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If we are unable to make full self drive work for cars, how are we going to safely have flying cars land anywhere except far out of the way airports? The dream

If we are unable to make full self drive work for cars, how are we going to safely have flying cars land anywhere except far out of the way airports? The dream of flying cars is to reduce City traffic, and until we can take off and land safely in a city there is no point.

mannykannot 3y ago
Safely and not unacceptably noisily - and the same applies en-route, as well. There are other scenarios where small, autonomous VTOL aircraft would be very useful, and in such cases, the question of whether such vehicles could reasonably be called flying cars becomes mainly a lexical/usage one.
Retric 3y ago
I’m more worried about people on the ground being safe. There’s not a lot of safe places to crash over a dense urban environment. Any plan that involves 10,000x more aircraft flying over cities is inherently flawed. eVTOL over rivers, lakes, or designated ‘flyways’ could work but such limitations would make flying cars far less useful, unless they can also operate as cars.
ta1243 3y ago
How would flying cars reduce city traffic? You know what does reduce city traffic? People travelling by foot, subways and bikes.
- amalcon 3y ago
  They would reduce traffic the same way subways do that: by getting people who might otherwise travel by personal auto off of the street entirely, and into another channel with a separate (though still finite) capacity. There are reasons that air travel won't do too much in this regard in the foreseeable future -- mostly around cost and the fact that ATC-managed airspace actually has quite a low capacity. Those are practical issues, not fundamentals.
  - bluGill 3y ago
    Airspace is fundamentally low capacity because there is still congestion to get back on the ground. Worse airplanes must move at all times, you can't stop to avoid disaster, you must have room in all directions to maneuver around whatever is happening. Getting a few people in the air can help everyone if you can pull it off, but you can't get a lot in the air as airplanes need too much space. You can extend 2d space with bridges and tunnels a lot easier, but it isn't cheap. Which is why cities need metro systems - it is the only way to get masses of people into a dense area.
    - amalcon 3y ago
      My sense (somewhat out of date) is that most flying car people consider VTOL and hovering to be fundamental requirements of the format. Helicopters (and other aircraft capable of VTOL and hovering) substantially mitigate both of these issues. If we're talking about fixed-wing, runway takeoff aircraft, then I absolutely agree with you. If we're not, I'm somewhat (but not highly) confident that coordinating these vehicles will be the long pole re: capacity. That's mostly because it's a really long pole. We haven't developed distributed actor algorithms for this the way we have for cars, it's unclear if this is actually possible, and there's no way the current way of doing ATC can handle the load that even 1% of upper middle class commuters could create.
      - bluGill 3y ago
        Even with vtol, wind wash is an issue and so you can't have takeoffs and landings nearly as often as needed for the whole to work. as you say we also don't have traffit control that works.
  - ta1243 3y ago
    Where would they be parked?
    - amalcon 3y ago
      In the same place where a car would be parked. Parking and traffic are both problems with cars, but they are not the same problem with cars. You can mitigate one without mitigating the other.
pcthrowaway 3y ago
Fewer pedestrians and cyclists in the air
simne 3y ago
> If we are unable to make full self drive work for cars Believe me, air have so much more volume, autopilots for planes are simpler than for cars. Definitively, air transport is more dangerous physically than land transport, but with stricter regulations on build planes and on maintenance/using them, we now have magnitudes (about 100-1000 times) better safety at air than on land.

mannykannot 3y ago

Safely and not unacceptably noisily - and the same applies en-route, as well. There are other scenarios where small, autonomous VTOL aircraft would be very useful, and in such cases, the question of whether such vehicles could reasonably be called flying cars becomes mainly a lexical/usage one.

Retric 3y ago

I’m more worried about people on the ground being safe. There’s not a lot of safe places to crash over a dense urban environment. Any plan that involves 10,000x more aircraft flying over cities is inherently flawed. eVTOL over rivers, lakes, or designated ‘flyways’ could work but such limitations would make flying cars far less useful, unless they can also operate as cars.

ta1243 3y ago

How would flying cars reduce city traffic? You know what does reduce city traffic? People travelling by foot, subways and bikes.

amalcon 3y ago
They would reduce traffic the same way subways do that: by getting people who might otherwise travel by personal auto off of the street entirely, and into another channel with a separate (though still finite) capacity. There are reasons that air travel won't do too much in this regard in the foreseeable future -- mostly around cost and the fact that ATC-managed airspace actually has quite a low capacity. Those are practical issues, not fundamentals.
- bluGill 3y ago
  Airspace is fundamentally low capacity because there is still congestion to get back on the ground. Worse airplanes must move at all times, you can't stop to avoid disaster, you must have room in all directions to maneuver around whatever is happening. Getting a few people in the air can help everyone if you can pull it off, but you can't get a lot in the air as airplanes need too much space. You can extend 2d space with bridges and tunnels a lot easier, but it isn't cheap. Which is why cities need metro systems - it is the only way to get masses of people into a dense area.
  - amalcon 3y ago
    My sense (somewhat out of date) is that most flying car people consider VTOL and hovering to be fundamental requirements of the format. Helicopters (and other aircraft capable of VTOL and hovering) substantially mitigate both of these issues. If we're talking about fixed-wing, runway takeoff aircraft, then I absolutely agree with you. If we're not, I'm somewhat (but not highly) confident that coordinating these vehicles will be the long pole re: capacity. That's mostly because it's a really long pole. We haven't developed distributed actor algorithms for this the way we have for cars, it's unclear if this is actually possible, and there's no way the current way of doing ATC can handle the load that even 1% of upper middle class commuters could create.
    - bluGill 3y ago
      Even with vtol, wind wash is an issue and so you can't have takeoffs and landings nearly as often as needed for the whole to work. as you say we also don't have traffit control that works.
- ta1243 3y ago
  Where would they be parked?
  - amalcon 3y ago
    In the same place where a car would be parked. Parking and traffic are both problems with cars, but they are not the same problem with cars. You can mitigate one without mitigating the other.

pcthrowaway 3y ago

Fewer pedestrians and cyclists in the air

simne 3y ago

> If we are unable to make full self drive work for cars Believe me, air have so much more volume, autopilots for planes are simpler than for cars. Definitively, air transport is more dangerous physically than land transport, but with stricter regulations on build planes and on maintenance/using them, we now have magnitudes (about 100-1000 times) better safety at air than on land.