[HN Gopher] Regional Air Mobility: Why we don't plan to operate ...
___________________________________________________________________
Regional Air Mobility: Why we don't plan to operate flights under
20km
Author : kayza
Score : 174 points
Date : 2020-07-24 19:26 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (lilium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (lilium.com)
| alexchamberlain wrote:
| There's one area where I'd love a shorter trip: travelling to the
| international airport.
|
| I live in South East London and it can easily take over an hour
| to get to Heathrow, which really eats into a weekend if
| travelling for work. I'd love to be able to go to a more local
| vertigo, check my luggage and just have to clear international
| security at the main airport.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Switzerland is one of few countries where "air taxi" services
| turned to profit.
|
| Hilly terrain makes it hard to make straight roads. Quite a lot
| of big cities don't have direct road connections.
|
| In a relatively flat USA, you don't have a lot of similar spaces.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| Only place in the US I can think of that matches that is rural
| Alaska. Lots of little islands and communities where bushplanes
| are a primary transportation mode.
|
| I remember seeing a row of houses built along a grassy strip
| that operated as a runway. Like their combined backyards were
| literally the airstrip.
| toohotatopic wrote:
| Hilly terrain with ice and snow. How do you get to work in a
| snow-storm? Possible in a car, but something else in an "air
| taxi".
| guidoism wrote:
| SF to Palo Alto by car in 35m is ummm, optimistic. It's usually
| more like 2h.
| tschwimmer wrote:
| It's about 35 minutes in zero traffic. During rush out it can
| be a few minutes on either side of an hour.
| Hovertruck wrote:
| > If we imagine for a moment that you work in an office in Palo
| Alto, you could now choose to live in Hayward (5 min flight,
| $25), downtown San Francisco (10 min flight, $50), or even San
| Rafael (15 min flight, $70).
|
| This is a strange example to include in here - that's a pretty
| expensive (one-way?) commute.
| looping__lui wrote:
| I guess they address the pressing problems of their investors?
| Like people with too much money to spend and a bit detached
| from reality? ;-)
| notatoad wrote:
| yeah, looking at the size of their aircraft and their
| proposed "vertiports", they're not suggesting that hundreds
| of thousands of people can move to san rafael and commute to
| sf, they're talking about more like 12 people. and tbh they
| could probably find a dozen people in the bay area with a
| $36k/year commuting budget
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Right? Because SF isn't already expensive enough without having
| to compensate employees for $700/week ($36,000/yr) in commuting
| expenses. (Or for employees to be able to justify that on their
| own dime...)
| gojomo wrote:
| It wouldn't have to be every day; it'd save 1hr+ over driving
| or train; many people in the Bay Area market for this have an
| effective rate of compensation over $100/hour.
|
| With sufficiently-enlightened regulation (for which I
| wouldn't hold my breath), these could run, for example, from
| the rooftops of Google buildings in Mountain View to the
| rooftops of their Embarcadero-SF building. Or downtown Palo
| Alto to a downtown SF pier. Etc.
|
| If physically possible, safe, & available for the prices
| they're claiming, this would have a big market. And,
| competitors, like the Larry Page-backed 'Kitty Hawk':
| https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2020/06/04/larry-
| pa...
| pengaru wrote:
| The last thing I expected was EDF (Electric Ducted Fan)
| propulsion on something described as a jet.
| Jabbles wrote:
| I would have thought any new transport technology would be
| heavily automated - from a brief look these require 1 pilot per 4
| passengers.
|
| Not that it would be easy, I'm just surprised something so
| ambitious doesn't also include automation.
|
| At first glance I would have thought automating a small plane
| would be easier than automating a car - for one thing there are
| fewer things to crash into.
| praveen9920 wrote:
| One word: compliance.
|
| FAA has lot of restrictions to allow a planes to fly with pilot
| in it. Imagine convincing them that without pilot.
| noir_lord wrote:
| Honestly that is as it should be.
|
| Does that kind of regulation inhibit progress in some
| domains, sure - is the cost of the loss of that progress
| worth it against the likely outcome of de-regulating it
| absolutely.
|
| Safety regulations are written in blood and when
| organisations like the FCC, FDA etc fall down on the job
| people _die_.
|
| I want my cyberpunk aircar as much as the next geek but not
| at the price of having them fall out the sky because some
| programmer made an error at the end of a 70hr work week to
| make a deadline for shipping.
| Jabbles wrote:
| This seems very absolutist. If we assume the technology
| exists to make this safe, there are a number of factors
| that would make this obviously less risky:
|
| 4 people per aircraft reduce the number of lives at risk
| from any particular issue. That doesn't mean the FAA can be
| 100x as cavalier as they are with an A380, but it does mean
| the worst possible likely outcome is not as bad.
|
| Short flights - easily predictable weather patterns.
|
| Elimination of pilot error - obviously replaced with
| computer error, but still.
|
| And as I said elsewhere, the ability to test to
| destruction.
| protomyth wrote:
| In limited situations that is happening now:
| https://www.garmin.com/en-US/autonomi/
|
| _Autoland has achieved FAA certification. It's now available
| on select G3000(r) flight deck-equipped aircraft. And it's
| coming to more soon._
| Jabbles wrote:
| I'm sure it would be a decade-long task. But I'm not sure
| it's monumentally harder than either the process for piloted
| aircraft, or the task of automating the aircraft in the first
| place.
|
| And you can much more easily demonstrate the limits of an
| automated aircraft. Simulated bird-strikes, thunderstorms,
| power-outages, emergency landing in fields, blinding by
| laser-pointers, stray bullets or whatever scenario the FAA
| throws at you can be done without the risk to the (non-
| existent) human pilots, just the cost to VCs.
|
| Whether that argument would work on them is a different
| matter, but I find it quite convincing.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| You know that passenger planes basically can land with
| autopilot now?
| rvnx wrote:
| Small planes and helicopters are so unstable that I wouldn't
| enjoy riding this vehicle at all. High-speed train is so much
| more comfortable.
|
| Most people taking the plane everyday hate it.
|
| It's a so-so idea.
| errantspark wrote:
| I this is a solvable problem and moving from current propulsion
| methods to a whole bunch of very small individually
| controllable BLDC motors with one moving part and low inertia
| is definitely a step in the right direction toward increasing
| the stability of low mass aircraft.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| Wonder if the mass is low enough for a parachute to be used
| as a final failsafe.
| jmercouris wrote:
| It absolutely is!
| Alupis wrote:
| Most of the "uncomfotrable-ness" of smaller aircraft is how
| easily they are blown around in the wind, which is not
| insignificant at safe operating altitudes.
|
| This aircraft proposal will not be able to negate the effect.
| Think small boat on a lake - even with azimuth thrusters,
| still bobs up and down back and forth with the waves. Larger
| boats don't experience the effect as much, due to mass - same
| with large airliners.
| yread wrote:
| Couldn't you come up with some smart way of changing the
| throttle of the engines to keep you stable. Bit like these
| fins
|
| www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rCWnI8r_EQ
| Alupis wrote:
| No. You're effectively in a liquid, and that liquid is
| moving very quickly up and down, left and right. You can
| see in the video you linked to, it's not all that
| effective, even while stationary in a boat. Plus, the
| drag penalty related to some extra appendage like this
| would be severe.
|
| It would take a LOT to keep you precisely in the same
| 6-axis position - and there's no way a system could react
| quick enough because it would first need to detect the
| movement, accounting for normal wind-speed, etc. Any
| solution here would be heavy, induce drag, eat through
| batteries/fuel, and introduce a lot of new failure modes
| that don't exist with traditional aircraft and could be
| unrecoverable in the event of a failure (stuck appendage
| or azimuth thruster-like propeller in wrong direction,
| destroying lift).
|
| Things are quite different just 1,000 feet off the
| ground, and even worse 5,000 ft or 10,000 feet. The wind
| speed can get extreme, averaging 100mph at 10,000 ft[1].
|
| For people accustomed to flying in these small aircraft,
| you get used to it. But for people already nervous about
| flying, or not familiar with small aircraft, the sudden
| movement can be very disorienting and scary.
|
| People often underestimate the aviation industry. It's
| incredibly safe, and very stable. A lot of innovations
| were paid for with blood during the early days of
| aviation, which led to it's maturity. Innovation, at this
| point in aviation's history, is very challenging and
| requires very deep understandings - even mature
| organizations like Boeing struggle with this from time-
| to-time, and they have a ton of experience in developing
| extremely reliable aircraft for not just transport, but
| combat and more.
|
| Unfortunately, far too often, things like this startup's
| solution are dreamt up by people that don't understand
| the problem domain and don't have a lot of experience in
| the field. They look from afar, and confidently state
| they know a solution no one else has thought of or tried,
| and the entire industry is simply doing things so
| obviously wrong. Fortunately, they often find out why
| things are the way they are within a reasonable time
| frame and don't blow all of their investor's money or get
| people killed. Time will tell here.
|
| [1] http://www.kitegen.com/en/technology/wind-data/
| errantspark wrote:
| To be clear I don't think that a bunch of motors with low
| latency control solve the problem of flying straight in
| turbulence. I think that it will allow for exploration of
| a new space of clever approaches to mitigate turbulence
| for craft with low inertia.
| Alupis wrote:
| Maybe. I'd like to see myself.
|
| But, I'm highly skeptical for a lot of reasons. This
| design in particular introduces a lot of turbulent flow
| over the lift surfaces, and is going to require a lot of
| fancy logic to ensure the aircraft can remain stable with
| one or more of it's motors failing. It ads a lot of
| complexity, to a vehicle where simplicity keeps you safe,
| particularly at low altitudes where seconds matter when
| there's a problem.
| scarier wrote:
| I'm curious if there will be a market for this--plenty of current
| production aircraft can work perfectly well as air taxis, but the
| service has only caught on in niche markets (island-hopping float
| planes, some helicopter services, arguably a lot of bush flying).
| Decreasing the cost by an order of magnitude might go some
| distance to open the market up--I can't see this succeeding
| without a drastic advantage in operating costs over traditional
| aircraft (I think the jury's still out on whether electric
| propulsion is a significant advantage here, and VTOL requirements
| are a big disadvantage).
|
| The case for VTOL in particular becomes a lot less convincing
| when you're primarily looking at the kind of regional travel
| Lilium mentions here--why not just electrify an existing FW
| aircraft and operate out of existing infrastructure
| (https://www.harbourair.com/harbour-air-and-magnix-
| announce-s...)? Small airports are pretty ubiquitous, and going
| through an FBO largely eliminates long waits for security and
| boarding (not to mention alleviating some of the last-mile
| transportation issues).
|
| I can't stress enough that nothing is simple about VTOL--even if
| this aircraft lacks complex hydraulic, fuel, and oil systems, any
| failure in the (electromechanical?) control actuation systems
| will likely prevent transition to/from hovering flight. It looks
| like the control surfaces may be designed to have multiple,
| independent segments (hopefully with redundant actuators) to
| mitigate these kinds of failures (aside: it's fascinating to see
| a GA aircraft designed to be dependent on TVC for basic stability
| and control), but a loss of even one of these segments might not
| allow a safe power margin for a vertical landing near max gross
| weight, and it doesn't look like the wheels were designed at all
| with roll-on landings in mind.
|
| All that said, I wish the engineers working on this thing the
| best. The current demonstrator is a great-looking machine, and
| it'd be awesome to see this kind of thing succeed.
| LouisSayers wrote:
| I can't see this taking off. If people truly wanted to travel
| between these places faster they'd already be doing it in
| Helicopters.
| giarc wrote:
| I can't remember who said it or on which podcast, but they
| basically said that VTOL is the real game changer, not autonomous
| driving. Sure autonomous driving might be able to shave some time
| off of your commute, but you are still in a car and still driving
| on roads. VTOL is what really allows you to experience what the
| ultra wealthy with access to private jets and helicopters have
| experienced. Getting out of the city to a 'vacation' spot in no
| time at all.
| hristov wrote:
| Until you invent anti-gravity, VTOL will always be (i) very
| energy intensive, and (ii) and very disruptive to the
| surrounding environment. This is both in terms of noise and air
| turbulence.
|
| Self driving is something that may be solved and can become
| practical for popular use with current and near-term
| foreseeable technology. Everyday mass use VTOL is not. Sorry,
| the Jetsons lied to you.
| giarc wrote:
| >Everyday mass use VTOL is not. Sorry, the Jetsons lied to
| you.
|
| Many companies are working on this problem currently. I would
| say consumer accessible, piloted electric VTOL is closer than
| fully self driving vehicles.
| einpoklum wrote:
| > Many companies are working on this problem currently.
|
| They're working on nullifying gravity? Cool.
| wefarrell wrote:
| Black hawks are quiet enough for specops teams to use them in
| urban raids like the Bin Laden one.
| missedthecue wrote:
| It wasn't _that_ quiet, it was fast and below radar
| bouchard wrote:
| The rotorcraft used for the Bin Laden raid weren't standard
| Black hawks.
|
| The modifications probably required huge trade-offs in
| cost/performance and might still not be quiet enough for
| daily use in urban/residential areas.
| wefarrell wrote:
| Still not exactly anti-gravity.
|
| Lilium boasts: "As well as a customized electric motor,
| it contains innovative liner technology which means the
| aircraft will be inaudible from the ground when flying
| above 400m and will only be as loud as a passing truck
| while taking off." https://lilium.com/the-jet
| soperj wrote:
| > VTOL is what really allows you to experience what the ultra
| wealthy with access to private jets and helicopters have
| experienced.
|
| I don't really want to experience what Kobe Bryant experienced
| though.
| aeternum wrote:
| The problem is a landing spot in the city and noise. Most
| buildings no longer have helicopter pads and neighbors are not
| going to appreciate the amount of dirt your VTOL kicks up
| whenever you leave for vacation.
| qppo wrote:
| This is what they say:
|
| > The Lilium Jet engine has been fully developed in our in-
| house sound lab where we have used proprietary acoustic
| modelling software, simulated on high-performance computing
| clusters, to optimize its design. As well as a customized
| electric motor, it contains innovative liner technology which
| means the aircraft will be inaudible from the ground when
| flying above 400m and will only be as loud as a passing truck
| while taking off. On the ground, the aircraft will move to
| and from parking bays using separate electric motors,
| allowing it to be as quiet as a typical electric car.
|
| The usage of future tense (will be) makes me somewhat
| skeptical
| looping__lui wrote:
| I love innovation and stuff. Radical ideas.
|
| But the aviation market is one of the most heavily regulated -
| bureaucracy beyond comprehension.
|
| Did you ever wonder why Piper or Cessna airplanes look EXACTLY
| what they did 50 years ago? And why the engines used in these
| planes (e.g., Lycoming) are referred to as "Lycosaurus"!?
|
| If you go for a sightseeing flight with a local aeroclub - you
| will find the pilot spending 30min pre-checking the aircraft,
| checking the weather, reading NOTAMS etc. Not to mention the
| potentially pretty intensive communication with ATC et al.
| required to make sure everybody stays safe.
|
| Getting a pilot license is magnitudes more work than getting a
| drivers license, proficiency has to be continuously demonstrated,
| maintaining airworthiness of an airplane isn't exactly cheap
| either and pretty heavily regulated.
|
| And all that should be "automated", certified and approved?
|
| Not saying things can't be automated - but no shit, the spark
| plugs in a Cessna are like 50$ each for that "aviation
| certificate"...
|
| Even if there ARE rules and guidelines how to certify autonomous
| vehicles like that - like how does anybody imagine that a novel
| aerial vehicle like this actually IS CERTIFIED within a lifetime?
|
| Pilots still walk around a multi-million $ fighter jet or
| aircraft equipped with the most sophisticated avionics because "a
| bird nest in the engine intake is hard to detect and difficult to
| resolve mid flight".
|
| Investing in one of the most heavily regulated, difficult to
| scale and extremely expensive to operate industries is brave...
| Even more so when this industry is low margin and "kept dying
| every couple of years"...
| RobRivera wrote:
| You paint it to in a overly negative light, in my opinion. Much
| of the processes and procedures in place are not just
| functional, but behavioral training and conditioning to enable
| the pilot to troubleshoot mid-flight problems. It's like a
| highly capable human runtime exception debugger that will save
| the lives of everyone on board.
|
| Some FAA regs and procedures are written in blood, but most are
| written in a way to prevent blood in the future.
|
| I also like to echo the products Garmin is incorporating to
| increase the UX in the cockpit. They address some of the things
| you outline.
|
| Remember, aviators aren't engineers, they are operators. The
| license requirement is there to ensure that pilots can do basic
| things like triage, malfunction diagnostic, ad hoc solution
| generation, energy management, communicate, etc.
| looping__lui wrote:
| For those interested, a couple of professors were using physics
| n hard math on the Lilium claims:
| https://www.aerokurier.de/8/3/7/8/5/9/6/aerokurier_Konzeptbe...
|
| (It is in German though).
|
| A big German magazine did a rather intensive "how much sense
| does it make" story:
| https://www.aerokurier.de/elektroflug/flugtaxis-kein-markt-f...
| IAmEveryone wrote:
| Safety, as measured in fatalities per person per mile per year,
| has increased by a factor of 100x since the 1960s: traffic
| increased 10-fold, while fatalities fell by the same factor.
|
| So they do seem to be doing something right...
|
| The lack of chaanges may just indicate that the current
| paradigm is a rather good one. If anvbody came up with a
| working scramjet, regulation would be a minor hassle.
|
| It's really physics that are limiting here: supersonic travel
| is too inefficient both economically and environmentally. And
| personal autonomous local transport (i. e. "flying car") is
| impossible without some sort of breakthrough on noise.
| mattigames wrote:
| Well, they should just use some of that VC money into pocketing
| (AKA lobbying) politicians to relax rules for these specific
| kind of airplanes, it has worked pretty well for the health
| industry in the US.
| looping__lui wrote:
| I mean, they probably do that.
|
| But the point is: even if politicians DO push that and even
| if the rules and regulations are written down - doesn't mean
| that they will be granted a certification.
|
| I mean, funnily enough, they don't yet even KNOW what they
| will have to adhere to and achieve and start burning through
| 300MM USD in investor money...
|
| Boeing, Airbus, Cessna, Cirrus and Piper have dozens of years
| of experience and KNOW how to get planes certified - and yet
| they essentially "re-use older certifications"...
|
| Fun times when they get told they need two ballistic
| parachutes or they need at least 30 min safety backup for
| hover flight (e.g., each Cessna pilot has to make sure he has
| 30+min fuel reserve). Your engineers will commit suicide when
| you surprise them with "oh there was this ask..."
|
| And then the weather - I mean, seriously, there are super
| strict rules about visual minimas for flights in the US and
| Europe. If you go instrument rated things get even more
| complex and bureaucratic. Not to mention that instrument
| flight is PROHIBITED in Germany below 2000+ft in uncontrolled
| airspace...
|
| Ah, and I want to see that flying electric lawn-mower make
| his way across the Alps with 50kts headwind, freezing
| temperatures at cruising altitude. Pilots landing in
| Innsbruck need special training for "Foehn" Approaches and
| when the heavy winds roll over the city and airport you can
| hear the pilots pushing full throttle in final to counter the
| 2000+ft/min downwash.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| > e.g., each Cessna pilot has to make sure he has 30+min
| fuel reserve
|
| Well, this is pretty much standard practice!
|
| Edit: Ah I misunderstood your comment. So yes it is
| standard.
|
| However I could see this not applying to these guys,
| because with vertical landing capability they should be
| able to support field landings with really minimal risk.
| gibolt wrote:
| VTOL and several other major capability differences
| really should change the certification process. Current
| certifications a designed around certain engineering
| constraints.
|
| Nearly all existing planes operate with the same basic
| parts, thanks to the fuel. This dictates the possible
| drivetrains.
|
| Reduced complexity _can_ lead to drastic reconsideration.
|
| While I don't expect change to be super fast, regulation
| tends to move faster than normal when major disruption
| starts showing up in practice (drones, self-driving
| vehicles, ...)
| nradov wrote:
| There is already a certification process for helicopters
| and autogyros, so VTOL capability alone is no reason for
| a different certification process. Helicopters require a
| 20 minute fuel reserve in VFR conditions and 30 minutes
| in IFR conditions.
|
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/91.151
| looping__lui wrote:
| Regarding the 30min safety: Yes, that is absolutely
| necessary... But I wonder how much 30min in safety will
| cost Lilium in actual range...
| cameldrv wrote:
| Helicopters in the U.S. only need a 20 minute reserve, at
| least for VFR.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Totally agree about the certification. It's so annoying having
| to do stuff like managing the mixture. There is absolutely no
| chance I'm going to be better at that than even the most basic
| FADEC system.
|
| Every car since the early 90s has done away with the choke, but
| for some reason in a 2020-built C172 I still have to do this...
| :X
|
| I would argue that this insistence on safety certification
| makes actual flights less safe. Because it results in it not
| being done, leaving something to the pilot who is more error-
| prone than an automatic system.
|
| I haven't heard of accidents in GA aircraft that were due to
| poor mixture (though I haven't looked, and it could technically
| cause one if you set it too explosive) but when I still flew
| there were several incidents reported by our maintenance
| company who complained about cylinder scoring due to
| overheting.
|
| It would be much better to have this automatically managed, and
| more environmentally friendly too, because there is no need for
| 'full rich' settings during takeoff/landing, it would just
| adjust it to ensure sufficient cooling. The full-rich is just a
| precaution to avoid the pilot miscalibrating it during this
| critical flight phase (and to avoid overheating on the ground
| of course).
| hindsightbias wrote:
| Lycoming/clones with fuel injection, you typically only mess
| with mixture when starting and stoping them.
|
| There is of course a minority religious sect within GA who
| follow lean-of-peak theory and mess with their mixture
| constantly for better mileage (and possibly better wear, but
| that can go either way).
| looping__lui wrote:
| I can recommend Mike Busch on that topic (like somebody did
| earlier).
|
| Leaning is not only for better mileage. The engines usually
| do not like a fat mixture for prolonged periods of time...
| I can't recall all the reasons, but I think a couple of
| mayor ones were: 1) lead in the avgas will foul the spark
| plugs for rich mixture settings which is a safety risk, 2)
| exhaust gas temperatures will be lower which can lead to a
| build-up at the exhaust valves which can lead to wear and
| failure and 3) you end up with more dirt in your oil which
| makes engine corrosion even a bigger possibility...
|
| Lean if you love your engine. And read Mike Busch - because
| he has the facts better than I do...
| looping__lui wrote:
| Yes!
|
| Rotax (Austrian company) actually builds great engines. They
| are heavily used in ultra-light airplanes with much more
| "relaxed" certification.
|
| And you are right: in the ultra-light market, we see a giant
| boom because of lower certification hurdles and actually much
| safer systems: automated engine control, constant speed
| propellers, ballistic parachutes, etc. But Maximum Take-Off-
| Weight (MTOW) is 650 kg (Germany) that leaves you with a
| skinny wife/husband, some gas and light baggage...
|
| Airplane engines are operating in tougher environments than
| car engines - hence bigger tolerances and less sophistication
| in some parts. They also must not fail. I mean, the engine
| has to be ok with starting up at 100 degrees F on the ground,
| climbing at maximum power to 10'000 ft, with below freezing
| temperatures within 15/20 min and descending down again with
| an urgy pilot pushing down the cylinder heat temperatures
| from 400 to 200 degrees fahrenheit within minutes (due to
| power reduction and increased speed cooling the engine).
| kitteh wrote:
| The fact that there are businesses that specialize in engine
| data monitor analysis and training on mixture operation says
| a ton about where GA is on this topic. There has been very
| little movement from the manufacturers on this.
|
| That said highly recommend any materials from Mike Busch on
| this topic. Super knowledgeable and has moved the needle in
| getting people to understand how engines operate.
| looping__lui wrote:
| Yes, great recommendation!
| phkahler wrote:
| I did hear about one accident due to mixture. They forgot to
| lean it out on a long flight and ran out of gas over a
| heavily treed area because they hadn't planned to run rich
| the whole way. If I recall correctly they survived.
| lisper wrote:
| Private pilot here. Yes, aviation innovates slowly, but it's
| not nearly as bad as you make it sound. Cirrus aircraft have
| been a game changer, as has the Garmin G1000 avionics. I can
| fly just about any instrument approach entirely on autopilot.
| The only thing I have to touch is the throttle and the flaps. I
| get real-time traffic information via ADS-B, real-time weather
| via Nexrad. I do my flight planning in five minutes using
| Foreflight on an iPad. It is all pretty awesomely cool
| actually.
|
| It's not installed in the plane I fly, but Garmin's auto-
| landing system was recently certified for emergency use.
|
| https://generalaviationnews.com/2020/05/19/garmin-autoland-c...
| scarier wrote:
| Avionics have certainly changed a lot, but basic aircraft
| structures and controls have been almost stagnant for decades
| (and most of the places they aren't static are largely
| related to electronics--even if you're lucky enough to have a
| FADEC running your engine, it's still controlling hardware
| that largely dates to the '50s or so).
| looping__lui wrote:
| Yes, but let us not compare a 50k used Cessna to a 500k
| Cirrus?
|
| They rely on a Continental that was developed in the 80s (so
| quite new) - but doN't you still have to adjust the mixture
| manually (e.g., manually adjust the air to fuel ratio)?
|
| I mean, the cool stuff you are describing can easily end up
| at 500k-2MM USD with a fully trained private pilot...
| maxcan wrote:
| Yes, you do have to manually adjust the mixture. I have to
| admit, for the newer turbo cirruses its insanely easy to
| do. just have to pull it until your fuel flow matches a
| blue indicator on the display.
| notatoad wrote:
| >let us not compare a 50k used Cessna to a 500k Cirrus?
|
| why not? the original post was that innovation can't happen
| in aviation because of regulation. if we're shifting the
| argument to innovation doesn't happen because it's
| expensive, that's a much more solveable problem.
| looping__lui wrote:
| Let me rephrase: The innovation you describe (which is
| cool and needs certification) bumped the price for a new
| airplane from about 50k in the 70s (I guess we may be
| talking 200k in today's money) to close to 1MM USD.
|
| And that innovation is "just" glass cockpit, and some
| more advanced avionics. Not changing the principles - you
| fly a bit faster, a bit safer but still need a license
| and do all the preparation and checks. But it's a bit
| more fancy. From 200k to almost 1 MM.
|
| The Garmin Autoland you described bumps up the sum to 3MM
| (https://www.piper.com/press-releases/piper-announces-
| new-m60...).
|
| So factor 10 for something "that was already unreasonably
| expensive"...
|
| My argument was around "innovation has a horrible ROI" in
| the aviation industry.
|
| Building a startup in that space has to take costs into
| consideration... I mean, Musk initially didn't shoot
| people into space, there was an inefficient market and
| the margins were enormous... That's a different story...
| theptip wrote:
| > "innovation has a horrible ROI"
|
| This may be so, but I don't think you've really
| substantiated it; you're just talking about part of the
| "I", without any reference to the dollars of "R". Sure,
| $1m puts a plane out of almost everybody's recreation
| budget. But for a piece of transportation infrastructure
| with high utilization, it might not be prohibitive. (I
| mean, a jumbo jet costs hundreds of millions to build,
| involves significant R&D budgets on each new model, and
| is still positive ROI, just.)
|
| You said "you fly a bit faster, a bit safer" in a
| dismissive way, but how much is this actually worth? I
| could easily believe that making flights slightly safer
| is worth an extra $1m of capex; I think your original
| claim would be much stronger if you provided some more
| concrete numbers/analysis here.
| looping__lui wrote:
| What kind of analysis are you looking for? How much these
| features are worth is subjective and the general aviation
| market is super small and not exactly growing. Don't get
| me wrong: everybody I know loves his SR20/22.
|
| My comment was not dismissive of the innovation by Cirrus
| (which I think is great).
|
| It's about the costs getting it into the market and
| having it certified.
|
| Imagine you buy a car for 50k USD. Now, you want an
| airbag and a better infotainment system. Not a problem.
| Price is now 250k. Is an airbag and a better Infotainment
| system worth that premium to you? I can't answer that for
| you. But this is what we are dealing with in general
| aviation.
|
| And it is not 1MM USD in Capex... It is 1 MM USD premium
| per PLANE.
|
| And again: there is a reason why you have the B747 and
| 737 for like 40 years... Because exactly of that
| certification nightmare of new airplanes.
|
| Now talk autonomous electric vehicles with passengers.
| How should the math ever add up?
| steffan wrote:
| One thing to keep in mind is economies of scale:
|
| Cirrus: "new aircraft deliveries for the piston SR Series
| reached 380 in 2018"
|
| By way of comparison, _Ferrari_ delivered 9,200 cars in
| the same year.
|
| Part of the problem with aviation has been that aircraft
| are boutique items and priced accordingly.
|
| I'd imagine even a Toyota Camry would cost $150k if it
| was a one-off design.
| renewiltord wrote:
| You only pay the R&D costs once. All you're saying is
| that you have to put a lot into R&D, but that's all on
| the I side of ROI. It was the same with SpaceX, the I
| part was huge. The question is whether you can make the R
| part work. And if you have scale, then the R part moves
| differently.
|
| It's the same with the first car you build. The first
| Tesla Roadster cost tens of millions to make. The second
| Tesla Roadster cost half that.
| looping__lui wrote:
| I think we have different mindsets here: !every! company
| in aviation, the automotive or transportation industry is
| worried about the "I" for the R&D.
|
| If there is a factor 10 whatever uncertainty in this
| equation - you are essentially just gambling like an
| Options-Day-Trader on Reddit. I understand that investors
| see "the hockeystick" unlimited revenue upside and
| justify everything around that.
|
| But I personally would not want to so business in the
| most over-regulated, slow-growing and low-margin industry
| with a "factor 10 investment uncertainty"; that
| uncertainty btw renders your investment null, void and
| lost if your plane doesn't get certified. And you don't
| even have certification guidelines.
| looping__lui wrote:
| Well, the R side pops up when they optimistically tell
| you that your 20 min commute is going to cost 70 USD...
|
| SpaceX is exactly the WORST example in this context: they
| just went ahead without all the bureaucratic overhead you
| find at NASA; they weren't exactly transporting people at
| the beginning but cargo... And they had a pretty clear
| market with fat margins; those margins were fat due to
| the (unnecessary) overhead other agencies created.
|
| You can't do that in this case.
|
| Put a bit differently: you can probably guess the
| magnitude of costs for a car to develop. In this case, I
| would be more than surprised if the get within a 10x
| magnitude in the end for their cost estimate and EVER get
| it certified. Again: there are currently NO guidelines
| how to certify that...
|
| An example from Airbus and the A400 flagship:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europrop_TP400
|
| "Several technical problems delayed the engine's
| certification test program and pushed the entire A400M
| aircraft program into further scheduling adjustments. The
| engine delays were primarily due to problems with
| completing the full authority digital engine control
| (FADEC) software to the satisfaction of the civil
| authorities. More specifically, Europrop determined in
| mid-2008 that the engine worked correctly, but the FADEC
| software still did not meet EASA requirements.[27] Since
| the A400M was intended for humanitarian missions, the
| aircraft also needed to have a civil certification.
| Europrop did not realize that this meant the FADEC also
| had to show traceability and accessibility, so EASA
| denied civil certification of the software. Because of
| this problem, the first A400M test aircraft, which was
| flight-ready by September 2008, was not permitted to fly.
| Europrop had to triple the size of its workforce to fix
| the issue,[28] resulting in a FADEC system consisting of
| over 275,000 lines of code, which was four times more
| complex than the FADEC software for the largest civil jet
| engine.[29] Other problems included numerous plane
| subsystems providing insufficient logging to the main
| aircraft computer.[30]"
| renewiltord wrote:
| That's a $250 flight which is mostly labour turned into a
| $70 flight without the labour. That's a marginal cost
| thing. It goes in a different part of the book.
|
| I'm not saying this is doable but those numbers show
| nothing.
| maxcan wrote:
| Private pilot, instrument rated here ;). I fly a G5 SR22
| Turbo, which is state of the art for GA piston aviation, or
| as the rest of the calls it, state of the are for 1982.
|
| No autothrottle, no FADEC, and that plane new costs close to
| $1 mil. Short of the turbine world, its the best you can get
| but its still ancient tech. Following a magenta line on
| autopilot is not a hard problem to solve.
| rklaehn wrote:
| If US and EU are so buerocratic that innovation is impossible,
| there will still be a big market for viable VTOL electric
| planes in the rest of the world.
|
| Just like most 3rd world countries these days have better 4G
| coverage than supposedly 1st world countries like Germany, or
| rural US.
| looping__lui wrote:
| Check out:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_5K7cpxeXnc&feature=youtu.be
|
| And guess the country :-)
|
| I would never start such a business in the US or Europe.
| steffan wrote:
| I'd argue that some of the difference between a pilot license
| and a driver's license would diminish if the difficulty of a
| driver's license more accurately reflected the challenges of
| operating a heavy vehicle in close proximity to pedestrians and
| other vehicles.
|
| At the current standards, apparently the only hard requirement
| is a pulse.
| legitster wrote:
| > With a range of up to 300km (186 miles), we'll be able to focus
| on connecting entire regions with high-speed transport, rather
| than trying to persuade you that we're quicker than a crosstown
| journey on an underground train or bike.
|
| As an air-taxi skeptic, I have to say I am refreshed to see a
| startup actually spend more than five minutes figuring out the
| market fitness problem. Focusing on bypassing geographic barriers
| seems to be a much better use case.
|
| I am still pretty skeptical on the idea overall. Everyone drools
| over the travel times and not enough on the confounding factors.
| Getting to and from the taxi. Dealing with regulations. We can't
| even make public transit in dense urban cores work - why would
| this much harder idea work?
|
| I find it amusing that one of their examples of bypassing noise
| ordinance restrictions is to follow existing infrastructure
| routes. The irony seems lost on them.
| ordinaryradical wrote:
| This to me is a true moonshot and venture-worthy idea. Some of
| these concepts may be technically or economically infeasible--
| it's a major risk--but the pay-off for human wellbeing is
| phenomenal. I wish we celebrated more companies like these, but
| it seems like most of them are met with (well-earned) skepticism
| rather than genuine curiosity.
|
| The world of atoms is harder than software, but it's awaiting
| disruptions like these.
| tmh79 wrote:
| I dunno man, im getting kind of jaded as I get older. "True
| moonshot" to me seems more like cheap clean water for everyone,
| or a real way to sequester carbon, not a way for rich folks to
| get to their country cottages faster.
| mishftw wrote:
| Sometimes I imagine if our collective minds were put together
| to figure out some of those basic - civilization wide
| problems like clean water for all, clean energy for all, or
| carbon sequestration. Imagine that world...
| renewiltord wrote:
| That sounds like a "true green revolution". Moonshots are, to
| me, technology projects supercharged by heavy investing to
| bypass present market forces.
|
| Sure, perhaps your age may indicate a preference for that
| kind of project but DDE was 70 when he started the moonshot
| so it's less likely to be age and more likely to be a
| predisposition to that sort of thing.
| byw wrote:
| This type of vehicle could be a game-changer for emergency
| response and rescue though.
| runarberg wrote:
| Helicopters and ambulances are already pretty good at that.
| This vehicle seems to have some added restrictions (like
| landing capabilities) which would make it less good.
|
| Helicopters are really expensive to operate though, so
| perhaps this vehicle could fit in if frequent flights would
| have to be made to a place without a road connection, such
| as to provide an emergency relief after big disaster.
|
| Where it _could_ be a game-changer is transporting people
| and light cargo in rural communities with limited
| infrastructure, such as East Congo or Greenland.
| runarberg wrote:
| True. This kind of technology would be a game changer for
| poorer rural communities with limited infrastructure and vast
| distances. Places like Greenland or East Congo. But this
| article did not mention this benefit at all. All they seem to
| care about is getting rich people between places they already
| can.
| bhupy wrote:
| To be fair, this is how most technology proliferates.
|
| In the mid-20th century, airline travel was an endeavor
| strictly for the rich. Today it is also accessible to those
| in the middle class.
| renewiltord wrote:
| This is just basic marketing. You sell to the guy who can
| buy.
|
| The Tesla company was started in 2003 to productionize the
| AC tzero. In 2005, the Roadster was conceived as the
| product it became and Tesla and Lotus tied up.
|
| The Secret Master Plan arrived in 2006. So yeah, that's
| just how it goes. Because there is an army of people who
| lament things targeted at rich people, but that army does
| not participate in progress, either in money or in sweat.
|
| The intelligent futurist always ignores them because they
| contribute nothing.
| runarberg wrote:
| That makes the current state of our humanity kind of sad,
| doesn't it.
|
| It is also not true. There are numerous innovations
| targeted for the betterment of us all. The three-point
| seat-belt is a quick one that comes to mind. The field of
| medicine has tax funded research innovating at a
| remarkable frequency, where the target beneficiaries is
| all humans who need it. Expensive infrastructures like
| roads, train networks, electric grids, and trash disposal
| systems are build around the world for everyone who
| needs, not just the once who can afford it.
|
| But we do lament things that are target at rich people,
| because these rich people are literally destroying the
| world with their over-consumption. They certainly don't
| deserve more nice things that the rest of the world is
| paying for.
| theptip wrote:
| Isn't the original literal moonshot (i.e. flying to the moon)
| more in the category of "things that don't help the working
| people" than "things that solve poverty/suffering"?
|
| I know the meaning may have shifted over the years, but i've
| always interpreted it as "audacious and unlikely to succeed",
| rather than any particular moral / altruistic content.
| mrwnmonm wrote:
| Haven't humanity learned that celebrating and running after their
| 'abilities' is not a wise move?
| k__ wrote:
| What would make a "flying car" worthwhile for under 20km flights?
| dsr_ wrote:
| VTOL from a space the size of 6 car parking slots; never start
| a trip without energy reserves for an additional
| landing/takeoff/landing cycle; have higher reliability/safety
| than any other form of transport ever.
|
| And then be economically justifiable.
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| For regions where the geography makes the roads dangerous or
| extremely slow or border regions where road traffic delays due
| to customs or immigration checks are common.
| ethanbond wrote:
| Basically a failing state. No public transit, bad roads, or
| safety issues between wealthy enclaves.
|
| Yet the market always has solutions up its sleeve! Short range
| flight!
| dheera wrote:
| > Or maybe you want to escape to Lake Tahoe for a long weekend?
| That would be less than an hour on a Lilium Jet, at a cost of
| around $250 at launch and less in the near future.
|
| Therein lies the problem with public transportation in the US.
| What do you do after you get to Tahoe, Santa Cruz, or wherever?
| Most of these places are devoid of functional public
| transportation, and rental car companies have long lines and
| routinely screw people over and overbook.
|
| And will the FAA allow you with your tent stakes, hiking poles,
| bear spray, and camping stove with fuel on the Lilium Jet? (What
| else are you supposed to do in Tahoe?)
| strig wrote:
| Obviously you have your personal driver pick you up and bring
| you to your 10k sqft "cottage" /s
| tssva wrote:
| They need to come up with an accompaning service which allows
| you to arrange for someone with a car to arrive and drive you
| to your desired final destination.
|
| Or in the case of Lake Tahoe the area ski resort, hotel or
| casino might provide shuttle service.
| dheera wrote:
| > shuttle service
|
| Shuttle service is not adequate. Most people do more than
| just visit a hotel or ski resort. I think the "easy" US-side
| solution to this problem would be for there to exist a
| better, more competent car rental service that doesn't
| require lining up or saying "no" 10 times to humans trying to
| offer you add-ons, is available 24 hours, is guaranteed, and
| is located within a 10 minute walk of wherever the Lilian
| drops you off.
|
| Kind of like ZipCar, but ZipCar has zero cars in Tahoe, 2
| cars for the entirety of Fresno (wtf), and cost twice as much
| as Enterprise for a daily rental despite the fact that they
| don't have to hire as many humans, which is backwards. ZipCar
| should be costing half as much as a place with brick-and-
| mortar and human agents.
| rvnx wrote:
| Also, the website underestimates one point.
|
| The air taxi is not on top of your house.
|
| You need to actually go from your house to the Lilium jet
| starting point (at least 30 minutes or more in these complex
| urban setups) and you need to be in advance for the take-off,
| eventual security checks and security briefing (like any
| plane).
|
| After air turbulences, then you are at the Lake Tahoe stuck in
| the middle of nowhere.
|
| You can take your Instagram picture and wait for the next plane
| to go back.
|
| Was that really worth saving 1 hour in your life ?
|
| The alternative is to gather with friends on the morning, go
| get your friends with your car on the way, have a lunch picnic,
| have a tour around in the nature, discover unexpected places.
| Come home for dinner.
|
| No stress, no schedule, quality time with friends.
| dheera wrote:
| Also I don't know about Lilium but one of my biggest gripes
| about Amtrak and other train infrastructure in the US,
| besides the sheer slow speed, is the complete lack of basic
| human necessities at the endpoints of travel. You get off the
| train and get basically thrown into a dilipidated, desolate
| parking lot full of locked cars, next to a locked building
| with no food, often not even bathrooms, no rain shelter, no
| bus to downtown for an hour, no rental bicycles, and
| sometimes no signal.
|
| That is a world of difference from Europe, China, or Japan,
| when you're usually thrown into a food court when you get off
| the train, and buses leaving every 10 minutes to everywhere
| you could possibly want to go. _Planes_ replicate that drop-
| off experience in the US, and Lilium will need to as well in
| order for it to be a comfortable experience.
|
| That goes for even for suburban trips. How do you get from
| wherever it drops you off in Palo Alto to say, Facebook or
| Google's offices? Or the thousand other companies that don't
| have company shuttles?
| kaybe wrote:
| The point is, the food court and shops usually make the
| train companies money because they pay high rent. That only
| works when enough passengers come through, which I'd guess
| might be the problem in the US?
|
| (eg in Japan, JR East makes 30-40% of its profits from the
| shops:
| https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2010/12/30/business/jr-
| eas...)
| einpoklum wrote:
| Flying a single person or two, with VTOL? That's an incredibly
| high expenditure of energy per person-meter traveled. Much higher
| than regular aviation, which itself requires a lot of energy.
|
| Considering the prospects for decreasing availability of fossil
| fuel, and questions of climate impact, it seems to me that this
| is not sustainable on a mass scale, at all. I would guess this
| initiative will either become an alternative for the very-rich to
| using helicopters, or not get off the ground.
|
| (... ok, that pun was a little underhanded, I admit.)
| mangecoeur wrote:
| Can an American please explain how a 3h41 minute car journey to
| Tahoe turns into an 8h49(!) train journey? Are your trains pulled
| by horses or something?
| missedthecue wrote:
| Amtraks stop for 20 minutes every 30 minutes to let passengers
| on and off at each stop. A car journey only stops if you need
| gas (15 minutes) or if you need to use personal facilities (10
| minutes).
|
| Furthermore, an amtrak will only hit a top speed of 79mph, and
| only a few times during the journey, while a car can stay at
| 75mph for most the journey.
| microcolonel wrote:
| The roads are really good (though the official speed limits are
| lower than they should be), and nobody wanted the trains since
| they became obsolete for a lot of North American geography,
| which in turn reduced the overall interest and investment in
| trains. The U.S. also has very high standards for the
| structural integrity of railcars, which precludes many
| international trainset vendors.
|
| The costs of acquiring land for rail projects are also higher,
| because of very strong property rights.
|
| Basically there are a lot of reasons, some of them are not mere
| political disagreements.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Is there no push for this to be stimulated again? In the EU
| there is a lot of talk about stimulating high-speed rail.
| Currently it's a total mess though, with each country still
| having their own standards, high-speed tracks having non-
| highspeed portions through cities, and simply not having
| sufficient capacity to support anywhere near the amount of
| passengers that are carried by air.
|
| But I really hope some day the EU will standardise this too,
| and get more tracks built. I'd love to take a train between
| Barcelona and Amsterdam. But right now it is 2 hours by plane
| or 14 by train with 2 changes. And the price has a similar
| ratio in favour of the plane, which makes the train simply
| nonviable.
| brianwawok wrote:
| There is talk. But the cost to build rail is so stupid in
| the US. You spend billions... connect two cities.. and then
| what? You can't get around in many cities without a car, so
| you are still stuck.
|
| Kind of a lot of problems on top of each other from
| construction costs to land ownership to right of way to
| city layouts that make trains rough to work in the US.
| (which stinks, I LOVE trains. had a nice train commute in
| Chicago, but those are rare in the US)
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| California is building a high speed rail line. But there is
| an enormous amount of reflexive opposition from NIMBY's,
| Conservatives, and Libertarians. To tell you how bad it is
| there are 100 year old train tunnels between New York and
| New Jersey that must be replaced and Republicans have
| killed the projects to replace them _twice_ simply because
| they are rail projects and passenger rail is 'bad'
| microcolonel wrote:
| > _California is building a high speed rail line._
|
| Allegedly.
|
| > _But there is an enormous amount of reflexive
| opposition from NIMBYs, Conservatives, and Libertarians._
|
| The greatest obstacles to California's high speed rail
| project are vote-buying politicians and the voters who do
| not pay attention or understand what they are doing.
|
| Conservatives and libertarians may have a lot to _say_
| about it, I gather that 's because it has been such a
| colossal money pit boondoggle affair; but you may have
| noticed that conservatives and libertarians don't exactly
| hold a political majority in California, so I doubt that
| their objections are a major obstacle to its completion.
|
| The plans they actually began to build with won't even
| produce much of a service, the target speeds are
| disappointing and there are so many detours from any
| meaningful corridor; and we haven't even seen the reality
| of it yet, which will probably be even more disappointing
| than the low expectations.
|
| > _...Republicans have killed the projects to replace
| them _twice_ simply because they are rail projects and
| passenger rail is 'bad'_
|
| Well, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that was
| probably not why they excluded that project from the
| budget.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| As you can see this response proves my point 100%
| MrFlynn wrote:
| > > California is building a high speed rail line.
|
| > Allegedly.
|
| Not allegedly, it's actually being built right now. 119
| miles of it in fact. It's not the whole system, but it's
| the IOS that they promised that they would build.
|
| > the target speeds are disappointing and there are so
| many detours from any meaningful corridor...
|
| The target speed is 220 mph between Gilroy and Burbank
| which is in line with the current highest speed HSR
| systems in the world. The route actually makes a fair
| amount of sense given that the cities in the central
| valley are not that small, especially since the stations
| in those cities are designed for trains to express
| through them. Rather, it makes more sense compared to the
| I-5 corridor which would have required branch lines to be
| built, not to mention the other fundamental issues that
| proposal had.
| sroussey wrote:
| Don't worry, the drive can take that long if you are planning
| on a weekend trip.
| hackcasual wrote:
| It's not really a train journey, it's mostly by bus.
| Arelius wrote:
| The California Zephyr does in fact make the daily trip from
| Emeryville through Truckee, and on to Reno and beyond.
| rconti wrote:
| I was actually surprised you could do it by train at all. I
| wouldn't even know how to begin to attempt a train journey in
| the US. (other than hitting up Amtrak's website and hoping for
| the best).
|
| I was also surprised at train travel in Norway on my recent
| visit; I hoped to book a ticket from Oslo to Bergen but it was
| basically impossible. Only a couple of trains a day, all sold
| out. I drove instead, which was also a shock, since I spent
| virtually my entire drive at or below 80kph. The train would
| have been roughly the same speed -- so, not as bad as your
| Tahoe example, but not great by continental European standards
| either :)
| zackkitzmiller wrote:
| There are several reasons, terrain being one of them.
|
| Also the commuter/long distance tracks are all owned by the
| freight liners, so passanger trains have to yield for them.
| There are also hour+ stops at some stations.
| technofiend wrote:
| We don't have separate high speed rail tracks like Europe does;
| we have a single rail system used for slow cargo trains that
| take priority over passenger trains. Imagine driving everywhere
| with giant cargo trucks driving 80 km / hr in every lane with
| no way to pass them and you'll get the picture.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| One other important thing is that in many places railroads
| used to have more features like more tracks and
| electrification.
|
| The interesting thing about American railroads is that unlike
| all other forms of transportation in the US, railroads pay
| property tax. Therefore, to reduce tax bills and improve
| their books for mergers, many railroads tore up their
| improvements.
| machello13 wrote:
| > slow cargo trains that take priority over passenger trains.
|
| This is only half true. Legally, Amtrak has priority, and
| railroads are required to cede right-of-way to passenger
| trains. In practice, the railroads don't cede priority nearly
| as much as they should. This is an ongoing fight. Amtrak has
| a whole site about it here: https://www.amtrak.com/on-time-
| performance
| einpoklum wrote:
| American capitalists, especially the car industry, lobbied
| heavily to make this the case, and also allowed privately-owned
| public transport services to deteriorate.
| kccqzy wrote:
| The railroad is centered around cargo. And the American freight
| rail industry is in fact pretty healthy and profitable, unlike
| passenger rail.
|
| Now consider viewpoints like this Economist article:
| https://www.economist.com/briefing/2010/07/22/high-speed-rai...
| "America's system of rail freight is the world's best. High-
| speed passenger trains could ruin it" and you get why passenger
| rail is discouraged.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| This discrepancy is much higher from the other destinations
| they mention, so I would imagine there is either no station
| nearby the lake so you have to take another mode for the last
| leg, or you have to get some complicated multiple-train route
| with long layovers :)
| TylerE wrote:
| That's wildly imaginative. But no.
|
| Train routes _don 't exist_. Outside commuter routes long
| distance rail basically don't exist in the US, outside a few
| connectors between major cities.
|
| This is IT: https://trn.trains.com/~/media/files/pdf/map-of-
| the-month/tm...
|
| Keep in mind the scale here... see that small-looking gap
| between Flagstaff and Tucson? That's 400km... you could fit
| most European countries in there.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Good point, I was speaking of European experience.
|
| But still, here with a really fine train grid, the train is
| much less efficient due to the many stops and many changes
| you have to make to get somewhere :( It can take up to 2-3
| times as much time to get somewhere by train than by car.
| kaybe wrote:
| What's going on with the Sanford-Lorton connection?
| TylerE wrote:
| That's the autotrain. Carries passengers AND the car. T
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto_Train
| Arelius wrote:
| Yeah, so so the drive from Emeryville to Roseville is about 2
| hrs via train or car, the car generally being a bit faster, the
| vast majority of the difference in time takes place from
| Roseville to Truckee, where the modern Freeway has had
| significant earthworks to provide a drive that can take place
| in about an hour, wheras the train takes a much older route
| that is both longer and ends up having a max speed much closer
| to 30 mph.
|
| Additionally Amtrak doesn't have right-of-way on those rails,
| so delays due to freight trains are super common on that
| section of track.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Much of California is single-track[1] and the freight trains
| have right-of-way, meaning you spend a decent amount of time
| sitting on a siding track waiting for a mile-long freight train
| to go by.
|
| 1: As in a single track for both directions, meaning there are
| limited places where a north-bound and south-bound train can
| pass each other.
| pcl wrote:
| The rail tracks in much of the western states are owned by the
| freight industry, and Amtrak leases time on them. As a result,
| the tracks and schedules are freight-oriented, not passenger-
| oriented.
|
| This means the tracks are not graded for high-speed relative
| lightweight passenger rolling stock. Also, the passenger trains
| need to fit into the schedules dictated by the freight traffic.
|
| Which is really a shame. The track from SF through Lake Tahoe
| runs just past Sugar Bowl and into Truckee, and is about 180
| miles. A ski train would be really easy.
| ogre_codes wrote:
| Looking at their proposed map and one of the destinations is the
| Yosemite Valley floor.
|
| Not just no... fuck no. I absolutely do not want what is an
| already awesome place to be fucked up even more by someone
| installing an airport (vertical or not) in the middle of the
| valley floor.
| abraxas wrote:
| If flying in this involves the all-cavity search like for all
| other passenger flights then forgetaboutit. I'll take a train
| ride 3x as long just to avoid the hassle of the airport
| experience.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Or by the time it becomes reality, certainly highway self-
| driving will be a thing and you can take 2x the time but
| sleep/surf/work/whatever over 95% of the distance.
|
| That said, it is so light that maybe it would be in range of
| consumer cost.
| bananabreakfast wrote:
| It's all well and good to talk about how great it would be to
| launch and land right from San Francisco, but they conveniently
| step around mentioning that it is currently explicitly illegal.
| The challenge isn't to come up with a great idea, but rather to
| get San Francisco to change its laws.
|
| There are helipads all over the city and none of them can be used
| with the specific exception of flight-for-life helicopters
| landing in Mission Bay.
| pdelbarba wrote:
| This isn't going to be certified and allowed for part 135
| operations inside at least a decade. Boeing can't keep their jets
| from crashing due to simple trim control software, what makes
| anyone think the FAA is going to go along with these flights over
| densely populated areas?
|
| This feels a lot like when everyone was scrambling to start
| helicopter taxi services which promptly crashed and burned...
| Helicopters were a mature and well understood technology then,
| but the realities of operating in urban areas under a variety of
| weather conditions just doesn't allow for these services to be A)
| safe or B) economical.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| Fly routes over freeways so they crash there.
|
| Society will learn to tolerate 4-6 deaths at a time, but not on
| the 737 scale.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Lots of things are in fairly close proximity to highways,
| this is not really a solution. Crashing into the tower block
| next to a highway is still pretty bad.
|
| Lots of things in dense areas also are not necessarily on an
| easy route near a highway, so if _that 's_ the limitation you
| run into Concorde's old problem of "where can you actually
| fly this thing?"
| CalChris wrote:
| Part 135 is FAA. Lilium is German/EU.
| looping__lui wrote:
| Trust me - Germans wish they had FAA because it is magnitudes
| more customer focused and actually "reasonable".
|
| The German LBA is literally Prussian Bureaucracy stuck in the
| 19th century...
| looping__lui wrote:
| Ok - maybe those hating me for the comment: FAA validation
| for my German license took a day and I got a plastic card
| license after 6 weeks with a preliminary one right away.
|
| Changing ownership of a plane took me 6! weeks with the
| LBA.
|
| I guess that there are potentially 10+% of all planes in
| Germany operated with an American N-registration (owned by
| a trust) because the maintenance overhead and paperwork
| headache is so much lower.
|
| Imagine registering your German car with a German license
| plate in the US and setting up a German entity so you could
| pull that off - how big would the difference in pain have
| to be?
| pdelbarba wrote:
| If they're operating in the US (given all the pictures of US
| cities) then they will absolutely be flying part 121 or 135.
| baxtr wrote:
| Maybe that's exactly what someone said about cars in 1900. BTW:
| In 2019, 39k people died in car crashes, in the US alone.
| noir_lord wrote:
| I wonder what would happen if the car (or something similar
| had never been invented) and someone came out with a modern
| saloon today.
|
| "It'll revolutionise personal transport but we estimate it'll
| kill 40,0000 people in a horrible way per year"
|
| Like many things that are harmful in some way cars got
| grandfathered in (as did alcohol and tobacco) - if someone
| came out with an equivalent of alcohol with the same side
| effects it would be banned immediately as well.
|
| In fact the UK did exactly that with the psychoactive
| substances laws - we didn't ban a particular drug we banned
| any drug with a set of side effects - largely because the
| chemists got _really_ good at tweaking the underlying
| chemical structure enough to evade the law.
| xnyan wrote:
| >banned any drug with a set of side effects
|
| The word you are looking for is pleasure. The only types of
| drugs that are 100% illegal are drugs that have no purpose
| besides making you feel pleasurable sensations. Horrible
| side effects (e.g. chemo) and high chance of addiction
| (opioids, amphetamines, etc) and more are all allowed as
| long as the purpose of the effect of the drug is not
| (solely) pleasure.
|
| Alcohol, and increasingly in some parts of the world
| Cannabis, are the exceptions (I understand both of these
| substances have real and potential uses in healthcare, but
| they are perceived as recreational). These are legal or
| quasi-legal only because they are both already in wide use
| and getting society on board to enforce a ban is difficult
| to impossible (depending on the society, a few do) .
| Tabacco is also on the list, but seems to be falling off
| somewhat.
| noir_lord wrote:
| I know we had problems with "Bath Salts" and Spice
| (synthetic marijuana) which was ironically legal at the
| time and but much worse than the original.
|
| I've no dog in the fight, I think people should largely
| be able to put whatever they want in their bodies but I
| choose not to.
|
| There is an argument about individual harm vs societal
| harm but good luck settling that one.
| pdelbarba wrote:
| You can throw around statistics but the reality is aircraft
| receive far more scrutiny. Nobody wants to sit helplessly as
| one of these things flies them into the side of a skyscraper
| or watch as one falls out of the sky onto them.
|
| Is that fair? Maybe?
|
| Is that reality? Yes.
|
| This isn't like the invention of cars. We have had all manner
| of airplanes for over 100 years and know how they work. This
| is like the NYC helicopter taxi boom in the late 70s and 80s
| where a number of fiery and high profile crashes put an end
| to the industry.
| nouveaux wrote:
| Maybe. To me, the cost is a bigger factor. If you can show
| helicopters have the same fatality rate, but has the same
| price of an Uber, I'm sure a ton of people would use it.
|
| It seems to me price is the larger barrier for most people
| when it comes to air travel.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| The problem is damage to others.
|
| Generally speaking, even if cars crash into buildings the
| building itself is not immediately unsafe; injured people
| and a broken storefront, but the building is not on fire
| or collapsing. Unless something has changed dramatically,
| planes crashing into buildings generally start fires, and
| generally cause concern about the structural integrity of
| said building in the immediate aftermath.
|
| As a result: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_New_York_
| City_plane_crash
|
| > On October 11, 2006, a Cirrus SR20 aircraft crashed
| into the Belaire Apartments in the Upper East Side of
| Manhattan, New York City, at about 2:42 p.m. EDT (18:42
| UTC). The aircraft struck the north side of the building
| causing a fire in several apartments,[2][3] which was
| extinguished within two hours.[4]
|
| > Both people aboard the aircraft were killed in the
| accident: New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle[3] and his
| certificated flight instructor.[5][6] Twenty-one people
| were injured, including eleven firefighters. An apartment
| resident, Ilana Benhuri, who lived in the building with
| her husband, was hospitalized for a month with severe
| burns incurred when the post-impact fire engulfed her
| apartment.[7][8]
|
| > On October 13, 2006, two days after the crash, the FAA
| banned all fixed-winged aircraft from the East River
| corridor unless in contact with local air traffic
| control. The new rule, which took effect immediately,
| required all small aircraft (with the exception of
| helicopters and certain seaplanes) to seek the approval
| of and stay in contact with air traffic control while in
| the corridor. The FAA cited safety concerns, especially
| unpredictable winds from between buildings, as the reason
| for the change.
|
| Most car crashes do not result in 2 dead, 21 injured, and
| property damage to several residences.
| sacred_numbers wrote:
| One big difference is that these EVTOL aircraft are small
| enough that they can use ballistic parachutes for an extra
| degree of safety. They usually also have more redundancy
| due to distributing thrust between many small electric
| motors. There has been a lot more research into autonomous
| drone flight than autonomous helicopter flight as well,
| which is crucial for safety and keeping costs low. I could
| be totally wrong, but I feel like battery, motor, flight
| control, and composite material technologies are finally
| good enough for EVTOLs to start making sense. Just like the
| tech boom of the late 90s there will be a lot of
| investment, most of which will be lost, but the survivors
| will have a big impact on society.
| therockspush wrote:
| There's a bunch of these companies getting more traction right
| now.
|
| Joby Aviation, Kitty Hawk Aero, Wisk, Terrafugia, Opener,
| Lillium, probably more.
|
| Its already been mentioned here how regulated this industry is,
| and they aren't going to be able to pull the Uber model of asking
| for forgiveness instead of permission.
|
| Guessing some consolidation is coming up.
| tschwimmer wrote:
| To me this marketing just looks like a slightly less expensive
| helicopter. It's great that we can travel to our ski trips or
| vacations a bit faster but it's not going impact the mobility
| needs of 95% of people. Why isn't anyone working on improving
| commutes through dense cityscapes? It's obviously a much harder
| problem but it's also a more important one.
| qppo wrote:
| > Why isn't anyone working on improving commutes through dense
| cityscapes?
|
| Uber, Lyft, Musk's Boring Company, and all their variants...
| there are tons of people working on improving commutes.
|
| But IMO there isn't a technical problem to solve. It's social
| and political. We shouldn't be asking about improving
| commuting, but reducing its necessity and distance.
| [deleted]
| pdelbarba wrote:
| I absolutely guarantee this will be anything but _less_
| expensive.
|
| You can get an R44 with better range and payload for a couple
| hundred thousand. This will be an electronic nightmare
| requiring extensive certification and maintenance efforts.
| Cessna can't even sell ridiculously old designs for reasonable
| prices due to certification overhead.
| kart23 wrote:
| The operating cost per hour of an r44, according to some
| quick googling, is $190. The cost after ownership is too
| high, and probably the reason that everyone still has cars
| instead of helicopters in their garage. Reliability and
| maintenance will be the most important thing here and will
| determine their success. And that's notoriously tough in the
| aviation market.
|
| https://www.aneclecticmind.com/2010/12/28/the-real-cost-
| of-h...
| nlawalker wrote:
| Yeah, what I'm not clear on is: what's the cost to fly from
| SF to Lake Tahoe in a helicopter? If it's a lot more than the
| $250 that Lilium is promising, what is it that makes Lilium
| cheaper? Is it just the up-front investment in scale and the
| route network?
| looping__lui wrote:
| Unrealistic business plan estimations not factoring in the
| true costs of operating an aerial vehicle...
|
| It's a bit like "soon to be plane owners" that don't quite
| pay attention when they are told the spark plug for their
| Cessna is 50USD, they need 8 for 4 cylinders and replace
| them rather frequently ;-)
|
| Changes when they realize that those companies chartering
| out planes for less than 200 USD/h probably don't make
| loads of cash but just keep track of actual expenses, have
| a high utilization and capable maintenance staff...
| wahern wrote:
| > It's a bit like "soon to be plane owners" that don't
| quite pay attention when they are told the spark plug for
| their Cessna is 50USD, they need 8 for 4 cylinders and
| replace them rather frequently ;-)
|
| That's supposed to be the promise of electric aircraft:
| almost all serviceable parts go out the window, just as
| with electric cars. Construction and maintenance costs
| are reduced to a fraction of what they are for mechanical
| systems. And because these are VTOL, ground expenses are
| likewise reduced.
|
| Batteries are still rather expensive, though, and energy
| density sucks. The advantages may not be able to
| compensate, at least not sufficiently to hit a price
| point that appeals to a wider, non-millionaire market.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Some israeli startup is doing replaceable aluminum air
| batteries. Also there are probably low-cycle solid state
| lithium designs that can start to approach the needed
| density, it would take a really good recycling loop
| though.
| pdelbarba wrote:
| For an owner operator, an R22 and maybe an R44 would be
| able to do SF to Lake Tahoe for well under $250. For a
| charter service you could probably get a commercial
| operator to do it for maybe around ~$500 and there are
| definitely some inefficiencies you could remove there.
| Lilium is on crack if they actually think $250 is going to
| be the all in cost for a private flight though. You don't
| just spin up a new air frame and 135 operation and make
| money at those numbers...unless you pull an Uber on
| steroids and open the VC floodgates...
| asdfadsfgfdda wrote:
| A medium helicopter charter might be $1200/hour, SF to
| Tahoe is ~130 nm, so ~1.5 hours each way.
|
| Of that $1200/hr, $150/hr is fuel, $50/hr is engine
| maintenance, and maybe $100/hr airframe maintenance. These
| scale linearly with time. For fixed costs, a new helicopter
| is ~$3 million, so figure $300k per year in depreciation,
| taxes, insurance, and finance costs. Add another $150k/year
| for pilot salary and training. If you find lots of
| customers and keep the helicopter busy, say 1000 hours a
| year, there's $450 an hour for fixed costs.
|
| The real key to reducing costs is increasing utilization,
| this keeps the fixed costs reasonable. Batteries and motor
| will likely improve fuel+engine cost, but also hurt
| utilization because charging takes more time than
| refueling. A large network improves utilization. But
| building a network, with various types of demand (leisure
| on weekends, business commute during weekdays, cargo during
| off-peak periods?), is the real challenge.
| getpost wrote:
| It might be less expensive due to the electrical powerplant.
| It will take a while before there is enough of a track record
| to know for sure. But, for example, electric cars are much
| lower maintenance than gas cars, as Tesloop as shown.
|
| https://cleantechnica.com/2017/09/05/10492-tesla-model-s-
| mai...
|
| https://www.tesloop.com/blog/2018/7/16/tesloops-tesla-
| model-...
| techsupporter wrote:
| > Why isn't anyone working on improving commutes through dense
| cityscapes?
|
| As someone who's been on and off involved in moving-people-
| technology, it's two-fold: it's "in the physical world" so you
| have all of the attendant problems (objections from people
| around the proposed construction, overlapping government
| bodies, cost, and that "the real world" isn't "sexy" for
| investment).
|
| And second, if you make something that's very efficient but
| looks too much like public transport, there's a whole market of
| people, at least in North America, who simply won't ride it.
| Where I live, I had several coworkers who lived next to a bus
| route or train line that went directly to our offices and
| they'd still pay for a daily Uber.
| noir_lord wrote:
| Integrated light rail/subways that are well designed and well
| run are pretty much the best mass transport solution we've
| come up with.
|
| The tricky part is the well designed and well run part and as
| you alluded to they run into a lot of real world issues
| during construction.
|
| They also really need to be state run at break-even or even
| subsidized since the benefit is the general increase in
| economic productivity across the whole region rather than an
| opportunity to make a lot of money.
|
| So politically they don't really fly in the US.
| epicureanideal wrote:
| I wish they showed estimated prices for each of the routes.
|
| If it's $100/flight I might use it once per month to get to Santa
| Cruz or Lake Tahoe.
|
| If it's $20/flight I might consider LIVING in one of those places
| and commuting to work.
|
| Edit: Oops, didn't see that they did. Or maybe you want to escape
| to Lake Tahoe for a long weekend? That would be less than an hour
| on a Lilium Jet, at a cost of around $250 at launch
|
| Ok, so this isn't going to cause me to move.
| mjlee wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > If we imagine for a moment that you work in an office in Palo
| Alto, you could now choose to live in Hayward (5 min flight,
| $25), downtown San Francisco (10 min flight, $50), or even San
| Rafael (15 min flight, $70).
|
| > Or maybe you want to escape to Lake Tahoe for a long weekend?
| That would be less than an hour on a Lilium Jet, at a cost of
| around $250 at launch and less in the near future. It might not
| be something you'd do every weekend, but saving you three hours
| each way might well make it worthwhile for an occasional trip.
| burlesona wrote:
| Even at tech salaries those are expensive commutes.
|
| But for a ski weekend in Tahoe? Seems legit, assuming these
| aircraft have a great safety record.
| gopalv wrote:
| > Even at tech salaries those are expensive commutes.
|
| Are they really that expensive?
|
| I was paying 40$ on Lyft one-way to office earlier this
| year, which was a huge part of my transportation costs
| (economically speaking, I should've driven, but this
| allowed me to take the bullet back in the evening, which
| beat driving by a lot).
|
| 50$ for SF -> PA isn't that much more expensive than Lyft
| in 2019.
| arcticbull wrote:
| You could do a line or pool in 2019 for as little as $17
| even slightly off-hours, fwiw. Your point remains well
| taken.
| semicolon_storm wrote:
| Sure the commute would be expensive, but if it lets you
| live in a lower cost area it may be more than worth it.
| kjs3 wrote:
| Since near as I can figure they've only built 2 technology
| demonstrators, they have basically no safety record right
| now. Interesting idea, tho.
| apendleton wrote:
| I think we'll also have to see how things shake out in
| terms of office cultures post-covid, as I think there might
| be some attitude changes around partial work-from-home. I
| don't think my current employer would be likely to go all-
| remote, but I could maybe see them going to hot desks with
| less-than-100% seating capacity on the expectation that
| most people only come into the office a couple days a week,
| and the economics of this kind of pricing definitely shift
| if it's not a daily expense.
| chris_va wrote:
| Most people do not have the years to devote to becoming a good
| pilot, much less get a new category cert, so I find that these
| sorts of prototypes have a very limited audience.
|
| "Or maybe you want to escape to Lake Tahoe for a long weekend?
| That would be less than an hour on a Lilium Jet" ... ah, mountain
| flying with batteries, what could possibly go wrong.
|
| Also, I find the lack of a vertical stabilizer this plane to be
| an odd choice. It seems like they have a ballistic chute for
| backup when the power fails, but it might be hard to deploy that
| when you cannot do any spin recovery.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| And a ballistic parachute is not super safe in mountainous
| areas where the ground is not flat. With the typical ballistic
| parachute there is zero control on where you land. And even in
| the best circumstances the landing is pretty rough, it's more
| like a last resort.
|
| However engine failure can also occur on fuel-powered aircraft.
| And at least this thing has a whole lot of engines so it could
| afford the failure of a few. The batteries could be subdivided
| in sections.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >However engine failure can also occur on fuel-powered
| aircraft
|
| This. Why would a battery powered aircraft be more
| susceptible to failure than another engine type?
| joosters wrote:
| Because we have decades of experience with the existing
| engine & fuel types, but very little experience of battery
| powered aircraft?
| scarier wrote:
| Yeah, I worry that a lot of the use cases are in the most
| complicated and dangerous flight environments (mountains, big
| cities), even before you consider things like weather, airspace
| management, power margin at altitude...
|
| >Also, I find the lack of a vertical stabilizer this plane to
| be an odd choice.
|
| Not to mention any form of traditional aerodynamic control
| surface: "With 36 single-stage electric motors providing near-
| instantaneous thrust in almost any direction, control surfaces,
| such as rudders, ailerons or a tail, aren't required."
|
| They've really doubled down on their VTOL shindig. Seems like a
| pretty big gamble making an aircraft that's entirely dependent
| on its propulsion system for basic aerodynamic stability and
| control (I'm also curious if the wings would make noticeably
| less lift in a glide). "Intrinsically simple design," huh?
| krm01 wrote:
| This sounds like they found an entry way into the market. Having
| traveled in Switzerland, hopping on this between offices Geneva -
| Zurich would be a no brainer.
|
| If anyone at lilium is reading. Please contact our firm. Would
| love to contribute to this moonshot and allocate some of ouwr
| UI/UX firm's resources to contribute and help simplify the
| software side of things. (See bio)
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| They are investing a billion dollar to develop a plane from
| scratch in order to launch a taxi service.
|
| This strikes as quite an odd thing to do and my bet is that
| either one of the big guys (Airbus, Boeing, etc) will launch a
| competing aircraft and kill them, or they will be acquired. Even
| if they continue as an aircraft manufacturer I am doubtful about
| the mix with being a taxi company.
|
| It also seems an awful lot of money to develop one small plane.
| gorpomon wrote:
| I love this idea. I don't envy the work ahead of them at all
| though.
|
| In my career I've worked in both mechanical and software
| engineering and IMO the mechanical engineering involved here is
| daunting. Caveat: when I was in that industry 3D printing was
| just around the corner and you could print a part per day and the
| machine cost $80k, so probably creating and testing prototypes is
| far more pleasant now.
|
| This looks like a truly fun project to work on that's full of
| frustration, waiting, scrapped parts, broken CAD models,
| regulatory bs, good regulations that save lives, tons of changes
| in direction, mercurial investors, endless naysayers, and all
| done while considering that chances of success are small.
| Honestly it looks fun as hell.
| viburnum wrote:
| This is bad because it doesn't scale up the way mass transit
| does. Only a few people will be able to use it, and those will be
| the people with the most resources and power. As long as the
| people in charge can avoid the problems that the little people
| have, they don't pay much attention to them. What we need is
| solidarity. We need systems that work for everyone, not one
| excellent system for the few and half-hearted make-do for the
| rest.
| barbegal wrote:
| I don't quite see how you can spend only $10 million in capex and
| get 1 million passengers per year. With 4 passengers per flight
| that's about 700 flights per day or about 1 flight per minute.
| That's a lot compared to existing heliports that handle 50 or so
| flights per day. Even with a 15 minute turnaround time you will
| need parking space for at least 15 aircraft.
| [deleted]
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