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...all you need is a little $30-40K Piper Cherokee or Cessna 172 and go fly yerself practically anywhere in the USA you damn well please. Instead of driving a brand new car every year and living in some yuppie condo/townhouse, I drive an 10 year old car, live in an older house and bought my own small plane and became a private pilot instead. I can fly three or four hundred mile trips in literally half the time it takes to drive, and roughly about the same net end-to-end amount of total time it takes to fly commercially, or sometimes even quicker than driving or commercial airlines since I can get into smaller airports much closer to my final destinations.

Drawbacks are: Sometimes obtaining ground transportation from a small Hickville airport is a bitch, and bad weather can keep you from flying a small plane like mine at all unless you've got a deathwish.

Benefits are: I can generally just hop into my own plane and go on my own schedule. Nothing feels better than flying over a traffic-jammed freeway and looking down at all the cars, except maybe flying over a highway patrol trooper that's got some poor schmuck pulled over on the side of the highway with his foot propped up on the car bumper and scribbling on a ticketbook while I glance over at my GPS groundspeed showing me cruising along at over 130 MPH :-)

Every Slashdotter who ever had any thought at all about learning to fly should get over to their nearest small airport that has a Learn to Fly Here program and at least take an introductory flying lesson for $99 or less.

Stop Dreaming. Start Flying.

Take flying lessons. Really. It's a lot safer. If you're 16 years old and your instructor signs off, you can even fly solo.

In that spirit, Be a pilot.

Spend a few dozen hours in X-Plane and a few dozen hours in the real world, and you can get your private pilot's license for less than half the price of a fuckin' Toyota Camry.

You won't make big money flying commercially. But whatever you do from 9 to 5, you will get your money's worth. You do not have to buy your own plane, and you can rent planes for little more than the cost of the fuel.

Best. Hobby. Evah.

Surprisingly few of our Defense Contractors' engineers are actually qualified pilots. That's why our DC ANG F-16 pilots complain that the F-16 is an airplane "designed by engineers, not pilots." That's why Lockheed had to pay so much money to the wives of German fighter pilots after the F-104 fighter failed so miserably as to break up under stress. (Our own government didn't do anything extra for the US F-104 widows.)

The Boeing B-1 Lancer was a good plane when they designed it, but the engineers then overloaded with so much gear that they either stall on climb or go into an unrecoverable dive. Naturally, the Reagan DoD claimed we needed the B-1 to win the Cold War. I guess that's why they're still flying B-52s.

Pointing to a DoD press release doesn't help your case, and neither do ad-hominem attacks, (to which I shall never stoop). This is the same DoD that claimed we had a missile gap in 1960, that East Germany had a higher standard of living than West Germany in the 1980s, and that we're winning the war in Iraq. The first version of the M-1 tank couldn't even shoot and move at the same time. The Bradley Fighting Vehicle? Another triumph of military engineering so great they had to make a movie about it.

The Moab desert robot drive challenge was successfully completed only last year. AI isn't as advanced as you might think. UAVs certainly do NOT have to follow all the rules of passenger aircraft under Parts 61, 91, 141 or 142 of FAA regulations. When UAVs fly, the FAA issues a NOTAM and restricts the airspace around it so no airplanes with humans on board fly anywhere near them. A surprisingly large amount of U.S. airspace is restricted, including most of the airspace over Nevada, for instance. Thus, the military and defense contractors get whatever exemptions they want from civil airspace rules. Don't believe me? Fly over Area 51 and see what happens.

The FAA controllers regularly complain about military bozos who want to restrict all US airspace to military traffic only. After 9/11, the Pentagon almost seized Washington's Reagan National airport and were stopped only when members of Congress figured out how long it would take them to drive to other airports.

Those of you who are ready to fly in airliners piloted by AI should:
1) take a class in AI
2) get a pilot's license, or at least take a flight lesson.
I have done both (not at MIT, though), and those designing these aircraft, for the most part, have not.

The main point of this is, don't believe everything you read in a press release.

Then I guess you must already be pretty fearful now.

The answer to this security check point crap? General Aviation. Get yourself a pilot's license and fly anywhere you want to almost any airport you want with no baggage restrictions, no lines, no security bs. The sky's no longer the limit!

Stop dreaming, start flying! Be a pilot.
http://www.beapilot.com/

Your comments only apply to air carriers and some well-funded freight operators. Not everyone has TCAS, not everyone has modern equipment, even in the commercial world. And some aircraft are simply too inexpensive in and of themselves to justify adding the things you've mentioned above.

He was talking about flying his own aircraft, most of which don't have:

-> co-pilot (unless you have a buddy who likes to fly with you)

-> virtually no commercial airplanes have a "navigator" anymore (two-pilot cockpits have been all the rage for at least a decade now)

-> at uncontrolled airports you're not even required to carry a radio, let alone talk to "ground control"

-> no "warning" equipment for proximity even the ground other than an altimiter, let alone expensive equipment like TCAS for warning about other nearby aircraft

Additionally:

-> You're NOT required to file a flight plan of any kind VFR.

-> ALL airplanes get within a mile of each other at this really neat place called... wait for it... the airport.

You're talking about things you know nothing about. But we certainly would enjoy it if you came out and flew with us... http://www.beapilot.com/ is a good way to start.

Both have useful information. Minimum required hours is 40 last I can remember.
Typical rental of a C152 is $65/hr including fuel, Instructor is another $40/hr (although after 20 hours you can solo, further cutting your costs).
(NOTE: Rental time is the time the MASTER SWITCH is on, not the time you actually have the plane for.)

As I've had in my .sig you can fly, too. The hardest part is starting. Go to your nearest airport and take the $49 demo flight.

Be A Pilot has all of the info. Other great resouces are AOPA and EAA.

Flying lessons or...

a plane

It doesn't get any better than this!

Science, freedom, beauty, adventure: what more could you ask of life? Aviation combined all the elements I loved. There was science in each curve of an airfoil, in each angle between strut and wire, in the gap of a spark plug or the color of the exhaust flame. There was freedom in the unlimited horizon, on the open fields where one landed. A pilot was surrounded by beauty of earth and sky. He brushed treetops with the birds, leapt valleys and rivers, explored the cloud canyons he had gazed at as a child. Adventure lay in each puff of wind.

I began to feel that I lived on a higher plane than the skeptics of the ground; one that was richer because of its very association with the element of danger they dreaded, because it was freer of the earth to which they were bound. In flying, I tasted a wine of the gods of which they could know nothing. Who valued life more highly, the aviators who spent it on the art they loved, or these misers who doled it out like pennies through their antlike days? I decided that if I could fly for ten years before I was killed in a crash, it would be a worthwhile trade for an ordinary life time.
-- Charles A. Lindbergh, 'The Spirit of St. Louis.'

High Flight
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, -- and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of -- wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air. . . .

Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or ever eagle flew --
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untresspassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
-- John Gillespie Magee, Jr

"Freedom"? Are you kidding?

The points you make are all valid, but call it something else. The word "freedom" took on an entirely new definition for me the first time I flew a real plane. The sense of FREEDOM I got was unreal -- not just sitting in front of a computer cooped up in my apartment, but actually sailing through the air, this two thousand pound object that somehow is graceful as a bird and can go in any direction I point it. This view that is so familiar from my years of being an airline passenger - yet, such FREEDOM, just touch this little piece of plastic, and the entire machine moves in any direction at your whim.

Fly over the convoluted streets that never go straight to your destination, over the traffic that's always stopped on the 405, play amongst the clouds, pass birds who can't fly nearly as high or as quickly as I can. That's freedom, in my book.

Don't get me wrong. I like simulators. I still use them. It's fun to try to land the space shuttle or try to do a short-field takeoff from a grass strip in a 747. It's useful to familiarize yourself with instrument procedures before you're actually flying. But ever since I tried my hand at being a real pilot, the last word I'd use to describe sims is 'freedom'.

You should try it -- and you can! For a mere $50, most local airports will give you a 1 hour introductory lesson (YOU sit in the pilot's seat, YOU fly the plane with an instructor at your side). If you have even the slightest interest in aviation or have spent more than 10 hours of your life playing flight simulators, I guarantee you this will be the best $50 you ever spend - even if you never take another lesson again. You will forever look at the world differently. You will tell the story of That Time I Flew A Real Plane to everyone who will listen. Here's a directory of airports that will do such demo flights.

Try it, my friend.

...if you fly your own airplane.

Seriously, all you geeks out there need to try having a few flying lessons. We need more private pilots in this country. If you've got the "right stuff" you owe it to yourself to learn how to fly. And no, you don't have to be rich either. I only make about $35k per year and I could even afford to buy my own single engine airplane. A modest one only costs as much as a new Chevy pickup truck and is a hell of a lot more fun.

Look at my .sig and guess what I do on sunny weekends.

You can get up from the Flight Sim and try the real thing. Start at BeAPilot.com

In my case I dreamed about flying all of my life. I decided to give it a go while I was still young enough to enjoy it.

I had three concerns:
1) It's very expensive. I can't afford it. (It took a while for me to notice that I could afford it.)
2) I need to do other things like get a new degree, etc. This will take up a lot of time. (So what? I wasn't making good progress toward that goal anyway.)
3) If I start, I'll be obsessed by it and I won't do much else. (Again So What? It ain't a drug addiction. It turned out that the obsession wore down, but not much. Like most pilots I think it's so magical I never get tired of talking about it, even if you get tired of hearing about it.)

Worse than I imagined, I bought a plane. There's where all my money goes.

There actually is a wave of techies that became pilots about the same time I did. We thought we had money to burn when the stock market was flying high.

Even now, you can earn a Private Pilot certificate in the US 6 months or so for $5000 or less.

Join me in the air.

From the comments I am surprised at how few people here fly small planes. There are over 9000 airstrips in the US and over 100,000 small planes.

From the comments I am surprised at how few people here fly small planes. There are over 9000 airstrips in the US and over 100,000 small planes.

Yes and no. It certainly won't be IT like we know it today.

Personally, I see the commoditization of the PC market continuing, turning the hardware tech side of things into something resembling the TV Repair industry; pretty much dead since a TV is usually cheaper to replace than repair. We're already reaching that point.

The networking side of the house will also change, it has to. Networks are going to become simpler, easier to manage and thus reduce the need for a dedicated admin. Sure, the larger companies will still have admin staff, but to be honest I feel that those departments will shrink dramatically, and smaller to mid-size companies will no longer need a dedicated admin. Small companies and home users will probably only know that they plug in a cable and it works... no messing around. How the abstraction of services will work between a local machine and the network I can't predict; personally I can't wait.

The outsourcing/consulting industry will actually probably stay about the same as it is today (or slightly smaller). Reason being, these commoditized networks and PC's don't need quite so much work, and are normally replaced rather than fixed. Those smaller companies without admins will use outsourcing for their basic admin needs, probably only needing a few things per month, if even that. This is already happening; I admin for a company here in St. Louis that has 45 users in the office, and their network is managed entirely by me, maybe 10 hours a month. As I've improved the network since I originally installed it, my admin work has been reducing. These days I barely have any overhead on their systems and there's rarely a problem that takes more than a couple of hours to fix.

As for programming... now there I do see some growth, though not as much as many might predict. Good programmers will be required to create the abstraction layers that my above predictions need, and to maintain them after the fact... but there are already enough programmers out there to make this a reality. The problem that I see in the programming industry is an "egg-farming" attitude; hire lots of cheap, semi-computer-literate programmers and give them all very small tasks to do, and sooner or later you'll have a product. I have worked (for a month) for one company that did this as a project manager (the one growth job for experienced people in this business model)... I quit because I hated seeing it and knowing this was the future of programming. Sure, the products worked, but that's about it. I guess someone might call it the "Infinite Monkeys" programming style. As the programming team project manager, I managed a team of 30 programmers. Even then I was only given a section of code to work and then it was my job to break it down into tasks, then manage to it. Tedious as all get out, but as much as I hate to admit it, it did produce the desired results.

Basically, the upshot of my discussion here is that IT is going to change. There is going to be less and less room in this industry for those who love to (need to?) excel at everything they do. Going "the extra mile" will eventually result in a manager saying "Very good job, but how much did that impact the tasks I gave you last week?" Creativity will be stifled within the walls of corporations, even those that have encouraged that creativity to-date, and "good enough" becomes a mantra for IT departments everywhere.

I hate to see this happen, in a sense... but it was inevitable. I have loved the IT industry for about the last 11 years I've been in it; it has provided me with great opportunities to excel at what I do best, as well as bring in a decent paycheck and allowed me to be creative with solutions. However, I'm already seeing the writing on the wall from where I stand.

In answer to the main question; no, I don't see myself retiring from IT. The old IT and new IT have one thing in common; they both value youth (and therefore low-cost). Thankfully, I got into IT young, so I have been able to ride it for a long time... but I see already that I'm within 8-10 years of being considered an "old man" in the IT world. To me, this is the time for me to start looking around at other options. They may not pay as well, but to me they will be much more rewarding.

That's why I'm learning to fly!

Moller's performance claims are completely unrealistic. Aerodynamic engineers agree there's going to be a lot of inteference drag from the way the ducted-fan nacelles are set up. Also, rotary engines on a per-horsepower basis are a lot less fuel efficient than even normal gasoline piston engines. Yet his figures indicate they will be more efficient than the best diesel engines being made today.

Also, you CAN get your own personal air travel. My light aircraft cost half the price of a new Chevrolet Suburban, and burns less fuel too. It does have some limitations, and it was built in 1946, but it's very nice and a great deal of fun to fly. Go to your local small GA airport and ask about learning to fly, or see http://www.beapilot.com.

Stop dreaming, start flying ;-)