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NASA Wants You To Fly The Highway In The Sky
rakerman writes "NASA is working on a program called SATS, the Small Aircraft Transportation System, which is designed to improve the automation and safety of small aircraft travel to the point where you could fly the 'highway in the sky' as easily as you drive your car." I'm ready -- when is the Moller Skycar?
I'm looking forward to the 3-dimensional traffic jams..
It was due by the end of 1999 but fell into an Access database y2k bug vortex...
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Whilst it might be safe for hundreds, or even thousands of vehicles, what happens when everybody jumps on the bandwagon?
Remember the old films of when cars were had by the minority? Just look at where it's brought us now...
Cool! This remind anyone of Back to the Future Part II where they go to 2015? We'd be a few years ahead, possibly! But where else are we going to find 1.21 gigawatts of power? It can't be done... unless I can get that flux capacitor off of eBay!
Its bad enough to have cars clogging the roads....
Whats this going to come to...
- Can't see the sky... too many flying cars
- Try to get away from it all... go on a hike... flying cars are all over
- They start to leak oil and anti-freeze... watch out below.. (or litterbugs)
anyhow.... cars kill how many people each day ??? Fix what we got first.... and figure out the social impact before going ahead with this one..
(then again... could open up some great back-country skiing.. but what fun would that be)
I sure hope it isn't windows... BSOD gets a whole new meaning....
Are you a grammar Nazi? I'm trying to improve my English; please correct my errors!
For turning left or right you simply turn the steering wheel - the appropriate roll, pitch and yaw are calculated by the onboard computer. To increase or decrease altitute simply move the steering wheel in or out. As for speed, the standard gas and break pedals would speed up or slow the vehical down. This all results in an incredibly easy and intuitive control of a VTOL vehical. Want to come to a stop 100 feet up and then slowly lower the vehical down? First apply the breaks. The VTOL aircraft then comes to a stop, hovering at 100 feet. To lower the car to the ground, simply push the steering wheel in. The speed of decent can controlled by the onboard computer to insure that proper decent velocity is maintained.
www.enthea.org
After reading the info, it looks like it has more to do with getting people to travel in small, possibly independently owned, airplanes, rather than "flying cars" per se. I'm all for it, though. I would love to own my own airplane, and I bet they'll get cheaper to buy in the long run also.
One thing I was thinking about though, is that high-speed chases will take on an entirely new meaning. Obviously there will be police airplanes protecting the skies, but will they be equipped with machineguns to take you down, or what? Those spike strips that they use on cars aren't gonna do a whole lot up in the air. And they can't just chase you until you run out of fuel, 'cause then you could crash into a neighborhood or something. Of course, they can't just knock you down either, or the same could happen.
There are also issues of licences. I don't know how hard it is to get a pilot's licence, but it looks like in order for something like this to work, they're going to have to make it easier, or find some way to intice people to get them.
One last thing. You know how when you watch the news in the morning, you hear about 4 or 5 accidents on the highway, in one day alone? How's that going to work for airplanes? They say that airplanes are the safest way to travel, but it seems to me they can make that claim because there are WAY fewer airplanes than cars. So if there are more planes, are you gonna hear about them dropping from the sky on the morning news? I wonder.
Still sounds badass, though. I'd love to travel by plane.
-- mesh
I've always heard you're statistically safer in an airplane 30,000 feet above the ground than you are in a car 30,000 feet above the ground..
Will these be hydrogen powered? The new Honda Zeppelin?
air and light and time and space
Ok. first of all
http://www.moller.com/skycar/
Next thing I want to know is why this isn't already done? With a GPS and a transmitter you could upload a flight plan made with something similar to driving directions from maps.com to a FAA data base, have it approved and fly away on auto pilot. Why dont comercial airlines do this? Couldn't this replace air traffic control people? Taking off and landing would be the hardest part (don't think you can do that with an auto pilot, yet). I know people will post tons of great funny jokes about how bad people drive on the ground but if all this is done via autopilot type controls I don't see a problem. Those of you with pilots liscenses enlighten me please.
HB
Aren't their jobs already stressfull enough without putting even more planes into the air? Or would we just see people fighting for rooftop parking spaces just like they do in cars.
What would the equivilent of road rage be? sky-rage? air-rage?
I can't wait to change my dog's name to Astro and my future son's name to Elroy!
30% off web hosting. Coupon code "SLASHDOT".
If I'm understanding this correctly -- even if it ever becomes a reality it won't be so much like everyone having their own personal flying aircraft as much as smaller commuter type services or the like. Instead of huge passenger jets that are best suited for flights over long distances, this sort of thing would be useful in small towns outside of larger cities requiring people to do more than an hours worth of driving to get to work every day. Not only would it reduce that but it would also increase the distance one could live from work. Instead of driving to work, or riding a bus every day, they simply swing down to the nearby landing strip and catch a ride on the next flight.
It seems like an obvious evolution in our transportation systems, really, since long commutes are getting more and more common and traffic is constantly getting worse.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
People will try to talk on their Dick Tracy wristwatches while trying to pilot/drive the flying cars. Causing not only a danger to other flying cars but the poor saps on the ground as well.
Of course this is Darwinism in action, which I am all for.
-
Ursula Andress, Catherine Deneuve, and Charo, twice...
Great, now I have to watch out for idiots cutting me off in a whole new dimension.. just what I need to keep my sanity.
Could provide a solution to road rage though, whose gonna try and punch out the guy stopped at the green light if you risk a 20 story drop.
One of the reasons why I gave up flying and sold my plane was because of so many pilots who simply did not know how to look out the window. Or how to properly enter the airport traffic pattern. So many morons in the air, and let me tell you from both a pilot perspective and an air traffic control perspective (yes, I've done both), too many pilots depend on their computer gadgets to get from point A to point B.
Here's some perspective: Check out the NTSB aircraft accident site. Follow the links for monthly synopses. If you read enough of the accident reports (I've read many of them), you'll discover navigation is the least of the problems facing pilots today. Most pilots die for one of two reasons: They run out of fuel, or they fly into weather they aren't equipped or trained to handle.
NASA has been at the forefront of the Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS), and for that I commend them. But you're sadly mistaken, Timmy, if you believe we'll see general aviation become as simple and safe as "driving your car," as you put it. There are way too many other obstacles GA pilots face than how to get from Madison to Detroit. You do your readers a disservice by pretending navigation is the biggest problem us pilots face in the world.
I don't know about you, Timmy, but I think I'd much rather have a parachute recovery system for my small plane than a new nav system: The parachute will be far more useful to me when I'm involved in a midair collision with a pilot who's busy starting at his new cockpit computer rather than looking out the cockpit window.
It is bad enough to have regular airplanes burning thousands of tons of kerosine in our atmosphere every day. The effect of millions of cars burning extra fuel to stay airborne in addition to getting from A to B would be disastrous IMHO.
Then there's the issue of horizon pollution, imagine sitting in your backyard unable to escape the trafic that is passing right over it. In my country (The Netherlands) it is already hard to find a place where you can't see/hear regular trafic.
Then there's the issue of accidents and their consequences. Apart from probably being fatal for the people inside the flying car, heavy objects dropping from the sky may pose a danger themselves as well.
Jilles
Those guys who hand out flyers at intersections are going to have to get real inventive! But they can always get a few pointers from South African Hijackers (those guys can jack ANYTHING!)
This sig is licensed under the Free Sig Foundation License, you may re-distribute it as long as you retain this notice
To me, this sounds like NASA is grasping at straws trying to prove its relevance. But developing tech toys won't cut it, I suspect.
I know this might as a shock for you all, but don't you think that NASA needs to do some coordinating with the Virginia Department of Transportation? I mean, they've just sunk all this money into a 14 year project to help relieve traffic around the beltway interchange here in Springfield, Virginia...
All kidding aside, seriously, think about the security issues you have here. By having little flying vehicles everywhere, we run into the problem of basically being able to let anyone take their car and get into airspace that is restricted. Sure, their might be klaxons going off and the vehicles computer might be saying, "You are in restricted airspace, please turn around" and sure you migth even have security features to change the course, but people will get around them. In my humble and very honest opinion it's a bad move.
Furthermore, not even thinking about the aspect of terrorism through air cars, what about the problem of accidents? I know I know, I'm jumping ahead of what the technological specifications of this are, but think about how bad some of these accidents could turn into it. It wouldn't just be that there was a midair collission, but also that the wreckage might take out some neighborhood. Hmmm, I'm seeing problems here my friends...
That's my story and I'm stickin' to it...
I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.
I can't imagine that this is going to work in a sane way.
Even in "professional" aviation navigating via GPS is only a BACKUP system, not the regular case. Still flying via VORs, NDBs and ISECs is essential.
How should Mr. John Doe learn when to go around, or what to do in very bad weather conditions.. How are they going to keep the civil and this "private" aviation apart?
How is Mr. John Doe going to pay for thes "driving/flying" licence (which won't be cheap, I'm sure)?
How can we decide who is allowed to fly, how can we be sure he is not going to insure/kill others?
Don't you think that with everybody and his brother/mother/etc using this system an reasonable amount of chaos is going to arise?
Wouldn't really small aircraft be good for hitting really small skyscrapers?
First two automobiles in Illionois crashed into each other :)
I blame there parents myself.
Only an idiot would think anything like this would actually get off the ground while the hysteria over the September 11th attacks is still going on. We're going to have every safety nazi group in the country telling us that there will be a rash of terrorists flying their flying cars into tall buildings ... and you know, they might actually be right.
The last thing I need is some guy flying in front of me with his car smoking like he's selling barbecue.
Just as I was reading this thread, Richard Noble (the guy who took the land speed record a while ago) was on a radio phone-in over here telling people about his plan for independent travel using his Farnborough F1 plane. (Hmmm, hope the plane goes faster than Richard's web site...)
He says:
"...enter the Farnborough F1 air taxi, which flies point to point faster than a congested airliner and the Farnborough integrated Ops system, which will enable you to book your on demand travel zipcode to zipcode off the web. This means you can be picked up by a ground cab from your office or home, meet up with the F1 at a local airfield and arrive at your postcode destination 1000 miles away in under 4 hours door to door. That's about half the airline time and the best bit is yet to come. The whole activity is low stress with costs comparible to a business class airline fare and you need never go to a major airport again for short-haul travel!
Key to all this is the importance of avoiding self deception. Constantly we check each other out - Have we got this right? Is there some fatal flaw in the project which means that it can never succeed? So far the only real problem is the very difficult finance - the rest is do-able. We can also take great confidence in the fact that NASA has come up with much the same ideas, though with different emphasis for their SATS (Small Aircraft Transportation System programme) which they believe will treble airspace travel capacity."
Gotta love these plucky inventor types!
Planes aren't the design i'd be looking at for a "skycar". I think that if nasa really wants to do something new, maybe they'd look into hover crafts. I'm thinking end result like the Jetsons or the Fifth Element. They are possible (look at the hover trains being developed), just not probable any time soon for mass use. The problem with a plane is that if it crashes in air... its going one way, down. And as previously stated large objects falling from high altitudes usually do some damage. With the hover car, if it crashes... then well... it hovers right where it crashed. Of course I wouldn't want to step out and check the damage, might want to wait for the hover taxi for that ;-).
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
Have any of these flying cars yet broken ground? I can see the point of working out the rules before they do, but it will be a while yet. I don't think the Moller Skycar flies yet, and I haven't seen any others that do. When will we see one that really flies?
David
Come on people... lets not forget the hippies. They've been flying in cars for years, all fueled on organic chemicals.
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
Would weapons restrictions apply for those flying cars? If they become commonplace, terrorist need not bother with hijacking airplanes, just getting some cars and loading them full of casoline is enough of a missile for crashing into buildings.
Furthermore, I can't see that those cars could be successfully flown by any less training that is currently needed for a pilots license. By successfull I mean flying without getting killed or destroying property.
me too! sometimes all i have access to is a 2X4 though.
I CAN'T STAND IT ANY MORE!!!
/. reader? 7rs old?
It's "you're" meaning "you are", and NOT "your" which means "you possess". Out of interest, just what is the average age of a
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
The Atlantic Monthly published an article about new small, safer planes and what NASA plans to do with them.
w s. htm
0 5
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2001/06/fallo
High quality stuff, as most of them articles there.
New Book, same theme, same author:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/15864804
I guess the whole thing about the dangers of this thing comes from the well known fact that if you step into the break while driving a normal car, you'll just stop and you're more or less save.
If you decrease the speed of a plane to much you'll stop too, but you'll tumble down and be more or less dead...
Is this the same NASA that doesn't want tourists in space?
I don't want to know what happens if someone looks how far up one of those SATS planes can go. Talk about tourism in space ;)
I'm ok with sky driving on one big condition. The test you have to take has to be hard as hell. I could officially kill this idea by rounding up members of congress, putting them on a schoolbus, and taking a field trip to Atlanta in the morning. I'd close off the top of spaghetti junction, park there, and hand out binoculars. :) That would probably do the most to make the roads safer.
Drunk drivers would immediately lose their driving priveledges forever. No debate. Vehicle inspections would have to be monthly. Litigation would be through the roof. Good lord. There is no way this would work. Imagine the people you are on the road with in the morning piloting a one ton aircraft at high speed. I'm personally of the opinion that better testing should be implemented now long before we make it into the sky. Your score should have bearing on when you have to test next. Hand eye coordination tests should be taken into account. Age should no longer matter. As long as somebody can reach the petals and pass the very hard tests, they should be able to drive. If not, insurance is going to be so high that only the ultrarich will be able to buy skycars. They might as well start requiring people to take a test before they are allowed to get married or have kids.
The most important thing any republican needs to know.
An article a few months ago (and available
w s. htm
... Weather delays in one part of the country have ripple effects thousands of miles away."
on-line) has far more details:
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2001/06/fallo
(Warning: long and fascinating!)
Some quotes:
"Today more than 80 percent of all airline traffic takes off from or lands at one of the fifty busiest airports, and most of it at the twenty-four major hubs.
"for the foreseeable future small planes will make a difference mainly if they constitute the operating fleet for a new national system of air taxis. A supply of inexpensive, safe, comfortable small planes, flown by hired pilots and available at rates comparable to today's coach air fares, could bring freedom and convenience to a broader share of the traveling public"
"The most important all-weather component is a precision-landing system, which lets pilots safely descend for a landing even if clouds are within a few hundred feet of the ground. Some 1,200 of the nation's public airports already have precision-landing systems. Holmes argues that if landing systems and air-traffic-control services were installed at many more airports, they could collectively handle some 500 million takeoffs and landings a year (versus 37 million now) without building a single new runway"
"Before the FAA will certify a plane, the manufacturers must show that a pilot can bring the plane out of a spin. The SR20 met this standard through a combination of spin resistance and the parachute, which would arrest the fall within 1,000 feet of where the handle was pulled--less altitude than planes typically lose when recovering from a spin."
"in the summer of 1997 Williams was able to display a preview version of his new engine...achieved the nine-to-one thrust-to-weight ratio previously thought unattainable. The combined weight of the engines for a twin-engine jet could be less than 200 pounds. Suddenly it seemed practical to design a four-to-six-person jet that could land at small fields and would be relatively inexpensive to build."
The article also talks about things like safety, new runways, pollution, etc. Good read.
-- hsun
Anyone remember that WTC thingy that happened a few months back? and OH YEAH, the other plane crash about a week ago...
Those planes were flown by professionals and people are scared to fly. You think the average Joe will trust a computer to fly them?
What if your "car" breaks down. You crash, you take out a small neighborhood.
The accident data of flying versus driving is usually stated on a per-passenger-mile basis, ie, if you have 200 people flying on a plane for 1000 miles, that's 200,000 safe miles. 40,000 people driving 50 miles would be equivalent.
Which scenario do you think would be more likely to have an accident?
I guess they saw that IBM commercial.
"Flying Cars! Where are the flying cars?"
When everybody used to believe that at year 2000 cars would be obsolete, and we all would fly. tsc tsc tsc.
But that'll be funny. I'll like to see what kind of ideas and/or design will show up. Will they be just like the 50's?
-=-=-=-=
I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
Anti-matter! The Honda Zappelin.
It'd sure make car-crashes interesting!
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
what "HAXOR Bin Ladin" could do with a few 'sploits of the control network and the entire morning rush-hour of flying cars?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
This is all well and good, but really doesn't do much for the average commuter. People that have the inclination and ability to fly a plane are probably already doing so.
.coms went bust because people don't want to pay $10+ for shipping on top of purchase price and tax. Lower that cost to $2 or $3 and see if that works better!
What I would like to see instead are automated flying boxcars. The technology exists today to allow a completely automated (no pilots) flight from point A to point B using GPS, WAAS, and sophisticated autopilots. Lets use those technologies to build flying package delivery drones, and reduce the number of semis that are tearing up our highways and causing the majority of traffic snarls.
These drones could be used to ferry routine cargo around at a much lower cost than FedEx, UPS, et al. These incumbents spend an absolute fortune on pilot salaries. The two pilots in any given FedEx jet are making in the range of $200k EACH! Multiply this by the hundreds or thousands of unionized pilots working for these organizations and it becomes clear why it costs so much to ship this way. Think about how many
Given that time probably isn't of the absolute essence, it would be possible to route these flights over rural areas and avoid the liability risks of flying umnanned aircraft over crowded urban areas. Most of these flights would happen at night when those 5000 general aviation airports NASA is talking about are essentially deserted, so the risk of a collision between one of these drones and a piloted GA plane is minimal, and could probably be addressed with the same technologies NASA is working on. The aircraft themselves would be cheaper to manufacture than commercial aircraft since pressurization wouldn't be needed.
Karma: Professionally Doomed (mostly affected by inability to keep opinions to self)
Rolling will always be more efficient than flying.
Better to only fly when there is a reason, it would be disasterous for the environment if society got to the stage of flying short distances rather than using more efficient travel means.
Unless we have the perfect fuel source of course.
Ugh. Moller has been throwing designs at the wall for decades now. None have flown in to production. A closer look at his ideas reveal that we'd need some new theories in thermodynamics and aerodynamics to make his vehicles fly. When he publishes such a paper, I'll pay more attention.
However, NASA's highway in the sky concept has been around for a while and only now has it become reasonably feasible for instrument rated private pilots to use.
Most people don't realize how much thinking is involved for aircraft pilots to navigate, evaluate weather ahead, keep track of airfields, aircraft performance, air traffic control instructions, and so on. The workload is high enough that unless an airplane has a capable autopilot, many would not fly "single pilot IFR."
So a highway in the sky concept is a big deal. Reducing pilot work-load means safety. Let's face it, it's hard enough to stay at peak performance for four hours straight, let alone four hours after a long day of activities on the ground.
Not having to worry what frequencies to use next is a big reduction in work, not having to dig out the next chart along the way is a reduction in work, seeing weather depicted in 3D along the route, is a big deal. The less you have to think about where the air route, airports, weather, and you are, the more attention you can pay to how well the airplane is flying.
Sandel already makes a nice electronic HSI display which is finding its way in to many higher end General Aviation aircraft. Garmin also makes a nice GPS+navigation radio combination with moving map displays that are extremely popular among pilots.
However, flying an instrument approach to miniumus is still a lot of work and there is often little room for going stupid and making mistakes. NASA's concepts could help a great deal in this regard.
I can hardly wait.
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
With what we know about our current oil and environment situation, that is entirely unacceptable to me. In fact, that's really not acceptable in a regular car today, and I'm sure a flying car will require more energy. CNG, fuel cells, hybrid-electrics.... we should be demanding these types of solutions from manufacturers, not just waiting until they get around to it.
Hey, how'd you know I was lookin' at you if you weren't lookin' at me?
Yeah, well, NASA will encounter much resistance to builing flying weapons... Anyone remember Sept 11th?
It's called an EMP bomb..much more dangerous to us from the air than the ground.
Not to be alarmist or anything, but think about it, a nuclear weapon is more effective from the air as well as an anthrax release, and the afore mentioned EMP weapon, and when it may be easy to put a bomb in a car and drive it up to the front of your house and blow it up, it's much more effective of a weapon when released from the air.
Whatever man, I spelled it write!
the fancy chrome-and-tinsel 4-wheel-drive market...:-)
if you are in your car, and something goes wrong with it, then you come to a stop. you just sit there, and ideally nobody rear ends you - but even if they do, the most energy you can get involved is them and you combined.
but if you are in the sky, and something goes wrong, you don't just coast to a stop - there is that whole "plummeting to the earth" thing that happens as well.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
The Ercoupe also is very tiny.... two passengers only, and doesn't have enough power to get out of its own way. The reason you can't stall one (and therefore go into a spin) is because the elevator travel is limited so much that you can't pitch up to make the wings exceed critical angle of attack... either with power on or power off...and has nothing to do with how the rudders and ailerons are "hardwired" in a quasi-coordinated configuration.
I hope they keep this one in the suburbs. They have bigger backyards out there.
I am a certified commercial pilot and air traffic controller. The problem with systems like this is that it is always easier than it sounds. No matter how nice that little LCD in the cockpit looks, flying is not going to be a "highway in the sky".
As a pilot, I regularly fly into airports where the wind is gusting to 30+ knots, the ceiling is 500 feet off the ground, the turbluence is slamming me against my seatbelts, and the visibility is below a mile.
If this alone didn't require a lot of skill, you have to constantly be alert for system failures, air traffic control instructions, and all relevant procedures.
All the automation in the world can't prepare your average highway driver for what flying can really be like.
This research will help pilots who are already fully certified reach their destinations easier and safer, but it will do nothing to have your average citizen flying the "highway in the sky".
Almost anyone can get a private plane these days for the cost of a luxury car.
Check out kit planes. You buy the kit and assemble it yourself, taking anywhere from 1-5 years. Get it approved by the government and get your license and you're good to go.
There are hundreds of small airfields all over the place that small aircraft owners use.
Also check out the "Experimental Homebuilt Aircraft fair", known as Oshkosh. People from all over the US fly in for it, and the amount of planes using the airport are truly staggering. The line for landing goes far beyond the horizon.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
And not a single thought about resource usage... how typically american :)
Not a single thought about hemp as an alternative to oil reserves...
Deisel engines were first designed to run on hemp fuel, and were thought to have been our future energy source by Mr. Deisel himself.
Factoid: Hemp fuel could take care of 99% of our energy needs.
Questionoid: Could hemp be refined for use in small aircraft? How versatile is it as a fuel?
As an American, I could BUY that Lincoln Navigator, tow a boat, a dirtbike, 2 jetski's, and a snowmobile without giving a second thought to acid rain or the Earth's dwindeling Oil reserves...
MODERATORS: Don't bother moderating me down for being Offtopic, I'm already at 0... Look for something insightful instead
When I was a boy, thirty-five years ago, Frontier Airlines flew into my hometown, pop. 12,000. I can only assume that this was not exceptional at the time.
What has changed? Highways have gotten a lot better. Airlines have been deregulated. High tech safety/navigation equipment have made airports much more costly to run.
I kind of like the idea of small airports being used again by normal travelers, but I'm not convinced that it can happen without huge government spending.
Well, gee. Let's all just forget it then, since you oppose it.
In fact, that's really not acceptable in a regular car today
Umm...apparently, at least among non-nutburgers, it is!
This scares the bejeezus out of me!
I'm trying to get my certificate to be a private pilot. I read the article stating that the computer would control the planes in 'non-radar' space and 'non-towered' airports...is this thing going to have speech recognition and natural language recognition as well?
What I'm getting at, is that the above airspaces pretty much control themselves. If I'm departing from a non-towered airfield, I announce via radio...is this thing going to be able to track and avoid other aircraft that are being flown the old fashioned way?
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.-Franklin
I am a postgrad working on my doctoral and am involved in the Human Factors issues of SATS. Many are worried about the impacts of such an endeavor, and rightly so. Especially with the events of 911, one wonders if this is feasible at all. There are two sides to this issue: one side is that SATS, and GA in general, is dead; the other says that, due to the currently inherent security issues with commercial transportation, SATS and GA will grow exponentially (i.e., no knowledge of who you're flying with or how intense the security scrutiny of others' baggage causing droves of travellers who wish to have SOME control to seek out alternatives). Being on the Human Factors side of things in SATS, I am more concerned with the interactions that will occur with respect to the 'human in the loop': the displays (visual or auditory), human performance in such things as terminal area procedures and separation maintenance, and investigations into optimal cockpit and aircraft design. Make no mistake: we have (or soon will have) the technology to do this. Surely, some aspects, such as ATC issues and flight path security (i.e., flying over sensitive areas), still need resolving. But, with the data gleaned from the AGATE research and others, we are confident that this will become reality. Current plans are for a demonstration of a fully-operational system, limited to a specific test area, in 2005. Time will tell if this system sells with the public, but I think it will. Witness the increases in chartered aircraft, both for business and pleasure. Several aircraft currently exist and are flying that contain SATS technology (Cirrus, Glasair). Consortia involved in SATS (Florida, Virginia, and a conglomeration of others in Baltimore and Ohio) are feverishly working out testing and experimental designs that produce the data that the FAA and NASA need to make the decisions to continue. I am excited about this, very excited. You should be, too.
I'm not in the U.S. I'm getting "(113) No route to host" errors. Ok, next step: try Google. What? They're not caching the pages!
Does that mean what I think it means? Anyone?
I see everyone is talking about how dangerous this would be and damaging to the environment and so on. I think these problems can be solved.
To make this reality I think we would need very light (hydrogen powered?) aircrafts which could take off and land vertically.
These aircrafts shoul have some kind of parachute, which would make it fall down slowly in case of engine failure etc.
From different points A to B e.g. travel between two cities using sophisticated autopilots, there should be multiple electronic highways, which the vehicles would have to follow. Every vehicle should broadcast their position and the computer should make sure that no other vehicle could come dangerously close.
The computer should have a digital map of the surrounding area using gps and other technologies. On the electronic map it should have the position of all nearby vehicles so that it could avoid dangerous situations. It should have maps over ground and buildings in the area. Flying to unmapped territory should be denied by the vehicle.
If a failure should happen in an aircraft, it should open the parachute, broadcast a failure signal so that other vehicles nearby would keep clear. Then it should land with the parachute and perhaps emergency stearing engines.
IMHO some kind of SkyCar IS the future and will replace cars. But it might be a while, maybe problems yet to solve. But I think all problems could be solved in creative ways, so that we eventually will have safe personal skycars.
I doubt that personal flying vehicles would be permitted to fly any path to the desired destination. Military installations and air traffic control regions would still be restricted/controlled airspace. In the U.S. I predict that dams, nuclear plants and other 'sensitive' installations will now be restricted forever.
If private air traffic proliferates, I can envision a new class of restricted areas:
Wilderness areas ("we can't permit these vehicles to disturb the [fill in endangered creature here]"), national parks ("they ruin the view"), observatories, etc. Those who live in major flyover zones will petition their legislators to restrict traffic over their homes ("Did you see the naked babe by the pool?? Go back! Go back!").
In the end, I suspect society will squeeze air traffic (mostly) back into "acceptable" corridors, and then a precision navigation/auto-pilot system will become an absolute necessity.
This whole thing would bring a brand new meaning to the people that let it run out of gas. This would actually prove the people who think the E means livin life on the edge are right.
SATS will be the first step to the principle of Free Flight, where everyone, commercial and private, fly as they want. And yes, this would in theory decrease the workload for controllers by a large amount.
However, there still needs to be a person who is ultimately in charge if something happens and machines fail. Conflict detection and resolution done by the aircraft themselves can resolve conflicts 99% of the time, but someone needs to watch over the other 1%.
So, on the controller side, the question becomes whether it is harder for the controller to simply control the aircraft or if it is more strenuous for him to watch the aircraft and 'trust' them to self-separate.
Based on research done by my department here at Embry-Riddle University, controllers want to be in charge and hate having aircraft that fly themselves around.
Veni Vidi Vici
I don't think he was saying just to forget it. I think the point was that better fuel economy is something that people should demand. It is a problem that is going to get worse as we run out of reserves, and we've hardly rolled out any alternate fuel vehicles. Sure, some fleets use CNG, and there are a few (overpriced) electric cars, but we need more development along those lines. The sooner, the better.
Or did I just get a hook stuck in my mouth?
Now I am going to really have to live in a bunker. Somebody is always turning 21 in the US.
Very true. I have a Moller brochure from 1974, and his little VTOL craft was touted as "real soon now" all the way back then.
It's not clear why he's having so much trouble getting off the ground. Things like the AvroCar and the Hiller Flying Platform flew in the 1950s. They were unstable and tough to fly, and before computerized stability control systems that made them useless. But that's not a big problem today.
Since Wil Wheaton has been revealed as the fellow geek and slashdotter he is, maybe we can get him to steal some of those dilithium crystals for us!
Just think, Wil, of all the blackmarket money you could make selling fuel!
Essentially, a lot of people have realized that the currrent domestic air transportation system is flawed, primarily because "hub" airports force us to spend more time getting to the airport, getting on the plane, and then driving from the airport to our actual destination than we need to. In fact, much of the time we'd save time by just driving.
So in order to make domestic air travel actually efficient, NASA and others are working to reinvent the system. If you're at all interested in the future of domestic air travel, read the article. Fallows does his homework, and it's a good read.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I'm a bit of a New Urbanist, so I can immediately see how this idea can go BADLY wrong. Two points (among many) that you should consider...
1. People invariably tend to live around an hour's commute from work. Many studies have shown this. When the highway was invented, it didn't make it easier to live in the city and travel between them - it led millions of people to move farther away and for cars to become the dominant mode of transportation, with all it's ills. The same has happened with rail lines. In all cases, it means that much more space has to be devoted to providing for the transportation network - roads, parking lots, gas stations, etc. If you have people commuting by plane, you won't be letting people live in the country and work in the city - you'll be turning the entire nation into one big suburb.
2. No matter how much of a resource you produce, people will inevitably find a way to consume all of it. This rule applies to commodities like oil and food, as well as things like road space. Think building another highway will solve your traffic concerns by relieving the other roads? Think again. I just drove 400 miles to and from my brother's house this past weekend, and let me tell you the traffic was RIDICULOUS. There were jams in the middle of nowhere, at all times of day. Granted it is just before a holiday, but still. This leads me to point 2b: The most important feature of a transportation system is not its capacity, but how well it performs at maximum capacity. Roads perform terribly - they slow to a crawl and stop as soon as accidents occur. Rail, OTOH, is a little crowded in the cars but otherwise functions perfectly for the most part. How will individual air travel stack up? I think I can guess...
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Consider an air transportation system where all aircraft -- from 747+ sized airliners to little vehicles like Moller skycars -- are equipped with GPS receivers and digital transmitters. Every aircraft's nav system transmits its position and velocity to every other aircraft's nav system within a 30 km radius.
Now that everyone knows where everone else is, it's not that difficult of a software challenge to have each aircraft automatically calculate and apply minor course adjustments that would eliminate any possibility of a collision -- either between two aircraft, or between one aircraft and the turbulent wake of another aircraft (which may have contributed to the recent crash in Queens).
Except for giving takeoff and landing clearances, humans would be totally out of the loop -- and that's a good thing for two reasons. 1) Human error and inattention on the part of air traffic controllers accounts for nearly all mid-air collisions. 2) Because of this tendency for human error, the air traffic rules for how much empty space must be maintained between aircraft contain ridiculously large safety factors. That is the reason we hear so much about "congested skies." Our skies aren't truly congested; an automated air traffic control system would be able to pack the three-dimensional airspace orders-of-magnitude more densely -- even while improving air safety.
I say SATS doesn't go far enough, because NASA's vision is limited to small aircraft -- apparently maintaining the traditional, inefficient air traffic control system for large aircraft. But large aircraft would also reap great benefits from the kind of automated system I describe. Better to have aircraft of all sizes working under one unified system.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
I see everyone is talking about how dangerous this would be and damaging to the environment and so on. I think these problems can be solved.
To make this reality I think we would need very light (hydrogen powered?) aircrafts which could take off and land vertically.
These aircrafts shoul have some kind of parachute, which would make it fall down slowly in case of engine failure etc.
From different points A to B e.g. travel between two cities using sophisticated autopilots, there should be multiple electronic highways, which the vehicles would have to follow. Every vehicle should broadcast their position and the computer should make sure that no other vehicle could come dangerously close.
The computer should have a digital map of the surrounding area using gps and other technologies. On the electronic map it should have the position of all nearby vehicles so that it could avoid dangerous situations. It should have maps over ground and buildings in the area. Flying to unmapped territory should be denied by the vehicle.
If a failure should happen in an aircraft, it should open the parachute, broadcast a failure signal so that other vehicles nearby would keep clear. Then it should land with the parachute and perhaps emergency stearing engines.
IMHO some kind of SkyCar IS the future and will replace cars. But it might be a while, maybe problems yet to solve. But I think all problems could be solved in creative ways, so that we eventually will have safe personal skycars.
Where did you find statistics about "cars at 30,000 feet"?
The car is probably safer, as it is likely a smaller target for other things to hit.
"It's not the fall that kills you, just the sudden stop at the end."
This is a very bad idea doomed to failure.
1. Many flying cars will agravate pollution problem. Aircraft need bigger engines than cars do. That would be a major problem in L.A. or Seattle.
2. Flying cars will always be more expensive than regular cars. They need bigger engines, radios, wings, etc.
3. This is friggin'dangerous! A lot of drivers can't drive a regular car very well, so how will they manage flying a plane.Also, when one crashes over a populated area, the flying car will slam into buildings and catch fire just like at the WTC. There would be collisions all the time. Inexperienced pilots would be killed in storms, from stalling, and from running out of gas all the time.
4. Our air traffic control system can barely handle the planes buzzing around today. It could never direct millions of losers in their flying cars.
5. How the hell would it be able to safely land, say in downtown Manhattan.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
There are no restriction over nuclear plants anymore. They were lifted. There are already (and have been for years) restriction over wilderness areas.
RZ
One oversight that I have noticed during the debates about economy is that yes cars get 20-40 mpg while going down the highway, maybe even better if you drive an insight, but they don't get that kind of mileage while stuck in a traffic jam during rush hour. These will, if nothing else prevent the congestion that you experience when everyone decided to take the same pipe to work in the morning. The only problem I see is landing/parking.
Pseudocode is code to demonstrate a concept, not designed to be run. Like certain M$ software.
this is what I want, plus you can put a parachute on the whole assemply.
Personal VTOL
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I doubt that personal flying vehicles would be permitted to fly any path to the desired destination.
Maybe not a perfectly straight line in all cases, but I doubt that there would be any situations where the distance on the road was less than the distance in the air.
Military installations and air traffic control regions would still be restricted/controlled airspace. In the U.S. I predict that dams, nuclear plants and other 'sensitive' installations will now be restricted forever.
It's probably a good idea to prohibit jumbo jets from flying near dams and the like, but it would be pretty tough to take out Hoover dam with the amount of explosives you could cram into a four-seat VTOL aircraft.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Why do you assume that a modern air car would be based on a thirty-year-old design, and a design for a very high-performance military aircraft at that?
Check this out. It's the first design I've seen for a sky car that might actually deliver what Moller's been promising for the last thirty years.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."