I don't want some rich dude flying over my house just because he/she can afford to take a airtaxi from the airport to city center while everyone else uses car or train.
For other use cases they can do what they want. Australian outback perhaps.
But airspace pollution and a potential small airplane crashing down in a city? No way.
Wait until you see the motor carriages they claim are going to replace horses one day.
Learning to drive and learning to fly isn’t the same bar today.
And if Lilium think Palo Alto to San Francisco could be $50, they’re gonna need _alot_ of flights to balance their costs.
Autorotations are by no means a "gimme", but if every autorotation "likely" caused significant injuries, there wouldn't be enough helicopters or pilots to go around (no pun intended).
They will probably want to fly across non easy terrain because otherwise you could just use some other means than an expensive helicopter.
Hight perhaps but you will fly across water, woods, power lines, cities.
That’s so the craft can stay in the “autorotation possible” section of the HV diagram as much as possible.
Can you quantify this?
> Most helicopter crashes happen outside that narrow zone of survivability.
AFAIK the majority of helicopter crashes are not caused by a loss of engine power, but autorotation is relevant specifically in that context. It's not relevant to helicopters crashing into hills during storms, or hitting wires with the rotor, or anything like that. We're discussing what happens if the engine stops, not all accident scenarios.
> Even if an autorotation is semi-pulled off it's likely to be a hard landing that causes significant injuries.
Yes, but it's better than being dead.
Control authority yes, but altitude is always a substitute for forward air speed (and is an even better substitute for the eVTOL planes than helicopters).
This is why you rarely see them do that, instead they circle - which any small plane could do but the helicopter can hover if needed. It’s just the most dangerous part.
There's also a lot of other things that can impact the event - for example, the crash I mentioned involved bad weather, tired crew, and losing both engines at once due to icing. They autorotated and nobody died... but they fell into a forest, landed hard enough to destroy undercarriage, and the first officer survived by accident due to helping get passengers into position when a tree smashed his station.
EDIT: corrected captain to first officer, as visible in this photo: https://static.polityka.pl/_resource/res/path/bc/08/bc086fae... (it's Mi-8, so captain sits on the left, not on the right as is normal in western helicopters)
That’s kind of a given, since the successful autorotations do not qualify as crashes.
2020: 94 accidents, 19 fatal accidents, 35 fatalities, 22% decrease in accidents compared to 2019, 36% decrease in accidents compared to 2013
2019: 121 accidents, 24 fatal accidents, 51 fatalities
2018: 122 accidents, 24 fatal accidents, 55 fatalities
2013: 146 accidents, 30 fatal accidents, 62 fatalities
Humans? A uneven roof? A busy road?
And for whom? The rich? People who can afford a few hundred dollars for a quick flight from the airport to the city?
How about no?
For example, to fly a helicopter over London requires pilots to fly only over well defined routes - although those with multiple engines are allowed more scope.
As an example, just on the topic of safety: Why would we assume these machines are relatively dangerous once they reach production? Just because they fly? I know of at least one category of vehicles where on that basis our intuition fails us to this day.
And what happens when they do fail? They are not going to explode randomly or purposefully target the closest building. So what are the chances of all fail-safes failing, and catastrophic outcomes occurring?
Why would we assume whatever this technology eventually enables will be operated by human pilots? I for one would be fairly surprised if that was to happen at any noteworthy scale. Clearly, the interesting part about this prototype is electric flight, not its HID, agreed?
So let's build cool things (electric flight is potentially a cool thing) and then gather actual data about other things it brings (some maybe not so cool), before we "no way" it without any facts on the basis of weak conjecture and personal feelings.
I don't have a particularly positive or negative opinion of the technology here, but the one good reason I can see to treat these machines as inherently dangerous is because they take all the kinetic energy of something traveling faster than a car and add the gravitational potential energy of something hundreds of feet off the ground, while not being constrained to a well-defined corridor that you can protect with safety barriers.
When cars meet stationary objects at speed they tend to make a mess. These things are likely to be lighter, but when out of control they'll be going faster, and this thing specifically, when it goes bad, will go bad carrying several hundred kilos of lithium into an uncontrolled energetic event.
If risk is probability times expected outcome, my estimate would be that Lilium comes out worse than driving on both sides of the formula. That's not a reason per se not to do it because, like you say, let's gather data. But the basic physics of the situation is also not something to ignore.
A) The reason that cars crash (crash meaning doing damage in the process of failure) is by a large margin not mechanical failure, but human error. While in this case the technology is still infantile and will, even after a couple of years of testing, certainly be more prone to mechanical failure, I see no real reason to assume that it would ever be permitted for actual inner city usage before it beats a certain range/failure-ratio, because that seems trivial to secure and exactly what regulatory bodies are made for.
B) Let's assume there will be no humans piloting these things in an urban transportation scenario, ever, because that does indeed seem incredibly dangerous and silly. I don't think we as a species have the capacity to manually navigate these things in a 3d space filled with them. I don't see any reason we have to. Let's not do that.
C) If you think about it, physics are impossibly bad for car safety. There is no time to decelerate safely and then also no safe space to evade to. In contrast, in the case of flying thingies however, you have space and time working for you: Even if parts of the machine fail, it definitely has at least an order of magnitude more seconds to manoeuvre to relative safety. Of course, catastrophic failure (big fireball in the sky) can possibly still occur (I assume), but you are not working against physics, which is great, because then all you need is outstanding engineering and appropriate fail safes. Engineers will take that over having to beat physics any day.
Advances in ai, energy storage etc.
But right now, air taxi is just inherently stupid.
We know how to build those things. There is nothing really you need to invent. you just need to build them.
The problem are things like safety, airspace (who owns it), co2, terrorism, airspace Management...
Let's talk air taxi again when we can fly fully electric, are in the right way for climate change and when air control is no longer handled by humans.
With C, we're well into "what do the safeties look like" because the assumption that you can manoeuvre at all after something Unexpected And Exciting happens is possibly rash. I don't trust that designs like this one have much unpowered lift or even that much flight control at all in a power-out state. And remember too that the whole point of these things is that they're flying over presumably dense areas. The idea that there will be somewhere safe to manoeuvre to in the seconds you may or may not have is definitely on the optimistic side.
But still, even given all that, a parachute should go a long way to being a workable "emergency stop" equivalent. There are failure states which it doesn't help with (for instance: a birdstrike goes badly enough wrong that a short-circuit starts a lithium fire which, thanks to our parachute, slowly drifts an incendiary path across entire city blocks) but in general I'd expect the benefits to outweigh the risks.
Planes will not be a solution for all transportation needs, but where it makes sense they're great. A flying bus basically, routes can be very flexibly changed depending on evolving needs.
Public transport is factors more efficient than air travel.
And yes including initial cost.
We build infrastructure to last not to throw it away 5 years later.
You need to understand how much more energy it actually costs to bring a plain up in the air and down again. We talk magnitude more energy than trains.
We can talk about this again in 20 years when solid state batteries are broken through.and sustainable energy sources are the norm.
Air taxi's ate not hard to build on a technical level. We know how to build them.
And honestly we didn't do a good job. After all climate change is real, lead poisoning was real too.
On the other hand, making it cheap enough that mono-millionaires can do it regularly is going to make a big difference compared to the status quo.
Ah right, moving it from 0.1%-ers to 1%-ers is really going to make a big difference.
It's hard to find precise qualifications for how they determine that, though. The households figure doesn't include primary residence value (why?), and the individual statistics don't mention liquidity. I suspect that only a small percent of that 8% actually has $1+ million liquid.
So yeah, 4%-ers then. Really makes a big difference to my point. This is totally gonna change everybody's life. (I.e. those who can afford it, while the majority is scraping by from paycheck to paycheck.)
Blockchain was supposedly created by a single person. The Federal Reserve Bank of the United States has mentioned creating a digital currency. As they pump more money into that idea and develop some neat tweaks or totally control blockchains, will we look back in 50 years and say, "Look at how much the government did for blockchain." forgetting that it exists in the first place to spite them?
Ah wait let me rephrase this: while more people can fly now economy got shittier than ever.
Also we live in 2022, the narrative that rich risk there life's was probably never true (they have test personal) and we have enough capital in our society to do certain things without the money of the rich.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amelia_Earhart#Childhood
> Earhart was the daughter of Samuel "Edwin" Stanton Earhart (1867–1930) and Amelia "Amy" (née Otis; 1869–1962).[13] She was born in Atchison, Kansas, in the home of her maternal grandfather, Alfred Gideon Otis (1827–1912), who was a former federal judge, the president of the Atchison Savings Bank and a leading citizen in the town. Amelia was the second child of the marriage after an infant was stillborn in August 1896.[14]
She for one, looks to me to have been wealthy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_inventors_killed_by_th...
> and we have enough capital in our society to do certain things without the money of the rich.
Part of the reward for pioneering tech is the taking of the risk and getting the reward while at the end of the day being able to feel a sense of accomplishment having done it largely of your own initiative and cost. The spirit of exploration that existed in early humans, that led to our expansion to the furthest points of the earth, exists today in the form of innovation and invention. While it is enticing of course to create at the behest of government or corporations like was done in Bell Labs or DARPA, there is a severe risk that liabilities and bureaucracy stifle innovation. I cannot imagine a governmental system of incentives that creates an atmosphere quite like the USA had prior to the 1960s that led to innovation, invention, and implementation that we had never seen before, and may never see again.
This is dangerously close to the infamous HN Dropbox critique[1] :-D
And it's likely wrong in the same way.
Hop over a fjord, hop over a mountain range. Much cheaper and eco-friendly than building bridges and tunnels everywhere, especially if the population density isn't high.
Perhaps in 20-50 years when we solved climate change.
Those companies are not trying to just create a cheap and easy to use carplane they want to become rich which needs business viability.
And I don't mind if they solve some niche problems. I mind that they want to fly over my head every 10 minutes.
Look at the rural countryside in places like Norway. I am not talking about rich people primarily, but semi-isolated communities whose older citizens might need specialized healthcare etc.
Also, this was originally a discussion about electric planes, so their effect on climate change is probably neutral-ish.
Why not? He's funding the employment of the air taxi people, plus their technology development, and reducing congestion.
I understand the safety concern, but I don't see how "just because" they can afford it is a reasonable objection.
It's the safety concern and it's flying over my head.
There is always a risk/benefit ratio and just because a handful of people want to spend more money so that they can fly faster from the airport to the city center than others is not worth the security implications.
You are aware how much security is involved whenever you fly?
We talk an expensive license, regular flying hours per year (also not cheap), air control, restricted air zones, very regular safety plain checks.
Every single object on a commercial plane for example is tracked, every replacement etc.
Congestion is not solved by small expensive air taxies. If a normal taxi costs x, an airtaxi has to cost 4x and more.
We the people don't need to allow everyone everything just because they have the money into do so.
>Congestion is not solved by small expensive air taxies
If you expect a new transport to 'solve congestion' as a requirement for it to be allowed, we're not going to allow anything. Incremental improvements can add up.
I just find these "I can't have it, so you can't either" arguments so short sighted. Lots of technologies start out the domain of the wealthy before achieving scale and mass adoption. Maybe we won't all be mass adopting air taxis, but some of the technologies that come out of these things may well end up in our cars, or houses, or benefiting us indirectly.
My issue is with the argument that simply being wealthy enough (literally 'just because' he is wealthy enough. Check the comment I was replying to.) to do this is by itself reason enough to ban it.
All this redirection back to safety is a smokescreen to distract from the actual issue I'm concerned with.
I also say 'do not start polluting the sky's
And ' keep the noise down'
Congestion would be reduced by people using trains and maybe, I would be actually willing to see this as an option, autonomously driving cars.
Bit of a fake concern, no?
>potential small airplane crashing down in a city
Is that really much worse than a SUV driving into a building?
Yes
please don't waste our time.
Risk is a community exercise. You don't (or rather, shouldn't) get to externalize disproportionate risks upon the commons because it makes your life easier.
(An example of such a consideration: what happens when the fire department shows up? They know how to deal with a car accident; are they going to have the presence of mind not to douse a vehicle that looks like a normal personal aircraft in water?)
Why ordinary speeds? Someone driving into a building is likely to be going significantly faster, perhaps because they confused the brake pedal and accelerator.
Things like this happen all the time https://twitter.com/TempePolice/status/1529914550266368000
We currently have a billion cars on the road. Of course we have plenty of accidents.
But that's not a valid comparison.
And perhaps we should also get rid of carsnow your argument is totally invalid
And I'd bet a lot more on the crash safety of aerospace cerrified batteries than those of the automotive sector.
Why? Aircraft are optimized for weight far more than automobiles. Making airplane batteries safer than car batteries would make them even less energy dense than they already are. Add to that fact that cars have a crumple zone built into them, while an airplane AFAIK does not -- at least not one that matters when it crashes into my house at 100mph.
Furthermore, some Tesla crashing on the freeway on the way to Tahoe is unlikely to start a forest fire. But what about some rich yahoo making the same trip while flying their personal electric plane who crashes in the Oakland hills?
These problems are non trivial particularly because every personal electric plane company wants to scale into the millions.
And in any case, even if such accidents would be worse, they’d also be vast less common. It’s more difficult to fuck things up in the air, and the level of training required to operate an aircraft is far higher than the level of training required to operate a SUV.
Drivers famously can’t even keep track of which pedal is the brake and which is the throttle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudden_unintended_acceleration
How many SUVs do you know of that are crashing into houses at 200mph?
Also, what is the relative mass of the electric airplane with a bunch of lithium batteries, versus the SUV?
What parts of the house might be hit by a falling airplane, versus an SUV crashing into the house from the road?
What is the fire risk of a bunch of lithium batteries having fallen out of the sky, versus the SUV crashing into the house?
There's lots of factors to be considered here, but overall I'd say there's a lot more risk of damage, injury, and death with the falling electric airplane than with the SUV.
https://www.fox2detroit.com/news/driver-crashes-through-gas-...
https://www.fox35orlando.com/news/car-into-kohls
https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/vehicle-careens-into...
https://turnto10.com/amp/news/local/massachusetts-wrentham-v...
https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/video-shows-suv-crashing...
https://abcnews.go.com/US/dead-hospitalized-car-plows-dc-res...
https://www.gainsberglaw.com/blog/cars-crash-into-buildings-...
I could find thousands of these.
An airplane falling from the sky is far less likely to hit anyone than a car suddenly accelerating into a store because the driver is flooring the accelerator instead of the brake. These incidents are so common that they have an extensive wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudden_unintended_acceleration
You can find some numbers at https://www.storefrontsafety.org/statistics.html They claim this happens around 60 times a day.
Again at least with streets I know that an SUV will only crash close to streets with an air taxi it could crash everywhere.
Kindergarden? Yes.
Can we protect a kindergarden from an accidental SUV acceleration? Of course we can. Easy.
Yes of course, per passenger mile SUVs are far more likely to drive into a building than an air taxi is to fall out of the sky.
> Can we protect a kindergarden from an accidental SUV acceleration? Of course we can. Easy.
But we don’t.
All of the things that https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31719861 wrote, and:
> You’d expect there to be far more people at the street level than on top floors.
There are far more people who live near the sky than live near a large road.
> It’s more difficult to fuck things up in the air,
No, it really isn't? Aircraft driver licencing and training is notoriously much harder, longer than the equivalent motor-car licencing and training. Car drivers don't have to learn about stalls for starters. The training is there because a) it's much harder to do right, there are more ways to go wrong and b) potentially greater impact.
The common failure mode for a car is that it stops moving at the side of the road. The equivalent for an aircraft is that it falls out of the sky onto whatever is below. We are not ready for a lot more of that.
remember this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Glasgow_helicopter_crash
An airtaxi crashes down from a hight and speed. They will crash into and through your roof or into a street or directly into humans.
Airspace pollution is not a fake concern.
Why would we allow one company to fly over my head and another not?
Either it is so niche that it doesn't add any benefit to our society or it becomes so normal that air space pollution is a real issue.
I'm very very happy when I look into an empty/nearly empty sky.
This is a valid concern.
This is something that happens on a daily basis.
https://www.fox2detroit.com/news/driver-crashes-through-gas-...
https://www.fox35orlando.com/news/car-into-kohls
https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/vehicle-careens-into...
https://turnto10.com/amp/news/local/massachusetts-wrentham-v...
https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/video-shows-suv-crashing...
The NHTSA estimates that there are 16000 crashes per year in the US caused by drivers confusing the brake and accelerator pedals. A huge chunk of these do end up with the vehicle inside a building.
https://web.archive.org/web/20161226060428/https://www.nhtsa...
> An airtaxi crashes down from a hight and speed. They will crash into and through your roof or into a street or directly into humans.
The odds of a SUV driving into humans is far greater than the odds of a falling airtaxi hitting anyone.
SUVs end up inside stores every single day because of unintended acceleration on parking lots.
> Why would we allow one company to fly over my head and another not?
What does that even mean?
>Either it is so niche that it doesn't add any benefit to our society or it becomes so normal that air space pollution is a real issue.
The “airspace” is very big 3D space that can simultaneously accommodate thousands of flights over a city before congestion becomes an issue.
And yes it's totally valid as well to not allow it at all if only a handful of other people can benefit from it.
We are the people and I don't care if a rich person wants to do that. My airspace is more important than that one rich person.
Re. Australian outback, air taxi already kind of exists in light planes, helis and of course flying doctor.
Biking is not slumming it. There are some pretty fancy eBikes out there.
That said, the particular generation of execs I was referring to largely exist in a culture devoid of bicycle commutes :)
Why is this fine with big planes, but bad with small ones?
But small air taxies would first of fly much lower, always in the city and if it is cheap enough for all of us, you need more than just one.
And if it's not affordable for us, than there is no real reason for us to accept this at all.
And yes the big planes when they travel very high you can not hear them but it's also totally valid to have the discussion about air pollution and sky visual pollution.
But air transport for goods is actually something were we all benefit. Airmail as well.
Drones ought to have megaphones that scream DRONE CRASH IMMINENT before impact.