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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."
Quote: Cars go quite fast enough, and while traffic is really bad the fact remains that after a small collision nobody falls to their deaths.
I don't know about you, but there have been many times where I've gone someplace by car spending over two hours on the road, knowing that a two-man ultralight or autogyro could have gotten me there in about 30 minutes. An ultralight aircraft (basically a glider with a lawnmower engine on it) with a 350 pound capacity will hold me, my equipment, and a small foldable bicycle to take me the rest of the way from wherever I land. (All you need is a hundred feet or so of open grass or roadway, too. Public parks and parking lots make a suitable landing strip).
After landing, the craft folds up and can be "driven" over land using the propeller, making it easy to stash it in a regular parking spot or garage.
Granted, it's not something I'd use on my regular commute, but something like that could come in handy, and I'm not the only person who could find a use for it.
So the issue of use is not a problem, it's safety. Most people can't even drive as it is. But ultralights are actually safer than cars because of mass and speed issues. Low altitude power-deployed parachutes allow for safe landings even in a major collision. If you lose power, you glide back down (quickly, but controllably). All you need is proper training and licensing programs to (hopefully) keep the really incapable people out of the skys.
As for mass-transit air, that's actually pretty popular, if a little expensive and awkward due to scheduling. But if you're going from New York City to D.C. in a hurry, you either take a shuttle turboprop out of LaGuardia.
Besides, once private aircraft become even remotely popular, the roads will probably clear up a bit. Things balance out. Don't write it off so quickly.
=Smidge=
1. Take the idiot who cut you off this morning with no turn signal and no glance in the mirror while pulling curlers out of her hair and talking on her cell phone.
2. Drag her from her car like you wanted to anyway.
3. Put her in a helicopter with a failed engine and see how well she does autorotating.
As I pilot, I think that personal flight will occur someday, but only after these two prerequisites are achieved:
1. Antigravity, or some propulsion system that is so simple and efficient that falling out of the sky is not going to happen no matter how inattentive the pilot, and
2. An automatic navigation system that will keep all the vehicles in well-defined "lanes" just as they are now.
Needless to say, I think we have a ways to go yet.
Evil is the money of root.
I for one would be petrified to live in a city if everyone was flying. The average driver has enough trouble paying attention on the ground. And we may also assume that many of them barely squeaked by in their driver's exam. I shudder to think of personal flight units sailing all over the place, just waiting for the day I wake up to some asshole talking on his cellphone, crashing through my window. I don't believe that it is possible for this to be made properly safe. I will never trust computer navigation systems either, they're idiots too.
Ginger scares the shit out of me as well. I'd love to pilot one, sure, but I don't need idiots whipping all over the place on these things. In all the various vehicles I've driven, I've never had an accident, for I always drive with the assumption that everyone else on the road is a complete idiot. Ie: Don't trust turn signals, speed changes, etc, without other cues to determine what the hell is really going on in that tiny brain behind the wheel. It seems to have worked so far.
Personal aircraft will never be mainstream until they can reliably fly themselves from point 'a' to point 'b' without direct control from the passengers. If you give people control, it would be a horrible problem.
Think of all the times people break out of the confines of traffic when the opportunity presents itself. How many times have you seen people drive up an embankment to get from a slow freeway to the feeder road? How could you possibly police all of the guaranteed violations of this type? This assumes that there is some form of infrastructure to create 'sky lanes' for people to stay in. What kind of mess would there be without some form of organized lanes?
What about parking lots? How would you like to navigate the chaos of a parking lot in 3D? Would you find people in some sort of holding pattern over Woolworths so that they could make a mad dash for the "good spot" when someone takes off? Imagine an early morning commute where people do not trickle into a parking area because traffic lights limit their access, and lanes do not keep them in single file. If everyone decides to leave home at 'the perfect time' because they know exactly how long it takes them to fly to the office, then everyone who needs to be at work at 8:am will get to the parking lot at essentially the same time.
What about the noise? When was the last time you heard a quiet aircraft? I can hear a single traffic helicopter approaching from a mile away when I am in my car. Think of the decibels generated by a freeway of such noisemakers.
What about the fuel efficiency? these things have to maintain flight even at standstill. Ground vehicles do not have to expend energy to counteract gravity unless they are moving uphill. By the time automated personal flying vehicles become practical (by not allowing the occupants to break traffic laws), how efficient will ground vehicles be?
I am rarely a naysayer of future ideas, but this idea has so many impracticalities that I find it to be a no-brainer. It will be nothing more then the folley of idiots for a very long time to come.
The general public is too stupid to manuver safely in 3D.