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> these form factors become a lot less relevant when we can fly dozens/hundreds of autonomous vehicles for orders of magnitude less money A big and multi-facet
by GordonS 5y ago
> these form factors become a lot less relevant when we can fly dozens/hundreds of autonomous vehicles for orders of magnitude less money
A big and multi-faceted factor not considered here is airport capacity, in terms of terminal building footprint, aircraft ground handling, flight control and airspace.
Many large airports are already at capacity, so it's difficult to see how higher numbers of aircraft could work.
- fire 5y agoYou make a good point; Now I'm curious how efficiently capacity is used with flight schedules exchanging large numbers of passengers with each flight, and whether smaller but more frequent flights would have any real impact on that equilibrium.
- jillesvangurp 5y agoThe counter point here is that small electrical and autonomous planes don't need large airports or long runways. They are very efficient in terms of space. All of the long suffering smaller airports that can't even handle jets would potentially be of use for this. And given the lower noise and pollution levels, building more airports would not be as controversial as building new airports for jets currently is. Possibly even within city limits. And that is of course before you consider VTOL.
- pestatije 5y agoTrains solve all of those issues: short haul, high capacity, electric
- GordonS 5y agoI certainly agree that many countries (US & UK included) should be investing much more in rail, but there is the pesky problem of rails and land to put them on - it's very expensive, and takes a lot of time.