6 ms·

I think in the case of flying taxi's is just that it is a moronic idea tho.

by polytely 9mo ago

jstummbillig 9mo ago
What is moronic about the idea?
- i80and 9mo ago
  It's hard to pick just one reason, but off the top of my head: * Any failure tends to turn flying things into unguided missiles * Noise is extremely hard to control -- I did an FAA helicopter discovery lesson, and oof * Cities tend to have difficult to manage wind currents and hit-or-miss visibility. I was in a skyscraper across from one hit by a helicopter trying and failing to land in 2019 -- there's reasons for city no-fly zones * Limited landing sites makes them highly situational in the first place, unless you want your streets to be helipads, which you don't These are all fairly intrinsic and not mitigable. I can think of more issues more in the sticks, but you get the idea.
  - tyre 9mo ago
    The wind in NYC is no joke. In brooklyn yesterday there were gusts so strong that car alarms were going off. In some apartment buildings, the handicap-accessible automatic doors simply cannot open into the wind. Imagine being in a flying car. Nope nope nope!
  - pastel8739 9mo ago
    One more reason is that it cannot actually solve the traffic problem that it claims to solve. It might be able to solve it for rich people when they are the only ones that can afford to travel by air, but if the cost ever comes down low enough for the masses to afford it, I don’t see any reason that congestion wouldn’t be as bad or worse than it is now. And to me it’s not a good investment to improve things just for rich people.
    - leoc 9mo ago
      There’s just a lot more space when you can move in three dimensions, so I don’t think the congestion limitations of non-flying cars are likely to be replicated. IIUC (I’m no expert) that’s one of the most attractive features of flying VTOL vehicles.
      - i80and 9mo ago
        You're bandwidth-limited on a sparse serialized landing site map no matter what, and you need far higher distance margins that will eat up basically all of the dimensional advantages. If ground vehicles side-swipe, it's just an insurance claim. If flying vehicles sideswipe, it's a Problem(tm).
      - pastel8739 9mo ago
        I honestly think the most attractive features of VTOL vehicles are that they are from sci fi, and you can look up and see a bunch of empty space and wish you were there while sitting in traffic.
        deleted 9mo ago
        [deleted]
  - jstummbillig 9mo ago
    I am (usually) not willing to assume that the founders of highly technical startups would not consider something that I as an outsider would in the first 5 minutes of engaging with the topic. That makes me skeptical of all of these (minus the wind currents in cities, that might have taken a little longer).
    - RodgerTheGreat 9mo ago
      Theranos was famously founded on pitches about blood testing from finger pricks that literally any phlebotomist and many people with a modest life science background could've told you were physically and statistically impossible on their face. You should be considerably less credulous toward startup grifters.
      - jstummbillig 9mo ago
        The reason why you (and everyone else) knows about Theranos is that it was unique, which serves as a bad signifier if you want to judge what is likely to happen with the next startup. Being in prison and losing billions of dollars is just not something most people get excited about.
        cbzbc 9mo ago
        The reason we know about Theranos is that it ended up in court. Plenty of other startups have had obviously impractical ideas that didn't go anywhere.
        tsimionescu 9mo ago
        The reason we know about Theranos is because they took the grift up to a huge level and went from grift to outright fraud once they had to show actual results. It is not only not unique, but in fact extremely common for startups to be grifts around impossible technical promises, live a few years off gullible investors who have way more money than sens and/or for whom losing a few million dollars on a long shot is just as bad as me wasting a few dollars on a gizmo off Temu I know probably won't work, and which then die out because their ideas obviously couldn't work. They even sometimes find a niche by pivoting to some vaguely related tech. Say, while flying taxis obviously won't work, a startup trying to build them might find itself developing into a small company building helicopter propeller blades for some specific niche.
  - signatoremo 9mo ago
    There are about 80,000 non-essential helicopter flights in Manhattan annually -[0]. That means a) there is a lot of demand, and b) it’s been pretty safe, with accidents being very rare. Many people are against helicopters on the grounds of noise, safety and pollution. Electric taxis will be welcomed once they are certified and economical. They only need to do better than helicopters. [0] - https://stopthechopnynj.org/frequently-asked-questions/ https://stopthechopnynj.org/frequently-asked-questions/
    - well_ackshually 9mo ago
      > Electric taxis will be welcomed once they are certified and economical. Do you believe helicopters are noisy because they're not electric ? Your electric taxi will do the same thing: they need propellers. Propellers that can carry up to 1 ton are fucking loud. Electric taxis will never be welcomed because they are a dumb idea.
ericd 9mo ago
Because noise?
xnx 9mo ago
Flying taxis make a lot of sense for very specific areas (e.g. Manhattan) and applications (e.g. mountain rescue).
- ph4rsikal 9mo ago
  China calls it the low-altitude economy, and besides human transportation there is a lot that can be done. Personally, I believe that propeller-driven devices are too dangerous and noisy, but there might be innovations coming out of China that Europe can't
  - bethekidyouwant 9mo ago
    Everything that flies is driven with a loud dangerous spinning thing (propeller)
    - nandomrumber 9mo ago
      Birds.
      - tsimionescu 9mo ago
        Bird flight doesn't scale significantly. You can deliver very small objects via bird, and perhaps build a bird-like drone that does the same. But you can't build a human-carrying bird.
        fc417fc802 9mo ago
        We haven't figured out how to scale it _yet_.
        tsimionescu 9mo ago
        It's very possible, and in fact most likely, that it can't scale. Insect flight is an even better example - the mechanisms that allow most insects to fly simply don't work past a few grams of weight. So, it is simply impossible to create an insect-like drone that can carry a human. I expect the exact same is true for birds - the kinds of effects that allow birds to fly with so little energy compared to a propeller-based aircraft are almost certainly not scalable, due to the fundamental properties of air as a gas. As far as I know, bird flight is made possible by complex turbulence effects induced by the microscopic structure of their feathers. It's very unlikely this effect could skale to 100kg of weight.
conductr 9mo ago
Agree. It doesn’t have the futuristic vibe but an urban gondola type system is probably what would be best. Especially in a city where there may already be a network of structures to leverage (eg. The buildings/rooftops and elevators). It would require massive coordination or eminent domain type laws to force but end result could be pretty awesome

I think in the case of flying taxi's is just that it is a moronic idea tho.

jstummbillig 9mo ago

What is moronic about the idea?

i80and 9mo ago
It's hard to pick just one reason, but off the top of my head: * Any failure tends to turn flying things into unguided missiles * Noise is extremely hard to control -- I did an FAA helicopter discovery lesson, and oof * Cities tend to have difficult to manage wind currents and hit-or-miss visibility. I was in a skyscraper across from one hit by a helicopter trying and failing to land in 2019 -- there's reasons for city no-fly zones * Limited landing sites makes them highly situational in the first place, unless you want your streets to be helipads, which you don't These are all fairly intrinsic and not mitigable. I can think of more issues more in the sticks, but you get the idea.
- tyre 9mo ago
  The wind in NYC is no joke. In brooklyn yesterday there were gusts so strong that car alarms were going off. In some apartment buildings, the handicap-accessible automatic doors simply cannot open into the wind. Imagine being in a flying car. Nope nope nope!
- pastel8739 9mo ago
  One more reason is that it cannot actually solve the traffic problem that it claims to solve. It might be able to solve it for rich people when they are the only ones that can afford to travel by air, but if the cost ever comes down low enough for the masses to afford it, I don’t see any reason that congestion wouldn’t be as bad or worse than it is now. And to me it’s not a good investment to improve things just for rich people.
  - leoc 9mo ago
    There’s just a lot more space when you can move in three dimensions, so I don’t think the congestion limitations of non-flying cars are likely to be replicated. IIUC (I’m no expert) that’s one of the most attractive features of flying VTOL vehicles.
    - i80and 9mo ago
      You're bandwidth-limited on a sparse serialized landing site map no matter what, and you need far higher distance margins that will eat up basically all of the dimensional advantages. If ground vehicles side-swipe, it's just an insurance claim. If flying vehicles sideswipe, it's a Problem(tm).
    - pastel8739 9mo ago
      I honestly think the most attractive features of VTOL vehicles are that they are from sci fi, and you can look up and see a bunch of empty space and wish you were there while sitting in traffic.
      - deleted 9mo ago
        [deleted]
- jstummbillig 9mo ago
  I am (usually) not willing to assume that the founders of highly technical startups would not consider something that I as an outsider would in the first 5 minutes of engaging with the topic. That makes me skeptical of all of these (minus the wind currents in cities, that might have taken a little longer).
  - RodgerTheGreat 9mo ago
    Theranos was famously founded on pitches about blood testing from finger pricks that literally any phlebotomist and many people with a modest life science background could've told you were physically and statistically impossible on their face. You should be considerably less credulous toward startup grifters.
    - jstummbillig 9mo ago
      The reason why you (and everyone else) knows about Theranos is that it was unique, which serves as a bad signifier if you want to judge what is likely to happen with the next startup. Being in prison and losing billions of dollars is just not something most people get excited about.
      - cbzbc 9mo ago
        The reason we know about Theranos is that it ended up in court. Plenty of other startups have had obviously impractical ideas that didn't go anywhere.
      - tsimionescu 9mo ago
        The reason we know about Theranos is because they took the grift up to a huge level and went from grift to outright fraud once they had to show actual results. It is not only not unique, but in fact extremely common for startups to be grifts around impossible technical promises, live a few years off gullible investors who have way more money than sens and/or for whom losing a few million dollars on a long shot is just as bad as me wasting a few dollars on a gizmo off Temu I know probably won't work, and which then die out because their ideas obviously couldn't work. They even sometimes find a niche by pivoting to some vaguely related tech. Say, while flying taxis obviously won't work, a startup trying to build them might find itself developing into a small company building helicopter propeller blades for some specific niche.
- signatoremo 9mo ago
  There are about 80,000 non-essential helicopter flights in Manhattan annually -[0]. That means a) there is a lot of demand, and b) it’s been pretty safe, with accidents being very rare. Many people are against helicopters on the grounds of noise, safety and pollution. Electric taxis will be welcomed once they are certified and economical. They only need to do better than helicopters. [0] - https://stopthechopnynj.org/frequently-asked-questions/ https://stopthechopnynj.org/frequently-asked-questions/
  - well_ackshually 9mo ago
    > Electric taxis will be welcomed once they are certified and economical. Do you believe helicopters are noisy because they're not electric ? Your electric taxi will do the same thing: they need propellers. Propellers that can carry up to 1 ton are fucking loud. Electric taxis will never be welcomed because they are a dumb idea.

ericd 9mo ago

Because noise?

xnx 9mo ago

Flying taxis make a lot of sense for very specific areas (e.g. Manhattan) and applications (e.g. mountain rescue).

ph4rsikal 9mo ago
China calls it the low-altitude economy, and besides human transportation there is a lot that can be done. Personally, I believe that propeller-driven devices are too dangerous and noisy, but there might be innovations coming out of China that Europe can't
- bethekidyouwant 9mo ago
  Everything that flies is driven with a loud dangerous spinning thing (propeller)
  - nandomrumber 9mo ago
    Birds.
    - tsimionescu 9mo ago
      Bird flight doesn't scale significantly. You can deliver very small objects via bird, and perhaps build a bird-like drone that does the same. But you can't build a human-carrying bird.
      - fc417fc802 9mo ago
        We haven't figured out how to scale it _yet_.
        tsimionescu 9mo ago
        It's very possible, and in fact most likely, that it can't scale. Insect flight is an even better example - the mechanisms that allow most insects to fly simply don't work past a few grams of weight. So, it is simply impossible to create an insect-like drone that can carry a human. I expect the exact same is true for birds - the kinds of effects that allow birds to fly with so little energy compared to a propeller-based aircraft are almost certainly not scalable, due to the fundamental properties of air as a gas. As far as I know, bird flight is made possible by complex turbulence effects induced by the microscopic structure of their feathers. It's very unlikely this effect could skale to 100kg of weight.

conductr 9mo ago

Agree. It doesn’t have the futuristic vibe but an urban gondola type system is probably what would be best. Especially in a city where there may already be a network of structures to leverage (eg. The buildings/rooftops and elevators). It would require massive coordination or eminent domain type laws to force but end result could be pretty awesome