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NASA Wants You To Fly The Highway In The Sky

Posted by timothy on from the wonder-if-ntsb-knows-about-this dept.

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?

2 of 248 comments (clear)

  1. More to it than that... by pongo000 · · Score: 4, Informative
    Timmy, you're in way over your head on this one. Navigation is but a small part of flying. With GPS, one can travel directly from point A to point B. But no amount of navigational assistance will help those pilots who die because they run out of fuel. Or who die because they buzz Mom and Dad's farm, low and slow, suddenly find themselves in a stall they'll never recover from. Or who die because they think they can scud-run below the cloud deck, and then suddenly find themselves in the soup, all visual cues gone. You see, Timmy, there's much, much more to flying than simply cranking up the hangar queen every month, taking to the air, and letting a computer fly for you.


    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.

  2. Re:3D Driving by pongo000 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.