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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?

19 of 248 comments (clear)

  1. History Repeating.. by NeuralAbyss · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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...

    1. Re:History Repeating.. by maroberts · · Score: 3, Insightful

      There are lots of reasons for aircraft to follow highways in the sky, the main one being that some point to point routes are bound to be heavily congested. I for one would dread flying round New York if everyione was performing point to point flying. Anticipating what someone is going to to in mid air is extremely hard and remember that closure speeds are going to be much faster (400-1000mph!).

      Traffic management can only do so much and the best software in the world is going to go into screaming fits trying to manage point to point flying. If it has some highway rules, then there is the possibility it can do it.

      --

      Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
      Karma: Chameleon

  2. 3D Driving by cosmosis · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Many years ago when I was in Aerospace Engineering School and inspired by the movie Blade Runner, I designed a steerting mechanism that would make flying VTOL easy for anyone already skilled at driving a car. Right now typical airplane flight is quite complicated. My design was based on the notion that compuational power would catch up by the time my design would be feasible. The idea is simple:

    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
    1. 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.

  3. Interesting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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

  4. I dunno.. by PopeAlien · · Score: 4, Funny

    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
  5. Don't get so excited... by Jace+of+Fuse! · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
  6. 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.

    1. Re:More to it than that... by NatePWIII · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Your absolutely right, just think your driving down the freeway and your timing belt snaps after 130,000 miles (this happened to me on my last trip back from Canada while driving through Montana last year) of driving. No problem just slowly ease your car to the shoulder of the road, turning on your hazard lights and thumb a ride. Ok now lets parallel this to a small airplane... something goes wrong in your engine (I'm not an airplane engine expert so I won't go into details, however whatever the problem is it basically shuts down your engine) no problem you assume the correct glide angle for maximum decent time based on your airplane specs and your cargo weight, this can all easily be programmed into any advanced airplane with an onboard computer. Ok, so now we are descending at a safe rate now the next step, find a safe landing strip... not so easy. What if your flying over residential or urban areas? How about over a large body of water, better yet over a treacherous rocky mountain range. You get my point, ditching an airplane isn't as simple as some would like to think, something else to think about is how many small aircraft pilots have actually practiced a ditched landing without any engine power? I knew a seaplane pilot who had the luck of such a landing, some pranksters drained the fuel out of his tanks about 1 min. after takeoff his engine sputtered to a stop, he managed to land back on the same lake just brushing the tops of the Cedars as he glided in, five feet less altitude and he probably would have been dead. The point is that driving a car and an airplane cannot even be compared, there are alot of different variables that must be considered before mass transit via small airplanes should be considered.

      --

      Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
      www.haidacarver.com
    2. Re:More to it than that... by SecretAsianMan · · Score: 3, Funny

      how many small aircraft pilots have actually practiced a ditched landing without any engine power?

      I have. I'm not a licensed pilot, but at one time I was training to be one. In 1996, my instructor and I were flying about in the '59 Cessna 150, and the engine died. Instead of taking over, the instructor told me to pick a spot and land there. The landing was a little bouncy, but otherwise uneventful. Of course, being in flat, rural Oklahoma helped immensely.

      I would have said 'IANALP' above, but the LISP programmer in me had some strange reservations about that.

      --

      Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.

  7. hmm environment? by jilles · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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
  8. What's the point? by vscjoe · · Score: 3, Insightful
    I don't quite see the point of short-hop mass air transportation. A well-designed rail system is more efficient, less noisy, safer, and more environmentally friendly. And we could, gasp, move closer to where we work.

    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.

    1. Re:What's the point? by sigwinch · · Score: 3, Interesting
      A well-designed rail system is more efficient, less noisy, safer, and more environmentally friendly.
      Rail is violently expensive. Profit margins tend to be low even in densely-populated areas.
      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.
      The problems that need to be solved for mass aviation are identical to many highly-relevant military problems: cruise missiles need to be able to autonomously navigate with 10 meter precision using terrain observation and inertial guidance (GPS simply doesn't *ever* work reliably), fighter/bombers need to land with a precision of a couple of meters on carriers, unmanned warplanes need to follow carefully-planned paths in the air, and so forth.

      Remember that speculative gold-plated bleeding-edge military R&D will be civilian bread & butter in twenty years. I think NASA is just beginning the obvious commercialization work. Even if it doesn't quite pan out for 'flying cars', the work directly applies to making conventional jet lines more efficient, safer, and more flexible.

      The aviation industry has a slow rate of improvement anyway. If you want to deploy massive improvements in 50 years, you need to start the preliminary work today. No, I'm not exaggerating. Aviation equipment and procedure life cycles are **EXTREMELY LONG** (where are <blink> tags when you need 'em?). For instance, the last B-52H heavy bomber was delivered in 1962, but they are expected to remain in service until 2035.

      --

      --
      Kuro5hin.org: where the good times never end. ;-)

    2. Re:What's the point? by vscjoe · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Rail is violently expensive. Profit margins tend to be low even in densely-populated areas.

      Rail, when widely deployed, is intrinsically cheaper than air travel. What makes rail expensive relative to other modes of transportation in the US is poor utilization, low-volume production of the components, poor integration, lengthy and costly legal and political fights when trying to build new rail lines, and subsidies and failure to account for the true costs of automobiles and air travel.

      You can't "grow your way" into rail travel and hope that it's cost effective from its smallest beginnings to a large scale deployment. If you insist on incremental adoption of a technology, you automatically favor auto and air travel, which have much lower infrastructure costs and can be deployed one vehicle at a time. Unfortunately, the ultimate cost of having 300 million people rely on cars and airplanes are horrendous.

      The problems that need to be solved for mass aviation are identical to many highly-relevant military problems: cruise missiles need to be able to autonomously navigate with 10 meter precision using terrain observation and inertial guidance

      That seems like another good reason not to undertake that kind of development effort: I can do well without both personal aircraft and without another generation of cruise missiles.

      If you want to deploy massive improvements in 50 years,

      Actually, I'd prefer to see short and medium range air travel, as well as the personal automobile, be largely replaced in 50 years by rail, high speed ferries, automatic taxies, walk-up car rentals, pedestrian and bicycle zones, and telecommuting. Those are technologically far simpler and have clear benefits.

    3. Re:What's the point? by jcr · · Score: 3, Informative

      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."
  9. Re:Air Traffic Controllers by mcpkaaos · · Score: 4, Funny

    What would the equivilent of road rage be? sky-rage? air-rage?

    Dog-fights on the 405.

    -------------

    [McP]KAAOS

    --
    It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
  10. Re:bad enough by znu · · Score: 3, Interesting

    As they discovered while trying to sneak up on subs during WWII, paint doesn't work. No matter what color you paint an aircraft, when it's far away it shows up as a black dot. You need illumination, which for this application would definitely be more trouble than it was worth.

    --
    This space unintentionally left unblank.
  11. Similar ideas in the Farnborough F1 by alext · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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!

  12. Re:Whoa! by FlyGirl · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This isn't already there for many reasons.

    First of all, innovation in the aviation field are VERY slow thanks to the liabilities involved. If someone introduces some new innovation and then a plane with that new device crashes, even if the pilot is drunk, the innovator gets sued. Almost ALWAYS happens and the innovater often loses with a multi-million dollar verdict. It's pretty easy to convince the non-pilot public that this new device/equipment was at fault.

    Also, it just takes time to change such a system. Yes, they have planes that CAN fly themselves from start to finish (including take-off, landing and even taxi) but navigation is not the key role of controllers -- aircraft avoidance is.

    A few more innovations need to be made in a system to allow aircraft to travel automatically AND avoid midairs. Not much has yet been done to automate that. It is only recently that the FAA has even required airlines to have the equipment to show the pilots directly where other planes are. Until just a few years ago, the controllers would tell the pilots where nearby aircraft were.

    It'll still be a while before they couple this system to the autopilot and program it to find a path through the other aircraft. And that product will have serious potential liabilities should it ever make a "mistake".

    Give it time... it'll happen.