Airbus Reveals a Modular, Self-Piloting Flying Car Concept (techcrunch.com)

At this year's Geneva Motor Show, Airbus has revealed a concept design created in partnership with Italdesign. "The demonstration vehicle offers modular functionality, meaning it can operate both on the ground and in the air, and Airbus thinks it's one potential answer to the growing problem of urban traffic congestion," reports TechCrunch. From the report: The concept vehicle is intended to work with others to form a network that can be summoned on demand, with passengers hailing a ride from an app on their mobile device. The capsule-based design can connect to either ground or air conveyance modules, letting customers specify their preferred method of transit. It's also designed to be used in concert with other existing transportation methods for maximum efficiency. Airbus and Italdesign call their creation the "Pop.Up System," which includes the artificial intelligence platform that uses what it knows about any individual user, and available routes and transit options to determine the best travel options. The main vehicle itself is a passenger capsule, which holds the rider and which can be paired with either ground and air modules, as well as, Airbus suggests, with hyperloop systems down the line once that tech becomes more widely available. There's a third part of Pop.Up that ensures this whole project touches all bases when it comes to current tech hype -- an interface that will respond and interact with the user in a "fully virtual environment" while in transit. They've thought of everything.

Comments

Parachute, please

[Max_W]

Why Airbus does not include a parachute in its concepts and aircraft? Even Russian military pilots have got an ejection system for more than half a century. Here is a video "MiG-29 Pilot Ejects Two Seconds Before Crash" https://youtu.be/5MQk1yvsoKY

But we, who pay for the tickets a lot of money still do not have anything. No safety system in the air at all.

Re:Parachute, please

[Anonymous Coward]

Even Russian military pilots have got an ejection system for more than half a century.

Because the government of russia has, like any other government (except for the japanese kamikaze pilots in WWII Japan perhaps), invested years of training into that pilot, and the pilot dying would be a severe loss for them. But for a fat lazy civilian? No way, they are dispensable.

Re:Parachute, please

[Anonymous Coward]

Training a pilot is expnesive. Losing an economy class passenger is cheap.

But in all honesty I don't understand why they still make these stupid concepts. Make something already or stop talking. Self-flying cars are and will be for the foreseeable future:
* More expensive than conventional traveling methods (including normal air travel)
* Inherently unsafe because they fly too low for certain safety mechanisms and too high to survive a high-speed crash
* Energy-hungry compared to other means of travel

If you think why we all don't already have a self-flying car, ask yourself why don't we all already have a self-flying helicopter.

Re: Parachute, please

[fubarrr]

If French will have vodka, there will be an ejection seat too

Re:Parachute, please

[Anonymous Coward]

The Putin bots find a way to work Russia into every topic it seems.

Re: Parachute, please

[Max_W]

If you have got a paranoya it still doesn't mean that there are no bots. If, seriously though I saw modern parachutes. They are small, like a briefcase, light, and hitec. True, it would be a rough experience for a passenger, but I would still prefer this, an automated jump, than a sure death.

Re:Parachute, please

[Richard_at_work]

Weight. Pure and simple.

Ejection systems are *heavy* and adding two ejection seats to such a concept as this would dramatically increase the lift needed, and in turn the thrust needed to generate that lift.

A commercial jet with ejection seats or an ejection capsule for the passengers simply wouldn't be economically viable - think along the lines of an economy ticket costing the same price as a first class ticket currently costs.

Re: Parachute, please

[Richard_at_work]

Some light aircraft do have a parachute system for last-ditch-effort crash landings, but you are heavily restricted on the weight of the aircraft and also the airspeed at which the parachute can be deployed.

Re:Parachute, please

[gravewax]

We pay a lot of money for tickets lol, you have got to be fucking kidding me . If they fitted parachutes and the ejection seats and capabilities to make that work the weight and extra cost would mean you would not be able to afford a ticket, Add at least 1 Zero to your ticket cost, probably more.

Re:Parachute, please

[Rei]

Actually, I've come around to view them as kind of inevitable.

1) There is a strong push, and will continue to be, from delivery services for permitting delivery drones. Bit by bit, they'll get it.

2) The economic case will keep causing them to push for a permitting process for larger and larger drones. Bit by bit, step by step, they'll get it.

3) Once you start having drone payloads in the hundreds of kilograms range, people are seriously going to start asking "Why can't you haul people with these?" And then will come all of the financially interested parties pushing, bit by bit, for permission to do so.

That said, this concept ticks all of the wrong boxes.

1) Quadcopter style = inefficient in flight. Even small scale delivery drones are moving away from it. It's fine for toys and little video cameras, but not for scale delivery with any sort of significant crossrange requirements.

2) Requires everyone standardize their cars to a particular drone. Not going to happen.

3) Requires everyone standardize their cars to a particular chassis, and more to the point bans monocoque. Not going to happen.

4) Requires everyone to use other peoples' chassis. Regardless of their condition. Without even knowing what condition they're going to be in.

5) Requires at least one spare chassis be at the destination when you get there. Something complicated by the fact that people can change their mind (or be forced to divert), throwing off estimates of what will be at a location at a given point in time. But at its most fundamental level, constraining people to much more limited destinations.

6) Requires such an integral vehicle connection - the body and chassis - be done in some "rapidly and automatically removable" fashion. Same with the critical connection with the props (albeit with lower mass loadings)

7) Doubles up powertrains. I hope you think battery packs are cheap, because this proposed system means (if done electrically) that you have to have two of them per vehicle, assuming an average of one "drone" in operation per "car". I'm assuming that you're leaving the battery pack behind, since that's a heavy element. Of course, that means when you get to the destination, you're using someone else's battery pack as well.

No, I'm not a fan.

ask yourself why don't we all already have a self-flying helicopter.

Drone helicopters exist. Are you talking about "at scale"? Because scaling up relatively new technology doesn't appear the instant you snap your fingers.

A better question is "why doesn't everyone fly around in helicopters?" in general. And the answers are pilot skill, noise, space requirements, safety, regulations, and cost (including insurance / liability, and the fact that the fuel is very expensive). These are in general, however, interconnected problems and with technological solutions at varying stages of maturity. It's clearly a barrier at present, but I hardly see it as a limitless one. Large, yes, but not unbounded. IMHO, electric is a big potential boon toward scaledown, at least where short flight times are required, as electric motors can be made small, light, and reliable, with very high power densities (making redundancy easier as well), plus they run on dirt-cheap "fuel". Battery mass is a big problem on long flights, but not short.

BTW, helicopters aren't that much less efficient than cars. A 4-passenger helicopter may get ~7 mpg (40 l/100km). But it goes in straight lines and doesn't wait in traffic.

Re:Parachute, please

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting points, and I admit many of them are correct. But I don't deny that autonomous flight would never happen - just that "self-flying cars" won't happen. We already have airplanes that have extremely sophisticated autopilot and auto-takeoff/auto-landing capabilities. It's a short, but demanding, jump from there to autonomous mass-flying with human supervision on-board and/or on the ground.

Re:Parachute, please

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

There are four rotors. They can windmill, dissipate energy and slow down the fall. In effect the rotors are the parachute.

Re:Parachute, please

[Anonymous Coward]

because there is some relationship between those cost differences and that which would be added by an ejection mechanism. or you just made up an example that has no bearing on the true difference in cost or engineering? such lazy fucking thinking.

Re: Parachute, please

[Anonymous Coward]

Parachut es for passengers on a plane would work. It would be madness for all seats to eject at roughly the same time or in some order. You just can't have 200 parachutes drop out of a plane in the same spot let alone launch them up.

Another issue, how exactly are planes supposed to let 200 eject ? There's a big support frame around them, you just can't have that explode away, the plane would collapse and attempts to strengthen it further would reduce capacity from hundreds to tens.

THe idea is totally brain dead,

Re:Parachute, please

[brambus]

The rotors appear to be pretty tiny and are probably nowhere near large enough to generate significant lift in auto-rotation. That is assuming that the blades even feature adjustable blade pitch (which is needed to induce autorotation on a propeller designed for thrust).

Re:Parachute, please

[TheRaven64]

Additionally, ejection systems are dangerous. The ejector seat mechanism compresses your spine to the extent that people who have ejected from a plane are measurably shorter than prior to ejection. If you're a healthy adult in good physical condition (i.e. the sort of person who is allowed to fly fighter jets) then you can do it a few times and survive (whereas you probably can't explode in a fireball a few times and survive, so ejecting is a better option), but if you eject more than a few times you'll be grounded on medical reasons. If you do the same with a typical commercial aircraft passenger, there's a reasonable chance that they'll die, whereas many commercial aircraft crashes are survivable.

As to just having a parachute, you'd probably only be able to jump from the rear exits without being sucked into the engines. You can't jump without oxygen until the plane is a lot lower than its cruising altitude, and if it can get down low enough to jump and stay there long enough to get 300 people out then it's probably able to manage a survivable landing. Landing from a parachute jump isn't that difficult, but generally requires a little bit of practice - at least some passengers wouldn't be able to do it. The bit after landing is also difficult, as you have to disconnect the chute quickly to avoid being dragged along and you must remember to disconnect the chest straps before the leg straps or you'll end up being strangled. And given that someone always panics and inflates their life jacket inside the plane, in spite of being repeatedly told not to, in simulated crashes, what's the bet that someone wouldn't pull the chord on their parachute by accident (actually surprisingly easy to do when putting the chute on) on the plane and kill / injure other passengers (those springs contains a lot of energy).

Re:Parachute, please

[Anonymous Coward]

The Putin bots find a way to work Russia into every topic it seems.

The Obamabots see Russians lurking behind every tree and around every corner.

RUSSIANS!!!! OMG!!!

The 1980s called - they want their foreign policy back.

Re:Parachute, please

[drew_kime]

2) Requires everyone standardize their cars to a particular drone. Not going to happen.

3) Requires everyone standardize their cars to a particular chassis, and more to the point bans monocoque. Not going to happen.

4) Requires everyone to use other peoples' chassis. Regardless of their condition. Without even knowing what condition they're going to be in.

Ever heard of containerization? Kind of swept through the shipping industry and completely changed truck, train and ship industries. No reason it couldn't happen to transportation.

Re:Parachute, please

[Rei]

Ever heard of containerization [wikipedia.org]?

Standardized cars will go over with the market about as well as standardized housing has. Actually worse because the needs for different types of cars are vastly varied; there's a huge amount of car form that follows intended function. An economy box is not a sports car is not an offroader is not a pickup truck is not a luxury SUV is not a courier van.... (on and on and on). Every usage intent has serious repercussions across the vehicle.

Re:Parachute, please

[the_Bionic_lemming]

No reason it couldn't happen to transportation.

Huh, So everyone is going to drive a jeep wrangler?

Because if the answer is "no", you have your reason why it isn't going to happen.

(and yes I own a jeep wrangler)

Re:Parachute, please

[Anonymous Coward]

FTFY: But for a fat, lazy civilian, fit only to morph into yet another fat, lazy, loud American tourist? They are, how do you say, dispensable.

Nick Rivers: dispensable

Re:Parachute, please

[Anonymous Coward]

But it goes in straight lines and doesn't wait in traffic.

Won't work that way.
Even autonomous navigation is not free from traffic jams but I look forward to seeing herds of semi trucks convoying in drone flocks to enforce the rules of the road by shear mass as the people that shouldn't drive in the first place scream about their right to drive stupidly in spite of it.

Re:Parachute, please

[Rei]

I'm having trouble parsing what you wrote. You seem to be talking about autonomous navigation at the beginning of the sentence but are describing something flatly contradictory with the concept of autonomous navigation by the end.

And for the record, by and large, air traffic does go in straight lines (or more accurately, great circles). There's some diversion (occasionally large, but generally small) for weather, and of course on approach you need specific vectors, but by and large it's "from point A to point B". Separation is preferentially handled by time and altitude rather than lat/lon separation.

Re:Parachute, please

[Anonymous Coward]

Cargo doesn't complain if you split it up into multiple containers.

Families do. Hell, they get nuts when you seat them across an aisle in an airplane. And even single people travelling are unlikely to be willing to temporarily part with their personal effects during even a short trip.

Re:Parachute, please

[TechyImmigrant]

Training a pilot is expnesive. Losing an economy class passenger is cheap.

Changing building codes and zoning so that residential buildings are built close to workplaces in quantities the yield affordable housing is even cheaper.

Re:Parachute, please

[TechyImmigrant]

>No, I'm not a fan.

Are you a turbine?

Re:Parachute, please

[Rei]

(( sound of a tumbleweed being blown across the desert by a flying car ))

Re:Parachute, please

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Quadcopter style = inefficient in flight. Even small scale delivery drones are moving away from it. It's fine for toys and little video cameras, but not for scale delivery with any sort of significant crossrange requirements.

I think the greater energy requirements for copter style transport are the most overlooked of the drawbacks. As for other flight configurations, straight line travel can be made to be reasonably efficient, but takeoffs (and sometimes landing) are always a huge drain, which impacts numbers a lot for short distance usage.

Also, mpg comparisons of helicopters vs cars is interesting. As I said above, don't forget takeoff drain, and also consider that the comparisons look different if you are looking at electric copters vs electric cars. Battery weight for copters becomes a significant offset for passenger/cargo weight in copters, not so much in cars.

Re:Parachute, please

[Anonymous Coward]

Shipping companies save money with standardization. Car companies make money off of being different.

Re:Parachute, please

[TechyImmigrant]

I'm keeping my day job.

Re:Parachute, please

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you even look at the concept? Serious question.

You seem to be under the impression that this is intended for everyone's personal use like it's some kind of 'replacement' for America's love of the auto-mobile.

Does everyone own taxi cabs? Does everyone own mass transit buses or 18 wheeler freight haulers or train engines or tanker ships?

This is a concept for a narrowly defined transportation need, not a 'personal use' toy. None of your points even apply here.

Re:Parachute, please

[drew_kime]

Ever heard of containerization [wikipedia.org]?

Standardized cars will go over with the market about as well as standardized housing has.

I didn't say standardized cars, I said standardized transportation. Do you hold out for a specific model of Uber? Or taxi? Or bus?

If I want a car, I want a particular car. If I want to get from point A to point B I mostly care what it costs and how long it will take.

Transportation is to driving as shipping is to luxury cruise.

Re:Parachute, please

[drew_kime]

What's that happening from midnight to 3 am over Turkey and Romania?

Re: Parachute, please

[gravewax]

Parachutes would not work either, despite what the movies may show you can't just jump out of an A380 or a Dreamliner or most modern jets.They would require major redesigns and huge decreases in airspeed and height before you jumped. It can work for smaller, lower and slower flying planes but their are so many problems with this for a large airlines. besides which you are already far more likely to die driving to the airport than in an actual plane crash anyway.

Re:Parachute, please

[Joce640k]

It's a short, but demanding, jump from there to autonomous mass-flying with human supervision on-board and/or on the ground.

No it isn't. Simple math on energy costs means it will never happen.

ie. It takes orders of magnitude more fuel to keep something in the air than it does to roll it along the ground.

Crap I should have patented this

[slickwillie]

back in the 80's when I had the idea. Only mine used public maglev instead of hyperloop. You would drive your little electric pod down to the maglev highway, get on and it takes you to within driving distance of your destination.

Re:Crap I should have patented this

[BESTouff]

You had the idea of a flying car back in the 80s ? My oh my, you're a genius !

Re:Crap I should have patented this

[stephanruby]

The 1980s was 37 years ago. Your patent would have expired by now.

In any case, the article talks of a "demonstration vehicle", but really there is nothing more than a CGI movie. Is that what they're demoing at the Geneva Motor Show? A giant screen with a CGI concept on it? If so, it's highly disappointing.

I would have at least hoped for a semi-working prototype, even if it's only a one-off.

Re:Crap I should have patented this

[Anonymous Coward]

The correct thing to do would be do copyright it, then he has 75 years protection ;)

Re:Crap I should have patented this

[Maritz]

Or if you're Disney, infinite years.

Re:Crap I should have patented this

[Rei]

I remember proposing quadcopter flying vehicles with computer-controlled balance between each prop's thrust to a pilot friend when I was a teenager. My friend laughed at me like I was an idiot, saying you'd never be able to achieve stability on something like that.

I still smile a bit whenever I see a quadcopter because of that conversation ;)

Re:Crap I should have patented this

[stephanruby]

Also to make it more feasible, I think Airbus should come up with a one-seater version with a lower profile (in addition to the two-seater design it already has), plus a storage area that is only part of the lower driving module.

It should make the bottom part self-driving without the main module on top so that it can drive itself safely away from other cars/people before the main module gets flown in on top of it. For that, it should have little flags on wires just like those flat bikes have so that they are visible to other cars/trucks when driving without the main module on. And the additional storage area on the lower module would allow the lower part to go on driving errands to pick up things for its master, or simply accept package deliveries while the main module is away.

The main module should have some temporary buoyancy, but also an escape hatch, should it get accidentally dropped in water. Due to its battery limitation, I envision the flying part of the vehicle to be used for super short range flights at very low altitudes (good enough to show off to the plebs that you're rich and that you're super cool, but not enough for any serious long flight). So I imagine that rich people will primarily use them to cross bodies of water to reach their secluded homes/yachts.

To be street legal, the design should incorporate some kind of airbag system or protective frame for the passenger(s). Ideally, that airbag system should be part of the driving module and most of it should be left behind when the main module is picked up and flown away (because I assume that the kind of crashes of a flying vehicle are going to be vastly different than the crashes of a driving vehicle and of course weight becomes a very important constraint when flying).

"designed with practicality in mind."

[Nutria]

Hah. Where's the energy storage for those 4 hungry fans?

Re:"designed with practicality in mind."

[drinkypoo]

Hah. Where's the energy storage for those 4 hungry fans?

I presume it's in the big fat blob in between them. You wouldn't have the energy for sightseeing, but you could make a short hop at high speed.

Mind you, unless there's a recovery parachute included in the design, I'm not getting in there. Thanks.

Concept

[Hognoxious]

Concept. Nothing, in other words.

Move along, everybody...

Re:Concept

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Concept. Nothing, in other words.

"Right now it's only a notion, but I think I can get the money to make it into a concept, and later turn it into an idea."

Re:Concept

[AmiMoJo]

It's not even a serious, realistic concept. The flying part is too small to contain any batteries or a large enough engine for flight. The battery pack seems to be in the base of the car that is left behind on the ground.

Concepts = Art, not Engineering

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a concept of a FTL spaceship with no engineering behind it.

Surely that's much better than a concept of a flying car with no engineering behind it ?

Re:Concepts = Art, not Engineering

[Richard_at_work]

What makes you think there is no engineering behind it? Just because actual metal hasn't been cut? Engineering also has a theoretical side to it as well, and this has definitely had engineering input within Airbus.

CIA wet dream

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure the CIA would love for everyone to have these for their covert assassinations.

Never the twain shall meet

[Viol8]

Aside from the obvious differences, car and aircraft design pull in completely opposite directions regarding weight. For a car crash protection is a high priority - that adds weight. Not something you want in an aircraft. Ditto airbags with explosive charges. A way this has been skirted is to license the vehicle on the ground as a quadricyle which doesn't need to meet many (any?) of the safety requirements of a car. But frankly I wouldn't want to drive one.

I really don't see the point of these vehicles - they're going to be compromised both on the ground and in the air and if you're rich enough to buy one you can probably afford a rolls or bentley than you can park beside your Bell or Sikorsky at the airport.

Re:Never the twain shall meet

[TheRaven64]

The concept works around some of that by having a passenger pod that is carried by either a quadcopter or a wheeled frame. Things like airbags and roll cages need to be in the pod, but most of the ground engine weight, crash bars, and fuel can remain on the ground.

Re:Never the twain shall meet

[Viol8]

That completely defeats the point of flying cars - ie you can land then drive off the airfield onto the road. If you leave the car part behind at departure then its pointless.

Re:Never the twain shall meet

[MobyDisk]

Airbags and roll cages aren't useful in an aircraft. So there is literally nothing left to re-use between them. The passenger might as well get out of the car, and get into the coptor. Ooh, they can re-use the cupholders and CD-player!

Re:Never the twain shall meet

[TheRaven64]

And you can do that, as long as there's a set of wheels where you land (not necessarily at an airfield, as this uses a quadcopter for VTOL). The target for this is large autonomous networks of vehicles - you'll have your own pod and the system will route wheels / copters to you as needed. For example, using a copter to hop across a river, rather than driving a few miles to a bridge and then back again.

Re:Never the twain shall meet

[swb]

My guess is that a system like this acknowledges that most of the time people will be taking off and landing at airfields that support this modular system. When you take off, you leave behind the drive module and when you land you mate with another drive module. "Your" drive module left behind gets used by someone else.

As you point out, it doesn't work for driving to some location, taking off, and landing at an arbitrary location which doesn't have a drive module. But then again, neither does a helicopter. You land in the boonies where there are no cars, you won't be driving anywhere either. And there's no reason you couldn't land at location without a drive module provided you didn't care about not

Even if you assume this system gets developed and widely deployed, I'm sure there would be all kinds of general regulations that basically *required* you to use specific airfields anyway. Maybe the super-rich would own their own drive modules which they kept at their homes or other private locations where they needed availability.

Re:Never the twain shall meet

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you even look at the concept? Serious question.

What makes you think you'd be able to buy one (rich enough or otherwise)? Do you own a taxi cab? A mass transit bus? A space shuttle?

The concept is focused on a very narrow transportation use case. This is not intended to be "every man's" flying car. Things like weight, airbags, license and safety requirements don't even enter the conversation here. At least not any conversation you'd be qualified to address.

Correction: it should read

[SomeoneFromBelgium]

"Airbus revels [in a] Self piloting, modular [Concept] Car"

Uh... this is just a 3D animation

[popo]

Why is this on Slashdot? Is it because the 3D render looks pretty?

I prefer all the "concept vehicles" in Star Wars, personally.

And there are sketches on DeviantArt that are more detailed.

Re:Uh... this is just a 3D animation

[Ol Olsoc]

Why is this on Slashdot? Is it because the 3D render looks pretty?

Because it's technology. Dumbass technology that won't go away, but technology nonetheless. Like 3-D movies.

Containerization

[Anonymous Coward]

This is containerization applied to people: The concept I saw in the 1970s applied only to planes so this multi-model version is slightly better but doesn't address the real issue: Economy requires scale. Having 1 or 2 people use 1 vehicle to travel is a highly inefficient, planet-killing use of resources. A 10-seat self-driving bus for every street would be nice but modern neighbourhoods are not homogeneous: Neighbours work in different suburbs, play sport in different suburbs, visit friends in different suburbs. Until that problem is solved, one is only shifting the traffic jams from the streets to the skies. It may be possible to stack 5 different 'roads' in the same space with flying cars but that won't prevent congestion.

Drones with humans

[Anonymous Coward]

These won't happen for a long time and I'm not saying because the tech is t ready. Just think what utter chaos it would be if many or even a few car drivers could now move in 3D. It would be madness trying to drive/fly with cars coming potentially in any direction. Remember there are no roads in the sky. It just can't or won't happen until it's all auto without human input and that's not here yet just for ordinary boring cars. Don't get me started about the battery problems of carrying that amount of weight for any significant distance.

Airbus investments are paying off, big time.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Airbus invested tons of money in acquiring CGI talent from Hollywood. It is paying off big time. Slick video after slick video. Enough to create a great impression among the public. That will help them get tons of tax supported funds from the government. It was a very wise investment for Airbus industries, indeed.

Whole plane chute

[DrYak]

Commercial jets aren't indeed doing ejection seats.

But some *do* consider adding chute that could try to e.g.: save the cabin in care of dramatic loss of engines etc.

Re:Whole plane chute

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a pilot. Planes become gliders when the engines fail. They do not glide well, and there aren't many places to land a commercial aircraft with no power. Catastrophic wing failure is something else, but they are rated for far more stress than they are ever likely to see.

A parachute system would be an interesting engineering problem, have at it. Keep in mind every ounce of the system is an ounce less passenger, cargo, or fuel.

Re:Whole plane chute

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep in mind every ounce of the system is an ounce less passenger, cargo, or fuel.

But then there is the entertainment factor. Imagine an airliner going down. People have been ordered to fasten their belts because they will be ejected forthwith. Some are screaming and the plane is on a downward course. Soon enough it is low enough.

Then it starts! The roof is loosened using explosives & cabin pressure blows it away. The screaming drowns in the sound of rushing air. Then another explosion sends the first row up and away. 1/10 of a second the next row goes, and so on! Nobody hears the wind anymore, only the ripping sound of the series of explosions that sends row after row up. I'd pay to be on a rear seat - even if it ejects last. To see all those people going up. . .

A minute later, a long string of parachutes in the sky, people watching the plane fall below them, wondering if any luggage will make it.

Re:Whole plane chute

[mobby_6kl]

Parachutes are totally a thing for smaller planes:
http://cirrusaircraft.com/flig...
http://edition.cnn.com/videos/...

The landing is still pretty harsh and I'm sure gliding down to a landing would be preferable when possible, but it seems to work pretty well.

Re:Whole plane chute

[Eloking]

Commercial jets aren't indeed doing ejection seats.

But some *do* consider adding chute that could try to e.g.: save the cabin in care of dramatic loss of engines etc.

Exactly,

I'm not sure that when we talk about emergency safety system in case of commercial airline failure, ejection seat always come as "the solution". Airliner aren't going at Mach 2 with a AAM at their tail. Of course they aren't a commercially viable option.

A parachute for each person weight way less than their luggage. It's not a economical problem, it's a engineering one. How can you make a system that "will" save live "without" the risk of failure that could "cost" additional lives?

For instance let's suppose we install automatic parachute on each seat with adequate belt and the floor open and detach those seat in case of emergency. Does it operate automatically? If yes what about that system risk of failure and activating without warning inflight? Does it operate manually? Then what about cases with rogue pilot like the one that crashed that airliner in Germany?

I honestly find that this is a system that "can" be solved but Boeing and Airbus hide behind the economical argument to just not work about this. On the other hand, there's also the fact that airliner are statistically safer than taking your car.

Re:Whole plane chute

[dpidcoe]

One of the other things that goes along with safety analysis though is looking at both the consequences of some failure as well as the probability of that failure happening. There are so few instances of commercial aircraft going down in such a way that ejecting passengers would have saved more people than attempting a controlled crash landing that it's a safety system that just doesn't make sense. Even if you could implement it for free, on the (incredibly rare) instances it would have to be used everything would be so far out of operational parameters that it probably wouldn't accomplish much.

Re:Whole plane chute

[Eloking]

One of the other things that goes along with safety analysis though is looking at both the consequences of some failure as well as the probability of that failure happening. There are so few instances of commercial aircraft going down in such a way that ejecting passengers would have saved more people than attempting a controlled crash landing that it's a safety system that just doesn't make sense. Even if you could implement it for free, on the (incredibly rare) instances it would have to be used everything would be so far out of operational parameters that it probably wouldn't accomplish much.

Again, engineering problem.

If the calculated survivability of using parachute is on par with not using them, that mean two things :

- R&D can be done to raise survivability of the said parachute
- R&D can be done to raise the efficiency to detect an absolute death condition required to deploy to said parachute to be sure you won't deploy it for people that would survive without it

And. as I said, this is exactly that sort of "we have done some research and our conclusion is that this is impossible" attitude that I criticize those airliner maker for. No it's not impossible, it just haven't been developed yet.

Re:Whole plane chute

[dpidcoe]

You're neglecting to calculate how often a condition will happen in which a parachute will be able to save more people than a controlled crash. System safety 101 tells us that risk = severity * probability. Not running the probability numbers means you're only getting half the picture. It'll very quickly lead down the road of "if it saves just one life...", and the only thing you'll find there is madness. My argument is that the probability of conditions occuring in which a parachute would be beneficial is so small as to be basically zero. You'll get greater return in terms of lives saved per unit of engineering if you spend it elsewhere (e.g. adding more redundancy to the aircraft, safer airframe design, smarter health monitoring, etc.).

Re:Whole plane chute

[Eloking]

You're neglecting to calculate how often a condition will happen in which a parachute will be able to save more people than a controlled crash. System safety 101 tells us that risk = severity * probability. Not running the probability numbers means you're only getting half the picture. It'll very quickly lead down the road of "if it saves just one life...", and the only thing you'll find there is madness. My argument is that the probability of conditions occuring in which a parachute would be beneficial is so small as to be basically zero. You'll get greater return in terms of lives saved per unit of engineering if you spend it elsewhere (e.g. adding more redundancy to the aircraft, safer airframe design, smarter health monitoring, etc.).

I've read your comment and I could respond it by copy-pasting the last one I've wrote. Did you really read my comment?

Let me ask you something else then. Are you 100% certain that it's absolutely impossible (even in a millennium) to design a safety measure that will safe all passager that are alive in a plane (to discard to one that have been killed by a bomb or something) before it's inevitable crash?

If the answer is "Yes", then you're absolutely right and we should completely neglect any further R&D about personal survival feature in case of failure.

Re:Whole plane chute

[dpidcoe]

I've read your comment and I could respond it by copy-pasting the last one I've wrote. Did you really read my comment?

I've read your comment and I could respond it by copy-pasting the last one I've wrote. Did you really read my comment?

Let me ask you something else then. Are you 100% certain that it's absolutely impossible (even in a millennium) to design a safety measure that will safe all passager that are alive in a plane (to discard to one that have been killed by a bomb or something) before it's inevitable crash?

In this way lies madness. It's the "if it saves just one life" argument I was referencing in my previous post. You might as well be asking why we can't just build the aircraft out of the same indestructible material the black box recorder is built from (har har). Here, I'll make one more attempt at explaining this to you before I give up:

I think it's fair to assume that parachutes will be useless during takeoffs and landings, which account for >50% of all fatal crashes of commercial airlines according to the stats I could find. Ruling out terrorism and pilot error is also fair (in all of those cases they'd have manually overridden the ejection system anyway), which drops those numbers even further. I don't have the time to comb through plane crash databases for the remaining ~35% that happened at altitude, but it's safe to assume that a lot of those were a total loss and would not have been able to deploy a parachute (e.g. midair collision completely destroying both aircraft).

Now you have to analyze the parachute system itself. We've established that a very small percentage of deadly incidents could have been salvaged via parachute. Considering that there less than 200 deadly incidents per 10 years (and that number has been dropping steadily), we're talking like 30 accidents where a parachute system might possibly have saved someone. Now can you say for 100% certainty that a parachute system isn't going to introduce additional failure modes that didn't exist beforehand (including failure modes that we won't know about until they happen and kill people)? e.g. decreased structural integrity, increased weight making the aircraft harder to recover from an engine loss event, failure of the system itself causing unnecessary ejection of passengers, increased maintenance complexity (more opportunities for human error) etc? It won't take more than one or two before any gains from having such a system will be completely negated.

My point here is that your time and effort is better spent on finding ways to keep human error from causing problems. Rail about economics all you want, but ultimately that's what system safety comes down down. You have to weigh the risks vs the cost of the mitigation (cost being defined as performance loss, additional risk, and of course actual additional cost) and decide if it's worth it. In the case of airliner ejection systems, the use case is just so niche that you're making a very hard sell.

Circlejerk

[Anonymous Coward]

Flying cars will come next year with super advanced AI that is smarter than all humans combined. 0% of the population will be employed something something one percent something UBI

Thought of everything?

[CanadianMacFan]

Except a proper name. Who wants to right a system with an acronym of PUS???

Actually, their video shows vehicles with a capacity of two people. Useful for business people heading downtown to work and back home (or just someone going to work in general). But terrible for many other uses. A family can't use it without going into multiple vehicle. But is a parent going to let a couple of younger children fly alone in one while they fly in another with another child? Or maybe they will have a four person vehicle available.

So many of these concepts that I've seen are only for two people or single people in a row. The concept drawings for the hyperloop showed a single line of seats. That's not even good for a couple of business people who want to work while on the trip. Never mind separating parent from child. These technologies are isolating us even more.

Re:Thought of everything?

[Baron_Yam]

>So many of these concepts that I've seen are only for two people or single people in a row.

The vast majority of driving is one person, perhaps with a few bags. The standard vehicle ought to be something that can cover 95% of work commutes and also allow you to stow a few bags of groceries. It doesn't need to go highway speeds either (or be crash-rated for them).

The trick is to make that vehicle (which has been done a few times already) and to get legislators to make said vehicles legal on a standard license. As it is, we get vehicles limited to bicycle speeds or running on 3 wheels and requiring a motorcycle license (and helmet).

All we need is something with a 30 km range (~20 miles), permitted to do 55 km/h (35 mph), with four wheels, and operated by someone with a standard licence. We're essentially talking about a fancy golf cart, but this has been regularly rejected by legislators. We could all have been zipping around in electric cars (for most of our trips) decades ago.

Re:Thought of everything?

[Rei]

Hyperloop Alpha is two seats side by side (2x14 seating), so I'm not sure what you're talking about. And that's for the smaller, passengers-only variant. They didn't list seating arrangements for the "passengers + vehicles" variant, but given the size increase it's probably at least three abreast.

Re:Thought of everything?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd let my in-laws fly in the other one. I'd just drive mine.

CG makes anything possible

[DrXym]

This isn't the first bullshot rendering of a personal transportation device. Doesn't mean its going to be a reality now or ever.

Energy consumption

[djbckr]

I have, fairly recently, come to the realization that we are consuming *far* too much energy. Now, I'm guilty of living in a society where cars are the norm, and I still drive probably more than I need to, but I'm making an effort where I can to reduce energy consumption. What does this have to do with flying cars? Everything. A single car consumes an enormous amount of energy, not just in just running it, but in building it, and the infrastructure to support it. The idea of a flying car is only going to burn through our oil even faster.

I insist on working from home now; our family has one car. My trike (with a trailer) allows me to go to the store for groceries and run other errands. And before somebody says something: Yes I know it came from Germany to the US - energy got it here. I think we could cut back on individual consumption and still have a world where things get from point A to point B.

We should all start to think this way. I realize it's not practical for some people. I get it, but it's the direction we need to be headed. My daughter's grand-kids are going to be in a world of hurt. I won't see the benefit of my efforts, but that generation will most certainly be looking back on this generation wondering why we trashed the planet.

Re:Energy consumption

[Anonymous Coward]

Oil is all natural and moreover oil is 100% organic. It is part of nature, occurring naturally. It has been seeping from the earth for thousands of years without harm.

Humans are pretty arrogant to think that they are better than Nature. Oil is degraded naturally in the environment by wind, water, ultraviolet light, and microorganisms.

So what's behind this new get rich quick scheme? As our European forefathers asked "cui bono?"

Who benefits? Simple. The shysters and fraudsters who try to wrangle contracts and lucrative government and investor money for their hare brained scheme. Do you know the Sham Wow Guy ? Or the vegomatic? Or any of those other scam artists peddling their cheap made in China doodads? Well these "scientists" have those pikers beat by a country mile.

These crooked "scientists" make fabulous salaries while shamelessly scamming the general public. Take that fake scientist Bill Nye. He is at the top of the heap of slight of hand artists. How much do you think he's worth? How much has this master snake oil salesman profited from his outlandish claims? How much is he worth? Try Six and a Half Million Dollars! That's $6,500,000.

Now consider the poor earthy-crunchy greenie schlub. He has a degree in sociology. He's pushing 30 years old. He meticulously recycles plastic/paper/glass/food scraps. His vegan diet consists of quinoa and rice. He shuffles around in Birkenstocks, works at the Rite Aid for a little over minimum wage, 31.5 hours per week, less that 20K per year. It's not enough hours even to qualify for company insurance.

Our poor schlub has a sunken chest and a pale pasty complexion. This chump lives this spartan third-world lifestyle so that he can "help the earth", sending every spare shekel to foundations controlled by the likes of Bill Nye, people who cruise around in tricked out Cadillac Escalades, while quinoa Birkenstock boy humps to work on his two wheel thrift shop "cruiser",

Cui bono? Who benefits? Why the fraudsters behind this "Magic Oil Sponge", the crooks and "scientists" pocketing a fortune in graft while putting the the Sham Wow Guy magic sponge to shame. Mr. Sham Wow couldn't even dare to dream of a con this large and lucrative.

Re:Energy consumption

[Anonymous Coward]

My trike [hpvelotechnik.com] (with a trailer) allows me to go to the store for groceries and run other errands

How well does your trike work in 2 ft high snow drifts and -4 Fahrenheit? How many people can work from home?

My god, the arrogance of people who think they've "got the answers" while living a utopian life.

Energy doesn't have to come from fuel. Energy consumption doesn't have to be harmful to the environment. You could have come from Germany to the US using nothing more than the energy of the wind in a sailing ship.

Energy consumption is NOT the enemy. If you realized that you'd see there ARE meaningful changes you could make in your life to improve the world instead of just waving your flag and shouting "look at me I ride a bike"

how many software exploits?

[Anonymous Coward]

What will teenagers do when they get their hands on the software exploits for these systems? We have many many generations of hardening software to go before we really want to release these systems onto the roads and airspace.

Glider

[DrYak]

Planes become gliders when the engines fail.

(I might not be a pilote but I have a vague notion of the physics involved)

Just like helicopters become autogyros when their engine fails.

(also: as long as the engine didn't take the commercial airplane's wing with it when exploding)
(also: and some fighter jets have enough body lift [and avionics to compensate] to afford losing a wing)

I wasn't commenting on the merits of whole plane chute, just mentioning that these are being developed.
(But currently, the only reports I've came across are from the manufacturer themselves. So of course these are going to be heavily biased toward "Our products are incredibly useful and save tons of lifes !")