltrotor aircraft whereas the Uber aircraft is not. Like you say it's more of an Autogyro.

I think the main difference here is that in the Autogyro and Gyrodyne the rotor is basically acting as a wing (either through autorotation for the Autogyro or the application of limited power for the Gyrodyne) while everything I have seen of the Uber fantasy and similar drone scale-ups uses powered rotors for most of the vertical lift.

Will this thing try to navigate as well as Uber's car-based navigation that occasionally tells its drivers in Las Vegas that the best route from the airport to The Bellagio is through the lobby of the MGM?

> A private pilot’s license takes a minimum of 40 hours of flying time

Wow, you can get a pilot's license that quick? In Germany you need 30h of driving just to get a regular car license. No large trailer or truck.

You still need to spend a lot of time in theory, and especially in Germany you need your radio certificates in English and German (which themselves take a long time).

After that, you can only fly a very limited subset of aircraft during the day under a certain altitude (and possibly certain weather conditions?). If you want to fly at night you need to get a certification for instrument flying.

In the U.S., a private pilot may fly at night with no additional training or rating.

Yes, that is the minimum number of required flight hours, but a Certificated Flight Instructor (CFI) must endorse a student pilot to take the practical test or checkride. A CFI’s certificate renews automatically if 80% of the people (and at least five of them) she endorses over a two-year period pass the checkride on the first attempt.

I have heard the U.S. average for number of flight hours logged prior to taking the private checkride is about 70. I know a couple of people who passed the forty hours total time (TT) mark on the flight to go meet the Designated Pilot Examiner (DPE) to take the checkride!

That's for a lightweight plane that costs a lot less than your car/truck.

Getting to fly a huge Boeing/Airbus takes years.

Why not a full-size multi-rotor automated drone that can carry 4 people and luggage?

The answer to questions like these is almost always "power density and safety".

oh hell no.

What's the glideslope of a multirotor vehicle?

That's a running joke in the aviation industry - Zero.

They do not fly so much as... plummet...

Whatever it wants, if it's using sufficiently redundant systems.

The article reads like machine- or cocaine-generated slop. There doesn't seem to be a single credible assertion in it. It has literally no point, as the author openly admits near the end of the article ("just my thoughts"), just before he closes by asking us to read his profound insights into why flying things shouldn't be heavy. This prose would receive a failing grade in a high school composition class.

I'm trying to resist the "Why is this on HN?" question, but can't. This is appalling dreck and doesn't belong here.

My guess is that there would be no pilots. Given they are attempting to get rid of drivers, getting rid of pilots in VTOL seems like an easier proposition with a large added weight advantage.

Yeah kind of weird that the article didn't even consider it. It seems like a non-starter with a pilot.

I think fully autonomous flight is a solution, but I also think it's further away than people imagine. For airplanes at least, the trickiest segments of flight are takeoffs and landings and even with today's advanced avionics suites, pilots are still in control for those portions of flight.

The other big factor is the passengers. Even if technology for fully autonomous passenger flight is available in the next 10 years, I don't think people will trust planes flying themselves.

DJI drones have been able to navigate back to their takeoff point and land automatically for a while now. Landing's much easier for a multicopter than for a fixed wing aircraft.

Ours went haywire and crashed into a pond onetime when we used the Return to Home feature. YMMV

I didn't say I'd ride on one personally. :P Just that the basics are solved, and reliability is a Simple Matter Of Engineering.

This is already happening and with testing in Dubai. http://www.ehang.com/ehang184

https://www.google.com.au/amp/s/www.zdnet.com/google-amp/art...

No idea why I have been downvotes above. Great to see intelligent conversations is rewarded with down votes here.

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