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

Who needs helicopters...

[Jouster]

... when we can have rocket belts?

Jouster

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.

Re:Easy prediction: It'll Never Happen.

[littlerubberfeet]

NO, the helocopter dies, and you autorotate down to the ground. At any decent helo flight school, they will force at least 3 practice autorotations, where they actually shut off the engine. They are no more dangerous then having an engine shut off in a Porsche at 140 mph. It just takes a little more training, which wouldn't be a bad thing for most car drivers.

Re:Easy prediction: It'll Never Happen.

[shadowj]

When the power goes in a helicopter you just drop, vertically.

Not quite true. When the power goes in a helicopter, there's a lot of angular momentum stored in the rotor, and aerodynamic effects allow you to spin the rotor even faster by angling the blades appropriately as you, er, plummet.

As you approach the ground (probably a lot faster than you'd like), you angle the blades to bite into the air, trading lift for angular momentum. If you do this correctly, you may be able to save your butt.

Re:Easy prediction: It'll Never Happen.

[Usquebaugh]

That's assuming you have a place to land, the rotors are still in one piece, the rotors are free to auto rotate, the other control surfaces are still functioning. There is plenty of footage of autorotation accidents.

Having an engine shut off at speed in a corner is vicious, suddenly no drive going to braking. When your car is balanced at speed any change in force is a big problem.

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.

Re:Ground is better

[Smidge204]

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=

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.

"Futurists", hah!

[hyacinthus]

I am reminded of one of David Brin's essays in which he bashes George Lucas and Star Wars. (Let it be said that I've bashed Lucas and Star Wars myself a few times.) At one point Brin delivers himself of the self-serving observation that while Lucas and others like him are obsessed with the past, Brin himself looks to the future.

Yes, indeedy, where would we be if it weren't for forward-thinkers like Dave Brin? Just about the same place, I guess. Science fiction writers' track record for predicting the future isn't really any better than that of your average "Weekly World News" fortune-teller, except that the fortune-tellers tend to risk their predictive powers on such quotidian affairs as whether Brad Pitt will stay married to whoever that ditz is from "Friends", while SF writers confine themselves to lofty predictions about the fate of human society and technology. Now and again, one of the sci-fi boys will accidentally get something right, or sort of close (thus has Asimov been credited with "predicting" pocket calculators), as opposed to all those other writers who "predicted" that we'd still be using slide rules),.

As I see science fiction writers and futurists, we could have done without the whole clan of them and it wouldn't have made a scrap of difference. But one can say the same thing about any entertainment--I don't propose that entertainment _per se_ is useless, only that SF is just that, entertainment.

hyacinthus.

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.

--

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.

An experiment...

[Scratch-O-Matic]

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.

Re:An experiment...

[AJWM]

... and see how well she does ...

Just think of it as evolution in action.

In actuality, most FAA regs are to protect (a) people (and property) on the ground and (b) passengers. They don't really care much if a pilot kills himself (or herself -- although most of the female pilots I've known were a little less reckless than the males) as long as he doesn't hurt anyone else. (Unless, of course, it was a commercially built (vs homebuilt) aircraft at fault. And then they're still more concerned with the other folks who might get hurt by similar.)

No Fifth Element for me thanks

[Feanturi]

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.

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.

It's already happened, sort of

[T.Hobbes]

In Sao Paulo, Brazil, there are somewhere around 300 private helicopters that those who can afford them use to avoid traffic and crime. They use them just like the plebes use cars. The best article I found on the topic is at aviation today (here).
Of course, having 300 'copters in a city of unpteen million isn't exactly what the man predicted, but the patter of use is consistent.

A frigging mess

[A non moose cow]

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.

Re:Not yet ...

[nbvb]

General Protection Fault at address x:FE2C y:42FA z:FFFF in module lane.dll.

Please turn your yoke up up, down, down, left, right, left, right, gas, brake, start to reboot.

Or, if they're built like anything from Detroit, a big 'ol light would come on that says "SERVICE AIRFRAME SOON" and it'd drop out of the sky.