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You can recognize that cars are going nowhere and it's best if we embrace this fact in our own ways (either by being a car owner, or working around car-designed

You can recognize that cars are going nowhere and it's best if we embrace this fact in our own ways (either by being a car owner, or working around car-designed cities the way we prefer), but still note that our cities could have been designed better from scratch that doesn't favor cars. Similarly, avoiding the same mistake now for helicopters wouldn't be inconsistent with living with cars.

jstummbillig 4y ago
That seems reasonable, but what is missing (at least in this branch of the debate) is data and counter arguments that will not clearly peter out while the technology matures, if they are even trying to be factual to begin with. 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.
- regularfry 4y ago
  > Why would we assume these machines are relatively dangerous once they reach production? Just because they fly? 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.
  - maigret 4y ago
    Those aircrafts can be easily fitted with a parachute actually.
  - jstummbillig 4y ago
    I think there are reasons to be a bit more optimistic about the dangers. 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.
    - Deritio 4y ago
      I don't want to say that the world might look different in 20 years (probably even more) 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.
    - 4y ago
trompetenaccoun 4y ago
The difference is we don't live in the sky. As long as there isn't noise pollution (and electric planes are supposedly a lot quieter), you have to try really hard to create and issue here. Aviation is getting ever more automated and safer.
- nopenopenopeno 4y ago
  It’s very energy inefficient to leave the ground.
  - trompetenaccoun 4y ago
    So is building and maintaining transportation networks of massive proportions on the ground. Somehow that never gets looked at, people just compare the running costs and completely ignore construction and maintenance. Plus the cost of all the deaths it causes, human and non-human. Plus the space it takes up and how it destroys environments. All these are costs. 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.
    - Deritio 4y ago
      That's not true. 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.

jstummbillig 4y ago

That seems reasonable, but what is missing (at least in this branch of the debate) is data and counter arguments that will not clearly peter out while the technology matures, if they are even trying to be factual to begin with. 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.

regularfry 4y ago
> Why would we assume these machines are relatively dangerous once they reach production? Just because they fly? 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.
- maigret 4y ago
  Those aircrafts can be easily fitted with a parachute actually.
- jstummbillig 4y ago
  I think there are reasons to be a bit more optimistic about the dangers. 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.
  - Deritio 4y ago
    I don't want to say that the world might look different in 20 years (probably even more) 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.
  - 4y ago

trompetenaccoun 4y ago

The difference is we don't live in the sky. As long as there isn't noise pollution (and electric planes are supposedly a lot quieter), you have to try really hard to create and issue here. Aviation is getting ever more automated and safer.

nopenopenopeno 4y ago
It’s very energy inefficient to leave the ground.
- trompetenaccoun 4y ago
  So is building and maintaining transportation networks of massive proportions on the ground. Somehow that never gets looked at, people just compare the running costs and completely ignore construction and maintenance. Plus the cost of all the deaths it causes, human and non-human. Plus the space it takes up and how it destroys environments. All these are costs. 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.
  - Deritio 4y ago
    That's not true. 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.