5 ms·

It's weird to see real innovation happen again. For so many years innovation has been about how to fit as many meat bags as possible in a shoe box, prentending

by keyle 8y ago

It's weird to see real innovation happen again. For so many years innovation has been about how to fit as many meat bags as possible in a shoe box, prentending to be luxurious, at the adequate speed to save the most fuel as possible.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> innovation has been about how to fit as many meat bags as possible in a shoe box That's an odd way to describe the most accessible era of global travel in human history. It's not like first class tickets, which provide a comparable experience at a comparable inflated-adjusted price, aren't available to bring back the 60s. There are more travelers who want a cheaper ticket than there are those who want, more than cheaper tickets, (a) more comfort or (b) faster travel. Evidence for this is in the demand for cheap tickets with long layovers and repeat flyers in basic economy.
- always_good 8y ago
  I recently paid bottom dollar for a flight and was annoyed when my knees jammed up against the seat in front of me. I had to contort myself a bit to fit. Then I chuckled at the annoyance since I, myself, had decided to get the dirt-cheapest flight available. Couldn't even be bothered to pay +$15 for an emergency exit seat. ...And I would've done it all the same again for that 2 hour flight. I just saw a Reddit thread where someone asked how many people would pay extra for a flight with no babies allowed. I had to roll my eyes at every commenter who said they would.
  - TomMarius 8y ago
    2 hour flight is OK, but 5+? I would pay up.
  - slavak 8y ago
    > Flying is the worst one because people come back from flights and they're telling you their story, and it's like a horror story. They act like their flight was a cattle car in the 40s in Germany. They're like, 'it was the worst day of my life! First of all, we didn't board for like 20 minutes and then they made us sit there on the runway for 40 minutes! We had to sit there!' Oh really? What happened next? Did you FLY in the AIR incredibly like a BIRD? Did you partake in the miracle of human flight, you non-contributing zero?! ... You're sitting in a chair in the SKY! Here's the thing: people say there's delays. Delays? Really? New York to California in 5 hours. That used to take 30 years! And a bunch of you would die on the way there, and have babies... you'd be a whole different group of people by the time you got there. Now, you watch a movie, you take a dump, and you're home! — Louis CK
  - MiddleEndian 8y ago
    I pay extra for direct flights and take JetBlue or Alaska Air when they're available regardless of the cost compared to other airlines like United. I rarely come across babies on my flights, but I'd pay a bit more for an airline that resulted in reduced boarding and deplaning times.
  - FiatLuxDave 8y ago
    I regularly pay extra for a flight with no babies. There are two airports an equal distance from my house. One has cheap flights, and the other does not. The one with the cheap flights also happens to be the airport for Walt Disney World. I fly out of the expensive airport whenever possible.
- peteretep 8y ago
  > It's not like first class tickets, which provide a comparable experience at a comparable inflated-adjusted price, aren't available to bring back the 60s. A Business Class ticket on an international route is incomparably luxurious compared to anything you could purchase in the 1960s. And some of the First Class products take it to the next level. That's before you take into account the safety, time-saving, and cabin-pressure differences.
lev99 8y ago
It's crazy to think that in 2016 there were ~3.6 billion airline passengers. Passenger airplanes started as a luxury and moved to mass market. Honestly, humanity benefits more from having high capacity cheap flights than having lower capacity more expensive faster flights. Luxury options aren't off the table, buy business class or go private. And saving fuel is in everyone's best interest.
- JetSpiegel 8y ago
  > saving fuel is in everyone's best interest > started as a luxury and moved to mass market These two objectives are contradictory. There are so many more trips because the fares are cheap, so fuel consumption is much increased.
  - throwawayjava 8y ago
    Surprisingly, if you're alone and the alternative is driving a personal vehicle, flying may be the more efficient way to get to your destination (but the comparison is inherently difficult). (Of course, I don't doubt that a lot of trips happen today which wouldn't have happened in the 60's, so you're probably still correct.) https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2015/09/evolving-climate-math-of-flying-vs-driving/ https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2015/09/evolving-clim...
garmaine 8y ago
Part of that is improvements in HPC. You can now do computational analysis of these designs and evolve a good solution way faster than was done by hand in wind tunnels for the Concorde and other supersonic aircraft. I don't think this would be possible without today's computational technologies, which allow orders of magnitude more "experimentation" (even if virtual) and therefore iteration in design. Aside: personally I'm waiting for someone to take up the Avrocar, aka the original flying saucer UFO. It's basically the jet version of the helicopter or quadricopter drone from an aero engineering tradeoff standpoint. At one point the Army thought that they'd stop buying jeeps and start buying flying saucers instead, but the Avrocar project fell apart for dynamical stability reasons. It was just too difficult to keep it in level flight during flying regime transitions, and they weren't able to design a control interface a human could use to compensate. But that was with 50's tech, and I'm pretty sure with modern ML techniques you could design a fly-by-wire feedback response control system that would have no trouble stabilizing Avrocar or an improved version of it, just like Stanford got a helicopter to fly upside down (a very analogous stability regime actually). It would fill the niche for medium-distance drone transport or perhaps short-range personnel transport (like choppers).
- oblio 8y ago
  Do you even need ML for the flight control? I have no experience designing anything remotely related to aircraft software, but from a distance it seems that the big thing would be making micro-corrections to stabilize the flight. I don't think you need ML just for that.
  - garmaine 8y ago
    No, but that’s how Stanford pulled off the inverted helicopter trick. Point is that flying regime is too difficult to design by hand, but ML is powerful enough to design a controller for us.

by keyle 8y ago

JumpCrisscross 8y ago

> innovation has been about how to fit as many meat bags as possible in a shoe box That's an odd way to describe the most accessible era of global travel in human history. It's not like first class tickets, which provide a comparable experience at a comparable inflated-adjusted price, aren't available to bring back the 60s. There are more travelers who want a cheaper ticket than there are those who want, more than cheaper tickets, (a) more comfort or (b) faster travel. Evidence for this is in the demand for cheap tickets with long layovers and repeat flyers in basic economy.

always_good 8y ago
I recently paid bottom dollar for a flight and was annoyed when my knees jammed up against the seat in front of me. I had to contort myself a bit to fit. Then I chuckled at the annoyance since I, myself, had decided to get the dirt-cheapest flight available. Couldn't even be bothered to pay +$15 for an emergency exit seat. ...And I would've done it all the same again for that 2 hour flight. I just saw a Reddit thread where someone asked how many people would pay extra for a flight with no babies allowed. I had to roll my eyes at every commenter who said they would.
- TomMarius 8y ago
  2 hour flight is OK, but 5+? I would pay up.
- slavak 8y ago
  > Flying is the worst one because people come back from flights and they're telling you their story, and it's like a horror story. They act like their flight was a cattle car in the 40s in Germany. They're like, 'it was the worst day of my life! First of all, we didn't board for like 20 minutes and then they made us sit there on the runway for 40 minutes! We had to sit there!' Oh really? What happened next? Did you FLY in the AIR incredibly like a BIRD? Did you partake in the miracle of human flight, you non-contributing zero?! ... You're sitting in a chair in the SKY! Here's the thing: people say there's delays. Delays? Really? New York to California in 5 hours. That used to take 30 years! And a bunch of you would die on the way there, and have babies... you'd be a whole different group of people by the time you got there. Now, you watch a movie, you take a dump, and you're home! — Louis CK
- MiddleEndian 8y ago
  I pay extra for direct flights and take JetBlue or Alaska Air when they're available regardless of the cost compared to other airlines like United. I rarely come across babies on my flights, but I'd pay a bit more for an airline that resulted in reduced boarding and deplaning times.
- FiatLuxDave 8y ago
  I regularly pay extra for a flight with no babies. There are two airports an equal distance from my house. One has cheap flights, and the other does not. The one with the cheap flights also happens to be the airport for Walt Disney World. I fly out of the expensive airport whenever possible.
peteretep 8y ago
> It's not like first class tickets, which provide a comparable experience at a comparable inflated-adjusted price, aren't available to bring back the 60s. A Business Class ticket on an international route is incomparably luxurious compared to anything you could purchase in the 1960s. And some of the First Class products take it to the next level. That's before you take into account the safety, time-saving, and cabin-pressure differences.

lev99 8y ago

It's crazy to think that in 2016 there were ~3.6 billion airline passengers. Passenger airplanes started as a luxury and moved to mass market. Honestly, humanity benefits more from having high capacity cheap flights than having lower capacity more expensive faster flights. Luxury options aren't off the table, buy business class or go private. And saving fuel is in everyone's best interest.

JetSpiegel 8y ago
> saving fuel is in everyone's best interest > started as a luxury and moved to mass market These two objectives are contradictory. There are so many more trips because the fares are cheap, so fuel consumption is much increased.
- throwawayjava 8y ago
  Surprisingly, if you're alone and the alternative is driving a personal vehicle, flying may be the more efficient way to get to your destination (but the comparison is inherently difficult). (Of course, I don't doubt that a lot of trips happen today which wouldn't have happened in the 60's, so you're probably still correct.) https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2015/09/evolving-climate-math-of-flying-vs-driving/ https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2015/09/evolving-clim...

garmaine 8y ago

Part of that is improvements in HPC. You can now do computational analysis of these designs and evolve a good solution way faster than was done by hand in wind tunnels for the Concorde and other supersonic aircraft. I don't think this would be possible without today's computational technologies, which allow orders of magnitude more "experimentation" (even if virtual) and therefore iteration in design. Aside: personally I'm waiting for someone to take up the Avrocar, aka the original flying saucer UFO. It's basically the jet version of the helicopter or quadricopter drone from an aero engineering tradeoff standpoint. At one point the Army thought that they'd stop buying jeeps and start buying flying saucers instead, but the Avrocar project fell apart for dynamical stability reasons. It was just too difficult to keep it in level flight during flying regime transitions, and they weren't able to design a control interface a human could use to compensate. But that was with 50's tech, and I'm pretty sure with modern ML techniques you could design a fly-by-wire feedback response control system that would have no trouble stabilizing Avrocar or an improved version of it, just like Stanford got a helicopter to fly upside down (a very analogous stability regime actually). It would fill the niche for medium-distance drone transport or perhaps short-range personnel transport (like choppers).

oblio 8y ago
Do you even need ML for the flight control? I have no experience designing anything remotely related to aircraft software, but from a distance it seems that the big thing would be making micro-corrections to stabilize the flight. I don't think you need ML just for that.
- garmaine 8y ago
  No, but that’s how Stanford pulled off the inverted helicopter trick. Point is that flying regime is too difficult to design by hand, but ML is powerful enough to design a controller for us.