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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?
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.
You may be interested in knowing that such a system as you describe (well, except for the hovering part) as been around since the '40s. The Ercoupe doesn't have rudder pedals: On the ground, you steer it like a car (unlike conventional aircraft, in which you use the rudder pedals), and all turns are coordinated since rudder movement is tied to the yoke, which also controls the ailerons. Supposedly, it's nearly impossible to get the Ercoupe into a spin.
The FAA is slowly moving towards open-air navigation using GPS. They recognize the ease in workload on both pilot and ATC with this in place. Unfortunatly, the occasional position error is a bad thing for air traffic. The FAA has started a program called Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS), which is a network of ground stations that take sattilite data, correct any signal errors, and beam the corrected data to the GPS onboard.
The only other problem is the fact that any aviation-certified GPS decks are usually pretty pricy. Expect GPS to explode over the coming years for aviation though.
GPS & FAA
Call on God, but row AWAY from the rocks!
The Hindenburg was hygrongen filled wasnt it?
Yes, and its skin was painted with rocket fuel, which was probably the real cause of the disaster.
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
A well-designed rail system is more efficient, less noisy, safer, and more environmentally friendly.
You'd think so, wouldn't you?
Unfortunately, railways are only more efficient if you think strictly in terms of the rolling resistance of steel wheels on steel rails. (Which, btw, is VERY noisy). There's a reason why passenger trains rarely make money: they're slow, they're inconvenient, rail maintenance is horrendously expensive, and let's not forget that when you get a large number of people together in a metal can, you have an ideal target for a Sarin gas attack.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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
Among other things, the Eurcoupe design prevents forward slips. Forward slips can be useful for dumping altitude quickly, especially in emergency descent situations or landing over an obstacle. It was also very difficult to take off in a crosswind, althought landing in a crosswind sounds easier.
A man without a God is like a fish without a bicycle.