The Coming Air Age

Lovejoy writes "Sixty years ago in The Atlantic Monthly, Igor Sikorsky wrote The Coming Air Age. "Any of us who are alive ten years after this Second World War is won will see and use hundreds of short-run helicopter bus services." He goes on to write about personal helicopters which fit in large garages and that helicopters that are easier to drive than cars, etc.. So, will personal flight ever be viable? Do wildly wrong predictions like this give futurists pause? I think they should."

Comments

Easy prediction: It'll Never Happen.

[Rick the Red]

It didn't happen because Igor Sikorsky couldn't make helicopters the way Henry Ford made Model Ts. The problem is that when a Model T breaks you get out and walk; when your helicopter breaks, you die.

And what did Sikorsky do for a living?

[Stinking Pig]

When a man who makes helicopters tells you everyone needs a helicopter, doesn't it sound a lot like a man who makes computers telling you that everyone needs a computer?

Or an Internet connection for that matter...

Ground is better

[Talennor]

The problem is that ground is better. Cars go quite fast enough, and while traffic is really bad the fact remains that after a small collision nobody falls to their deaths. And can you imagine the noise pollution from the rotors? Think of one of those things taking off from your neighbor's driveway! Cars are fine for me, where I don't have to worry about watching for other vehicles in 3D, hey it's hard enough when you don't have cars coming up from underneath you cutting you off! We're still on the ground all the time because it's just a better place to be.

fuel issues

[KevinMS]

I'll admit i'm not expert on this. But i do believe the faster you push something through the air the less fuel efficient it becomes. Also, keeping something In the air requires a lot of fuel. You'd think that cramming a lot of poeple into a fast flying machine would eventually become fuel efficient the more you put in, but its a fact that traveling by train is much more fuel efficient than a 767.

My car goes about 300-400 miles on a 15 gallon tank of gas. Imagine how much gas a any kind of helicopter burns in 300 miles keeping itself up and pushing itself through the air, especially with all the crazy turbulence the roters makes.

I have no doubt that fuel will get cheaper in the future and global warming is bunk, but i dont want a bunch of hippies bugging me.

Affordable personal flight is still just a dream..

[kcbrown]

There are several reasons point-to-point personal flight isn't here yet (and may not ever be).

• Technological limitations, including:
  1. Engine technology: a flying vehicle that can't glide requires highly reliable engines. Today that means turbines, but turbines are very inefficient compared with internal combustion engines. They do produce enough power to enable aircraft to fly very high, which does a lot to offset their inefficiency, since true speeds increase as you go higher.
  2. Form factor: without highly reliable engines, you'll need to be able to glide (or autorotate) to a landing. That means having airfoils on the vehicle, which greatly increases the overall size of the vehicle.
  3. Navigation and collision avoidance: only recently, with high speed miniature computers, has the technology become available to make going point to point in 3D in high traffic situations a possibility. Without it, the risk of a midair collision is too high to make it feasible for everyone to own a flying vehicle and to fly them from their homes.

• Regulatory problems: personal aviation would be a much more popular and widely available means of travel if it weren't for the FAA. Many believe that they are necessary to ensure safety of flight, and I don't disagree with that role, but their method of regulating the industry has all but killed off personal aviation:
  1. Personal aircraft have increased in price in real, inflation-adjusted dollars by a factor of two or more in the last 30 years, and are not any safer despite their insane prices.
  2. The safety of personal aircraft has not changed significantly in the last 30 years, but the safety of automobiles has changed drastically, proving that the NHTSA's method of regulating the industry (requiring that vehicles have a minimum set of equipment and requiring that they pass certain safety tests, but requiring nothing else) is far superior to the FAA's.

     The FAA requires all of the following:

  3. The manufacturer's design must be certified by the FAA. The FAA requires specific behavioral characteristics from the aircraft.
  4. The manufacturer's manufacturing process must be certified by the FAA. The FAA must approve the materials you use, the build procedures you use, the quality control measures you use, etc.
  5. Any design changes must be approved by the FAA
  6. Changes to the manufacturing methods used to build the aircraft, including materials, techniques, machinery, etc., require that the entire manufacturing system go through recertification.
  7. Aftermarket modifications, which includes installation of new navigation and communication equipment, require the same basic certification by the FAA that airplanes require.

  8. Owners are not allowed to make any modifications themselves, nor are they allowed to do any but the most minimal maintenance (anything more requires a signoff from an FAA-approved maintenance technician, which usually means you may as well have them do the work).

  The end result is that the FAA has made it almost impossible for manufacturers and aircraft owners to improve their products. That means that aircraft safety can't improve, nor can the cost. So the only way to significantly improve an airplane's safety or cost is for the manufacturer to come out with a completely new design go through the entire certification process outlined above.

• Public perception of flight. Many people believe that equipment failures in the air will result in instant death. For instance, many believe that if the engine of an airplane stops, the airplane will fall out of the sky, when the reality is that the pilot will be able to glide the airplane to a landing. Loss of an engine is a life-threatening issue only over mountainous terrain.

  People believe these things about aviation because the mass media (movies, news reports, etc.) has portrayed aviation in this light in order to make the news more spectacular and to make movies more exciting. But of course, that kind of excitement isn't what you're after when you're flying for real.

The bottom line is that I don't think affordable personal aviation is ever going to happen because I don't believe the FAA will ever let it happen. The trend for the past 30 years has been for airplane prices to increase while at the same time production volume has decreased. These are the symptoms of a dying market.

To resurrect affordable personal aviation, a large manufacturer (like Toyota) will have to get into the game. It will require an investment of billions (most of that will go into the mass production machinery required) and at least a couple of decades. The manufacturer will have to sell moderately capable (150 knots, 1000 mile range, 18,000 foot service ceiling, 4 seats), simple to fly airplanes for between $50,000 and $100,000. They will have to manufacture their own engines because the current manufacturers are still building engines that were designed back in the 1940's, using 1940s production techniques, for a minimum of $20,000 apiece. This will kill just about any other airplane manufacturer, who won't be able to adapt themselves to that kind of competition because the FAA won't let them. It will seriously depress the used airplane market, because nobody in their right mind would pay $70,000 for a 30-year-old 120-knot 4-seater when they can get a 150-knot brand new 4-seater for the same price.

It'll be opposed by everyone: the FAA because they're 0wn3d by the airlines, the airlines because they'll lose a lot of short to medium range business, and many current aircraft owners, who view their aircraft as investments (used aircraft currently appreciate, not depreciate).

But that's what it'll take to make affordable personal aviation a reality.

seriously...

[keithmoore]

air traffic control is probably the biggest problem.
the ATC system is already overtaxed in busy areas and part of how they cope is by discouraging general aviation. it's certainly technically feasible for personal aircraft to be reliable, affordable, and about as easy to fly as it is to drive a car IF you can get enough people to use them. but if you get enough people to use them you have a traffic management problem far worse than anything we've ever seen on the ground.

face it, one reason we want to travel by air is to avoid traffic jams - but as soon as we put everyone in the air we need to find ways to keep everyone from hitting each other, and to do that we end up imposing the same kinds of constraints we have on the ground. at least on the ground we can often survive collisions between vehicles.

Keith

You're comparing a car to an aircraft?

[Ruger]

Well of course it assumes a few things...like the rotors are intact...but let's deal with only one emergency at a time. The truth is that it's extremely rare to loose a rotor. Much more likely is the loss of engine power, or hydraulics, or maybe a dynamic component malfunction. I've practiced 100's of autorotations without incident and suffered one intermediate gearbox malfunction. The gearbox malfunction resulted in a crash.

As far as a place to land is concerned, any parking lot, large backyard, baseball diamond or other area large enough to accommodate the length of the bird is sufficient...something you can't say about any airplane. Also, helos glide pretty well. So finding a spot to set down isn't that hard unless you're in some really rugged terrain. If you're in flight flying low (nap of the earth) in anything and loose power you're toast (unless you have an ejection seat...not available on most civilian aircraft), but a good pilot doesn't need much altitude to successfully auotrotate and walk away from the landing.

And there's no way you can compare loosing power in a car with loosing power in an aircraft...unless it's comparison out of ignorance.

Re:"Futurists", hah!

[Saeger]

Don't be so quick to dismiss futurists - even when their predictions turn out to be incredibly offbase, they still serve to inspire the actual work of making the future happen.

Here's how you make BAD PREDICTIONS:

• Ignore the scientific facts, or guess.
• Forget to ask whether anyone wants the projected product or situation.
• Ignore the costs.
• Try to predict which company or technology will win.

Flying cars could never have been LESS expensive than cars (fighting gravity costs more energy), and safely flying the things in 3D virtually requires guidance computers that are only now just capable.

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