Most of us grew up expecting the flying car would eventually come to pass. One of the more successful attempts occurred in the 1950’s but although some were produced, it never made it into the mass market. Although I cannot substantiate it, I understand the FAA of the time was rather horrified at the thought of such large numbers of people flying. Whether true or not, there are very real problems associated with aircraft which one does not face with a car: you cannot pull an airplane over to the side of a cloud when something goes BONK in the night.
Another issue is flying requires a pilot. Even with the new US FAA sport flying category, getting your ticket is no mean feat. Being a flyer does not just mean you know how to point the thing. It implies you are conversant with the rules of a three-dimensional sea, one whose buoys are marked with radio waves and whose small craft must stay out of the way of large aircraft not just for their own safety but for the safety of the heavy iron as well.
This is not to mention knowledge of meteorology, the jargon required to talk to towers and other pilots in order to communicate critical information quickly through sometimes noisy radio systems and all the rules and regulations which encode the hard won wisdom of a century of flight and the loss of thousands of lives. I could go on for a very long time but I will just say that being a pilot right now requires a skipload of skills and knowledge.
However, as we move deeper into the 21st century, some of these problems are abating. With smart systems and eventually self-repairing systems we will get flying machines which either won’t take off when there is a problem or get you down before it gets serious. With autonomous AI systems development moving along the way it is (think UCAV’s!) the knowledge base of the pilot will more and more be embedded in the avionics and the ‘driver’ will simply point the thing.
For all this to happen there has to be a Transition that opens up the market. And that machine may finally be here:
An aeronautical startup called Terrafugia has developed a small airplane called the Transition that it says can take to the sky as easily as the road. It is about the size of a large SUV and features innovative folding wings that collapse with the press of a button. Terrafugia calls it a “personal air vehicle.”
The team behind the Transition still has to design a drivetrain to propel the craft and a mechanism to transfer power from the propeller to the wheels, but it expects to begin flight tests late next year.
Production could begin as early as 2009, and Terrafugia says it’s already received more than 30 orders.
You will still need to be a real pilot, but at least you can save on the hangar or tie down fees.
The whole idea of “flying cars” scares me half to death.
I think about the morons out there on the roads right now (with state-issued driver’s licenses, I hasten to add), and the jump to 3D space just horrifies me. We’re talking about incipient Eloi whose conceptual connections to reality are getting more tenuous all the time. The implications are staggering.
I have the opposite feeling. Whatever airborne “roadway” equivalents they establish, it will be much easier to avoid maniacs than it currently is, there being more ways to swerve out of the way, fewer of those obnoxious troglodytes who take it upon themselves to “enforce” the speedlimit by driving in pairs and going well below it, and the concept of cutting someone off will become more or less obsolete. I think things will be more polite.
Of course, from the other point of view, it’s also true that people will have to pay attention to more directions than they have to focus on now. And yeah, some of the people you mention simply won’t be able to handle it.
One can always hope, though, that the timid stay on the ground in the New World.
This has been my dream all my life!
But let’s get real here.
Monbiot and Co would like to shoot 4×4 drivers on sight now.
They’ll never let us have one of those.
“I have the opposite feeling. Whatever airborne ‘roadway’ equivalents they establish, it will be much easier to avoid maniacs than it currently is,…”
…except, of course, when they’re raining out of the sky like Les Nessman’s Thanksgiving turkeys.
This is not to mention something like the possibilities for disaster open to great urban areas. I picture something like the morning traffic up & down I-85 in Atlanta, all converging on the city center at once, in the air.
I’m tellin’ ya: get all that Jetsons bullshit out of your mind. This is not a good idea.
Transition needs a runway (I think there are other models that don’t). What’s the point of the whole thing if one cannot take off in a middle of a traffic jam? And, Billy may be right.
I’m not so sure. The morning traffic up and down I85 is as forbidding as it is because it is confined to I85. The enormous increase in space offered by air lanes will eliminate traffic jams and decimate commute times. There won’t be the clouds of locusts you’re anticipating.
I said “air lanes.” This is indeed the “Jetsons bullshit” (or rather, “5th Element” bullshit – I’ve never seen the Jetsons) in my head. I assume people will insist on such a thing – or at least no-fly zones and stricter licenses for aircars – when these hit the market. However, I am content to wait for the science. It may be that they are unnecessary, or else so unenforceable as to be impractical, and it may be that Billy is right that it JUST. WON’T. WORK. because of swarms of cars crashing into each other left and right. It’s just that this latter seems implausible to me given the reduction in pressure on traffic flow that comes from all that extra space.
“The morning traffic up and down I85 is as forbidding as it is because it is confined to I85.”
If you know Atlanta, then you know that I barely scratched the surface with the reference to I-85 singularly.
“I am content to wait for the science.”
The science, Joshua, is never going to eliminate something really essential to all this, which is the fact that we’re talking about something elemental. As in: the air is not our natural element. Here is a fact: most people hold no serious conceptual way to consider a flight for what it really is. Every single time any human being leaves the planet in any way and for any reason, it is a completely unique event, because of the fact that it represents very grave defiance of the basic natural fact of gravity. (Please note that “defiance” in this context is not the same as “violation” of nature. The human mind is a superb tool for engineering this defiance — and we’re the only species that can do this — but that is nonetheless what it is, even though the device by which we do it is inherent in our nature.) This fact holds true even after more than a century of science applied to the business of flight, and it’s true because of the fact of gravity. Your average moron can goof on the street and get away with it in ways that will never be possible in the air, because of the immutable fact that the air is not our element.
All efforts to make routine something that is in its nature not routine, and never can be, are naturally-bound for trouble.
Call me a curmudgeon, contrarian or anything else, but I refuse to dream about this stuff. I’ve been in split second-to-second trouble as a Pilot In Command, and I see right through this nonsense.
What are you talking about? They’ve had these on sale for about the same price as a good car for years. There’s one of the pages on that site discusses what happens when things go wrong mid-air, too.
As for all this traffic chaos at rush hour – that’s why they used to have a guy out front waving a red flag. It was only when they stopped doing that that all the trouble started. But I’m sure we can come up with some sort of flying flag thing – innovate!
Here’s an even better one! “What do you get if you cross a motorbike with a…”
I do know Atlanta, and the idea that you barely scratched the surface is, of course, an understatement. Communiting to and from that city is a nightmare. However, I think my point stands. Traffic problems are what they are in Atlanta because huge amounts of traffic are routed along comparatively small navigable ribbons, and people have to travel further than they really should to get to work because the city is so spread out. The relative freedom of airtravel would seem to be an antidote.
And water is? And yet people do just fine in crowded harbors.
Alright, granted, this is a good point. It is not, however, an insurmountable barrier. People can and will be trained to deal with routine air travel. We are an adaptable lot.
Things that are not routine become routine with practice. Nothing is “in its nature not routine.”
By “Communiting” I did, of course, mean “commuting.” Not that Atlanta isn’t screwy enough to merit its own word for it…
“What are you talking about?”
Of whom are you asking that?
“They’ve had these on sale for about the same price as a good car for years. There’s one of the pages on that site discusses what happens when things go wrong mid-air, too.”
I don’t understand your point. The established procedures for air emergencies in every type of aircraft could probably protect half of Manhattan from radiation attack when put to paper and properly stacked, but people still die with steadfast regularity because there is no procedure that trumps nature. They all die from the same thing: impact. It happens every single day.
Everyday on my commute I pass at least a few accidents. Imagining that every one of these accidents would translate into large falling objects is a little off putting.
“And water is?”
No, sir, it’s not. Sailors and divers know this, just like pilots do.
I reckon Billy Beck is dead on, but even if these things were mass produced tommorow he’d still be free to NOT use them.
But whether he’d be free to NOT pay for other people’s use of them is another thing entirely…
In which case I’m not following you. Water is not our natural element, and yet with training ordinary people learn how to pilot their boats – even in busy harbors.
Is there some reason to believe it will be significantly more difficult for ordinary people to get the hang of aircars?
Let me try it this way, Joshua:
“People can and will be trained to deal with routine air travel.”
Then I suggest that we stop talking about “cars” and emphasize flying. Do you understand?
The very first thing to be attended is scrupulous conceptual hygiene.
Every variety of delusion is already so rampant in Western culture that every thinking person must deeply fear for the future. That’s a great big part of why this is so hair-raising.
I don’t think there is any reason to imagine that every one of these accidents would translate into large falling objects as I suspect there would be fewer accidents with aircars. The reason I think so is a consequence of the comparatively greater amount of swerve room, as I indicated earlier (though I concede that I may be wrong about that given that people will presumably have to pay attention to more than they currently do on the road).
However, I agree with you that the comparatively fewer number of accidents have a greater potential to harm innocent bystanders than current road crashes, and maybe, indeed, to such an extent that it makes aircars in general more dangerous – granted.
Who wants an aircar, or motorcycle-helicopter, when you could have one of these?
“…and yet with training ordinary people learn how to pilot their boats – even in busy harbors.”
That’s as wrong as it can possibly be. Training, Joshua, is exactly what makes them extraordinary.
“Is there some reason to believe it will be significantly more difficult for ordinary people to get the hang of aircars?”
Yes, there is. My Private Pilot certificate.
I did say “routine air travel.”
Evidently I don’t, so please explain yourself clearly. Is there any reason to believe that flying will be any more difficult a skill for people to acquire than sailing or motorboat piloting, which large numbers of people do acquire to the requisite level of skill?
Has anyone said anything about vast numbers of untrained aircar pilots? I am assuming that most aircar pilots will be, as most sailors are, trained to do what they do. Is there any reason I shouldn’t make this assumption?
Can anyone explain how that folding wing airplane is a transition to anything? Technologically, it’s no more advanced than a Autocar.
Where is the hands-off fly-by-wire scheme necessary to make flying cars a disastrous reality? Without that, the flying car concept is merely an investor trap, as opposed to an – infallibly computer guided – constant rain of wreckage.
Yes, large flying objects controlled by a Windows product. That’s pretty funny.
“Hey kids, the guidance system just crashed! Put on your parachutes!”
Most flying car proposals are just another scheme to seperate well-heeled nerds from their money. There is nothing like a complete lack of any sense of history to make your complete mark. I have a guidebook from the Seattle Worlds Fair advertising some prototype one-man jet powered helicopter you could supposedly fly from your backyard into downtown Seattle. “Dealerships available now. ” This was in 1962
Why not let the Top Gear crew like Jeremy Clarkson or the Hamster have a go in one of these? They’d love it!
…says Joshua. Well, we have that situation now. So what happened to Aircars for All?
“Is there any reason to believe that flying will be any more difficult a skill for people to acquire than sailing or motorboat piloting, which large numbers of people do acquire to the requisite level of skill?”
There are so many reasons that I hardly know where to begin.
If you’re really serious about the question, then I might suggest setting aside many thousands of your favorite dollars for the purpose of this training and going to see for yourself.
For over four decades, mate, I was dreamy-eyed about flying. Then, I sorted out the fantasies from the reality. Believe me: your enthusiasm is close to my heart. I know, however, that my head is far, far more crucial to the thing.
Flying is a big, big deal — no matter the fact that you see it happening every day — and “flying cars” are not.
Nothing. Most people are probably capable of learning to pilot one of these things – when and if they are readily available on the market. The fact that they are harder to learn to deal with than ordinary groundcars does not mean people cannot do it. The reasons there are comparatively few pilots and sailors are because these things are expensive and impractical. If they became practical in the same sense that driving a car is – i.e. more than just a hobby or a career choice – people would acquire the skill necessary to use them.
Actually, I do intend to do that someday. Right now I am in graduate school and do not have the dosh.
Obviously you’re right that if I do not know anything first-hand about flying I cannot speak to the skill level required to pilot aircars. Perhaps it is prohibitive for the general population.
I am inclined, however, to think not. See the comment I just posted: people are capable of learning a lot more than you think when there is some immediate practical reason for them to do so. There are comparatively few air pilots now because aircars are not cheap and readily available (available at all?). If they became so – things may change.
However, granted, I do not know about flying so I cannot say this for sure. I remain optimistic.
Let’s get some points straight. The air car design I am linking to is most certainly a vehicle that will require a PPL. There are no immediate vehicles on the drawing board which will get us away from that requirement, and so long as things remain as they are technologically, Billy is correct.
But things are *not* going to remain the same. We are only on the bare beginnings of robotic flight, but it is an area that is advancing at an incredibly fast rate and is having billions of dollars invested in it world wide. The EU has recently put down a set of rules on what a UCAV will have to be capable of to fly in non-military airspace. Those rules essentially require that the craft be able to fly autonomously and see and avoid other traffic. This will be required even for remotely piloted vehicles because communications links can fail.
The electronics revolution is already making massive differences in General Aviation as well. TCAS type systems are no longer something only a major airline can afford. Neither are autopilots that can handle an entire flight in 0-0 conditions from takeoff through landing.
Once we have the technology with which a totally unmanned vehicle flies freely mixed in with piloted traffic, it is not a very big stretch to put people in it and allow them to control that vehicle within predefined parameters.
That will come and it is not all that far away.
So we are not talking about a moron pilot, we are talking about an already proven robotic pilot which accepts suggestions from morons and decides whether to comply or not.
“There are comparatively few air pilots now because aircars are not cheap and readily available (available at all?).”
I sharply disagree. Even accounting for the economics, I submit that it is actually a small segment of the general population who have both the inclination and aptitude to do it. This is in fact something that eases my mind about this whole aircar thing, with the heavy caveat that bloody fools can always be tempted beyond their own measure. But I’ve seen people in flight training never make it eight hours to solo, much less a certificate checkride, for all kinds of reasons. I have no reason to believe that, if flight training and aircars were given away on every street corner, pilots as percentage of the population would become predominant.
“We are only on the bare beginnings of robotic flight,…”
There it is: the panacea.
I don’t know how to make this clear to you people. The robot will know nothing about the element. And when it breaks, nature will. It will not be like your auto-driving Onstar 5.0 sitting there in the middle of the road in a coma while irritated passersby bang on their horns at you.
How in the world am I to make this clear?
Thank goodness for that! Problem solved. We can all sleep comfortably now. Except for those of us who won’t be totally comfortable until the UN has slapped down those upstarts from the EU and issued their own rules.
Good thing that the global warming problem got solved. And the peak oil problem too. Otherwise, this discussion would have been a little beside the point.
Even if the technology is absolutely perfect, I’d rather be in a car I can direct myself than an aircar that would basically be under someone or something else’s control. To be really safe, an aircar would basically be beyond the driver’s control, with the driver just indicating his destination. This is in the best interests of liberty?
Not to mention that such a scheme is the near-opposite of what all you people are dreaming of as “flight”. It’s debasing piloting to bring a automated simulacrum to the commuting masses.
Of course, as Beck points out, it’s impossible. If possible, it would also be obnoxious.
I’m loath to speculate as to what will come to pass. It’s clear that we typically underestimate by orders of magnitude. For this particular issue, I think it pays to keep in mind what the essential desire is driving this “dream.” Is the dream essentially to have flying cars for everyone, or the freedom and ease of mobility that such a dream implies?
I think it’s more the latter, and flying cars are simply a natural response to that desire. As such, if I were to speculate, I’d say that probably something else will eventually fill the need. If I had to guess? My guess is that the need to “go to work” to a physical location each and every morning will become increasingly unnecessary.
I have a different perspective, too, on airspace management. See here:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=YdV-_ObZTa8
I’ll see if I can find one of hang gliders (what I fly — in addition to sailplanes and powered) later. These are going about 15-20 mph, so 30-40 relative at most. Hang gliders are about double that. I’ve been in gaggles even larger than this, comprised of both slower moving para gliders and hang gliders. That’s more of a challenge, because of the speed differences. Still doable, and I have to admit: far easier than it looks.
“Of whom are you asking that?”
Of people thinking that the technology for easily available personal flying cars was anything new. It wasn’t meant to be rude.
“I don’t understand your point. The established procedures for air emergencies in every type of aircraft could probably protect half of Manhattan from radiation attack when put to paper and properly stacked, but people still die with steadfast regularity because there is no procedure that trumps nature. They all die from the same thing: impact. It happens every single day.”
Perfection is the enemy of the good. If the engine stops in your autogyro, you just land. The question is not whether some people will die, because they will. The question is whether they will necessarily die at any greater rate than they do in cars, trucks, bicycles, motorbikes, skateboards, boats, and so on.
Yes, there will still be accidents. And yes, every time there is one, you’ll get the same knee-jerk characters demanding that it be “regulated” or “banned”. I mean really, it’s only flying cars – personal hypersonic space rockets, which is what we really want, are still a long way off. It’s not as if we were proposing something really dangerous, like letting all those untrained idiot members of the public own and carry loaded guns around with them or something. 🙂
(That’s a joke, by the way. Please don’t shoot me.)
“It wasn’t meant to be rude.”
I didn’t presume that.
“Perfection is the enemy of the good.”
Well, addressing this just by itself, I’ve always thought it’s impertinent nonsense, and I still do. In any case…
“If the engine stops in your autogyro, you just land.”
That’s nowhere near all that can go wrong (pop quiz: anybody around here know anything about “gyroscopic precession”, for instance?), and people get killed in gyrocopters all the time for that very reason.
“The question” that I see in all this is about the idea that operating anything in the air can be compared to operating anything on the ground. That is a truly fundamental conceptual misgrappling.
The aircar will come when the AI technology is advanced enough. The robotic aircraft is not coming… it is *already* here. There is a lot of discussion going on in the FAA and amongst the major aviation players about how to maximize safety in a mixed use airspace.
If we can let loose thousands (and there will be thousands upon thousands of them) autonomous flying machines in the global airspace, then letting people ride in them is something that will come. It will be market driven. Take this robotic vehicle, but a luxury cabin and a destination keypad on it and sell if for loads of dosh to rich playboys… and then as the production rises and the price falls, sell it to a larger market. That is the market at work and it will happen.
As to handing over your ‘liberty’ to a robot. I am sorry, but if you can find a market mechanism that will let the average Joe get a real PPL and fulfill all the requirements Billy rightfully names, then please let us know.
There will be private air transport and it will not exist for the joy of flying: it will exist to get people from Point A to Point B with minimum hassle and without the need to pave over the entire country using tax money.
As to the problems? Of course there will be. Just imagine the problems horsedrivers prophecied for those damn horseless carriages. A horse could take you home drunk, how on Earth could one of those wobbly dohickeys match THAT? And where would you get the gas? And what use are they since they can’t even get very far or to many places because what roads there are exist for horses and carriages. And horses don’t break down every few miles either.
Times change and you either go with them or get squashed flat.
It’s bad enough that we already have teenagers and geriatric incompetents colliding with everything in sight. The idea of multi aircraft collisions and wreckage raining down on my holiday party is disconcerting.
Pfft. Yeah, those are similar. You might want to consider that the number of mishaps related to firearms is dwarfed by the carnage drivers inflict on a daily basis.
You can build a flying car, but they won’t come. Not as long as one of them costs more than a Cessna and a Miata combined while getting worse performance than either. The design trade-offs for cars and planes push in different directions. Anything you build will be horribly compromised.
Now if you want a personal VTOL, that day will come.
One of the big problems of flying cars is that the behavior of air near the ground is extremely unpredictable and can be quite nasty. Wind shear can bring down a 747, imagine the damage to a stack of flying vehicles in an airborne traffic jam.
Then there are simply mechanics–if the flying vehicle on top of the stack runs out of gas, what’s it going to do? An autogyro can, well, autogryo down, but by what path? Most other designs will just plummet to the earth taking everything in the way with it.
As one commentator put it, flying cars give you a crappy car and a crappy airplane. Who really wants to fly in a crappy airplane?
Joe: when Joshua asked me about the difficulty of acquiring skills, I actually wrote the word, “meteorology”, and was actually about to launch into a brief sketch of the implications of that single aspect of it, alone, when I came to my senses.
Dale: nobody ever got killed when their car stopped flying, unless they were dim enough to somehow get the thing in the air in the first place. This fact is not about “changing times”.
This discussion reminds me of the very beginning of Wolfgang Langewiesche’s Stick and Rudder, which I first read as a quote in Solo, by Clyde Edgerton:
Here’s a little bit more from the very first page:
I personally hope the public schools won’t be entrusted with offering “Flyer’s Ed” as they are now with “Driver’s Ed”.
Linda: yes, ma’am. You go, girl.
Langewiesche is essential in any discussion of flight. Indispensible.
Much as a flying car
has always been a childhood dream for me
I’m with Billy on this one.
The words Plummet Airlines keep coming into my head.
I’m not about to trust the technology above the law of gravity and that of universal stupidity.
I say that as one who’s father in law got his pilots licence age 55. After very much effort.
Flying is not for fools.
So I guess there are a number of you who:
* Do not believe we will ever have really good AI
* Do not believe that even with our double exponentially increasing rate of technological improvement that materials and systems will ever be safe.
* Do not believe that networked systems will ever be able to pass information between nodes with sufficient speed and accuracy to allow information on weather, location and proximity of other craft to shared.
* Do not believe that the rapid advances in fabrication and materials technology will ever make mass produced inexpensive craft buildable.
I could go on. Keep in mind that I agree with you at this point in time. I just do not agree with you for all future points in time, and my agreement starts falling off exceedingly rapidly after 2015.
Hell, by 2035 we’ll have our household AI design one for us and our neighborhood Rapid fab nanotech facility have it ready for us in the morning.
And forget about the ‘learning to fly’ the people on board will be passengers. Even the ‘driver’ will be a passenger in all but name. The pilot will be a mass produced silicon chip.
Hell, even the USAF is suggesting that the Raptor may be the last generation of manned fighter. And that the next bomber design will be the last manned bomber. Whether it quite comes about in one more generation I will not argue. But it will be fact within a couple decades at most.
But don’t despair… the same technology will let real pilots have cheap rebuilds of classics like the Stearman, the P-51 and others to do real piloting in.
That will only be for those who want to learn the skill. The rest will be passengers. Just as is likely to happen to ground vehicles by the way…
In the early ’70s, my brother took up aviation. Back then, renting an airplane was about as cheap as renting a car. By age 17, he had his private pilot’s license. His aerobatic certification and commercial license followed at age 18. Years ago, I asked him about the concept of “flying cars” as discussed here.
I don’t recall the details and can’t ask him (he’s dead), but the thought filled him with deep and sincere horror. Like most members of my family, he nurtured a secret love of engineering; for him, learning to fly meant understanding, at a reflexive level, every aspect of the game that was open to be understood. That, along with experience, an abiding respect for the dangers involved and other traits made him an outstanding aviator in the eyes of his fellows.
The hoary old quote about aviation not being inherently dangerous but less forgiving than the sea of carelessness, incapacity or neglect is as true today as ever. This is not a list of problems to be overcome with technology, but a statement of principle. You can regulated around it, create whatever gizmo you like to try to circumvent it or ignore it, but it will be entirely and immutably at your peril.
We’ve had the technology to create automated, high speed expressways for some time now. We don’t have them. For now and the foreseeable future, it’s a prescription for disaster.
Increase that by a couple of orders of magnitude.
A couple of comments about the book by Langewiesche, if I may. It’s no longer the case that lower is inherently more dangerous in terms of lift, as opposed to how fast you’re going (“Can I dodge that tree in time?” for instance). It’s possible to fly “Wing in Ground Effect” and gain immense amounts of lift at low altitudes. Which is to say, so low, you’d usually use the effect for heavy aircraft flying where there aren’t many sudden elevation changes or obstacles to dodge. Oversea freight routes immediately spring to mind, especially if you use it with a flying-boat (such as the Hughes ‘Spruce Goose’ back in the mid-1940s). WiGE vehicles make use of the wingtip vortices inherent to lifting bodies in a somewhat unusual way, but do so very effectively whenever they’ve been tested.
These vortices make the limiting case with any “mass market” aircraft, even modern airliners. The problem is how large of a vortex they throw, and how long it takes to dissipate. These vortices can (and have) knocked fully-loaded airliners out of the sky. In recent discussions between carriers and Airbus, it came to light that the sheer bulk of the new A380 meant that spacing between successive flights would have to be increased; possibly to the point where passenger/flight gains would be offset by flight/day reductions (completely blowing the business model for buying a fleet of them). And of course this’ll be magnified several orders if you’re talking about glorified ultralights. Even business jets would be able to knock a skycar down if it got too close behind or crossed the wake. The only safe way to have mass-market flying “cars” is to have many landing fields, and skycars sized enough to carry several people at a time, all with computer-controlled spacing. Think carpooling, maybe multiple groups’ worth per plane compared to modern cars to make it affordable–and you’re now talking about a business plane, again.
What I find surprising is nobody’s saying much about using simple hovercraft (with suitably-straightened roadways) for the higher-speed future ground transport of choice. A bonus is that one may drive them at slower speeds too (lift being independent of velocity), so they can be used on current roads. And, somewhat rougher terrain may also be crossed in them. Think of it as combining the speed of a light plane with some of the offroading ability of a light truck.
“The rest will be passengers. Just as is likely to happen to ground vehicles by the way…”
That statement makes my skin crawl. Having visual information about the risks of my journey but not having the personal control to choose exactly how I avoid them…. that always scares the hell out of me.
I hate being in a car being driven by another person – regardless of my appraisal of their driving skills.
I will not get on the back of someone else’s motorcycle.
I hate taking taxis – and I will even behave strangely to avoid doing so.
Not having personal control over my vehicle scares me. By way of explanation, I live in Taiwan – a country with one of the highest rates of traffic accidents in the world. Now I have heard that Americans, generally speaking, aren’t particularly renowned for their driving sense, but – until you’ve lived here, you know nothing about the dangers of idiocy. Nothing.
I do not believe in ‘road safety’ – there is no such thing, only risk reduction.
And the best way to reduce the risks of losing your life – is being aware of them in the first place.
There is always a danger of stupidily missing the mark in making generalisations, but I really do believe that lack of road awareness is so widespread among drivers in Taiwan (westerners included) that it might be better described as a character trait – either of person or of this country. Witness these idiots for example. This sort of thing happens pretty much every couple of days here – so I can’t bear to imagine what these people would do in the air.
For all the talk about guns and self-defence here on samizdata, there is surprisingly little about control of one’s own vehicle and protecting oneself from the idiots all around – I can only imagine this is because London is so much safer that the subject never occurs to anyone as an issue for libertarians. Yet to me it is a daily question of life or death importance. Perhaps I ought to write an article…
“Most people are probably capable of learning to pilot one of these things – when and if they are readily available on the market. The fact that they are harder to learn to deal with than ordinary groundcars does not mean people cannot do it.”
I disagree. If they are to be actually flown by people, ask yourself this question, how many folks out there, today, on the street can actually, competently, drive a manual transmission.
I see people every day on my commute (round trip 63 miles, and on something similar in scope to Billy Beck’s I-85 description) who are obviously driving an automatic and make themselves look like a pig trying to walk in high heels.
Yes, I do believe that the skills might be possible to acquire, but most folks are far too lazy to think about actually practicing enough for either getting or keeping them.
“Yes, I do believe that the skills might be possible to acquire, but most folks are far too lazy to think about actually practicing enough for either getting or keeping them.”
A wise old aviation mentor of mine once told me, “If you open the average two hundred-hour logbook, what you’ll usually find is the same hour over and over again two hundred times.”
Even many certificated pilots don’t keep up what are very perishable skills. We see this all the time on the streets, too, which is dangerous enough without the element of gravity.
“I disagree. If they are to be actually flown by people, ask yourself this question, how many folks out there, today, on the street can actually, competently, drive a manual transmission.”
In the UK, most cars are manual transmission. I make no comments on competence, though.
Any unfamiliar skill will seem hard at first. From watching a 2 year old trying to walk, to first getting on a bicycle, to juggling a football, to doing flips on a skateboard. As the problems building robots to do this stuff demonstrate, merely walking down stairs demonstrates an astonishing degree of computational coordination, compared to which stuff like driving or unicycle riding is merely the waves on the ocean deep.
Now you may be right, and flying is an especially difficult feat that only a tiny elite of biologically talented hyperintelligent born-ninjas have a hope of ever doing – my only experience of flying is flight sims, which I suspect make it easier than it actually is, and a few balloon trips which don’t really have the same issues. And I’d sort of expect that when doing 200mph while 1000 ft up in the air there are many more new and esoteric things that can go wrong than are found doing a mere 69mph+ while dodging lane-switching lorries driven by sleep-deprived East Europeans and assorted maniacs in Volvos holding shouted conversations on mobile phones a few metres apart at ground level through a badly signposted concrete maze. But I do think you guys might be taking this all a bit too pessimistically. It reminds me of all those people of long ago who said man could never exceed 30mph because all the air would be sucked out of their lungs and they’d suffocate.
If you’re all going to be such wet blankets about flying cars, what hope do I have of gaining your approval for my hypersonic scramjet rocket ship armed with 100kW death lasers? A man’s got to have a dream.
Definitely. By some time in the next generation or two, both land-borne and airborne vehicles (and, I expect, seaborne vehicles) will be autonomous. It will be illegal for a person to drive or pilot one in the “public domain.” There will be race tracks and reserved volumes of airspace where human operation will be allowed for sport — possibly co-located.
I’m not saying that’s either good or bad, just inevitable. As both a pilot and a driving enthusiast I’ll miss enjoying both activities whenever I feel like it. But for autonomous land vehicles it’s a no-brainer: they will be so much safer that the general public will demand them and demand that “drivers” be banned. The safety benefit of autonomous jet airliners is less clear, but personal aviation on a large scale will only happen if the vehicles are autonomous.
There could be a transition period where AI will make it easier for human pilots. One could argue that we’re already in that phase. But it will be easier to make autonomous aircraft than aircraft that make flying easy to learn, so I don’t think we’ll ever see the day when the average person pilots aircraft the way the average person drives a car today.
Again, I’m not arguing that this is good or bad, just inevitable.
“In the UK, most cars are manual transmission. I make no comments on competence, though.”
Yes, I realize this, but over here on the other side of the pond, where the automobile has reigned supreme for a hundred years now, we’ve been driving automatics, mostly, for the last 40 or 50 years.
Guess what? It shows.
Nothing breeds incompetence as much as relieving someone of the responsibility of doing something about directing themselves at whatever task it is at hand, and I’m convinced, from 20 years of watching dolts on the road with their left foot on the brake while simultaneously having their right foot on the accelerator to know who’s who and my eyes and mind are wide open as to who are the better drivers, and it’s almost universally those who are still driving the antiquated stick.
I’m a hold-out, and will not gladly part with the last of my stick-shift vehicles, when they are no longer available. The day is coming, as another commentor noted, that we’ll no longer have much option for this. Sooner than I hope, the manual transmission will no longer be economically viable to produce for the manufacturers, and that will be the last of it. Here, at least.
Also, I would point out that (without resurrecting a dead subject) if a person is piloting a boat that sinks, he can at least swim….if a is person piloting an aircar that dies, no amount of trying will cause him to be able to fly. In this sense, water IS a natural human element. We can learn to swim without assistance, but never to fly.
A sinking ship also doesn’t take out anything beneath it, unlike the aircar which takes out anything in its path, as someone else pointed out.
Flying, though, is great….if you ignore the plane. Ha!
I’ve got to go with BIlly on this one.
Several reasons –
I am a pilot and have a 30+ year career in computers.
Contrary to what some may think or have stated – computers have NOT gotten better – just faster/smaller/FAR more complicated and prone to errors in the software area but a bit easier to deal with so all of this AI, autonomous, robotic stuff is pure pie in the sky for anyone who values his life. You really want to trust your life to what you have seen in electronic and software in the last 20 years ?? Not me.
Now, flying can be learned by just about anyone with average intellegence and a willingness to study, learn and practice. You can learn to drive a car in about 5 minutes ( I didn’t say well, or safely or skillfully ) – and that simply isn’t true for aircraft. There is FAR more to it than ‘turn the key and away we go’ and the simple fact is that most people are simply not going to invest the time and effort ( to say nothing of $$$$$$ ) to do it .
One reason for that is without an instrument rating, weather can be an incredibly limiting factor. ( 2 days in a hotel waiting for the storms to pass !!) and if anyone can get a pilots license, I’m am not sure about an instrument rating ( the toughest of ALL the ratings – after instrument, the rest, commercial, multi-engine etc. are peices of cake !!!)
No one so far has even mentioned weather limitations and they do exist. Magiacally automatic or not, ice in sufficient quantity will bring ANY aircraft down !! Fog ( clouds ) is another ‘fun aspect’. Try flying directly at something ( a cloud ) at 150 MPH that appears solid. You’ll find out just how good your nerves are the first few times!!
There are people driving who shouldn’t be allowed on a bicycle without training wheels and you’re going to put them in an aircraft !! Are you knucking futz !!
Maintenance – aircraft have to be meticulously maintained ( you REALLY do not want things to go wrong a mile or two in the air ) and the way most people maintain their cars, if they were in aircraft, they’d kill themselves 3 times a week !!!!!!!
Efficiency and fuel economy, forget about it. The milage today is pathetic but is due in part to basic physics. You have to keep the thing in the air and above a certain speed. That takes energy, lots of it. and the rule about the resistance rises as the square of the speed
( double the speed and you quadruple the resistance ) This adds up to lousy fuel milage.
Cost
Right now, a new 4 place,130 mph aircraft built in the U.S.A. will set you back about $200,000.00. Oh you want radios and NAV equipment ?!! Plan on dropping another $30 to $50K.
Don’t even get me started about fuel, tie-down/hangars, insurance on and on.
Essentially, simply too expensive. Now some may say, economy of scale will solve that. SOrry, not true as I will explain below ( In any case it won’t lower fuel, storage etc. anyway )
As an aside, there is an individual in this country that has been trying to sell a ‘flying car’ for about 30 years.
It LOOKS great until you realize it is simply a mockup and I don’t believe one has EVER gotten off the ground to say nothing of the idea that his figures for speed, load capacity, fuel comsuption etc. simply don’t add up.
The idea that we will ‘all be flying to work’ has been ‘just around the corner’ for 70+ years. To add to that perspective, hang-on-the-wall television was also ‘just around the corner, for how long, 30 years ?
The ATC system in this country operates on the ragged edge of overloaded and you’re going to try and add how many thousands ( millions ) of aircraft to that system ??!! Good Luck
Finally, what will prevent any of this is a little problem called PRODUCT LIABILITY !!!
The general aviation industry in this country has all but been destroyed by lawsuits. Remeber that $200K example above ? About $199K of that is for future litigations expense – an exageration to be sure but not a great one !!!!
All that is going to have to happen is one ( or several ) deaths blamed on some real or imagined deisgn failure/flaw and the manufacturer will be sued out of business or other manufactures will get out of the business.
An incident will not take long to happen. All you have to do is ‘bump’ another aircraft and it will ruin you whole day. As my instructor once said – mid-air collisions are generally one-to-a-customer. VERY few are survived.
This is one of the reasons we don’t already have ‘self driving’ cars. Product liability.
Sorry but not in my lifetime and I suspect never in the ways envisioned by the dreamers.