Boeing's First Autonomous Air Taxi Flight Ends In Fewer Than 60 Seconds (cnn.com)

Boeing has completed the first flight of its autonomous air taxi Tuesday at a small airport outside Washington, D.C. "The flight lasted less than a minute, according to Boeing, and it didn't actually go anywhere," reports CNN. "Instead, it hovered above the runway. Boeing declined to share how high above the ground it flew." From the report: But Boeing is hailing the achievement as a milestone for its NeXt division, which develops autonomous airplanes. The flying car prototype is 30 feet long and 28 feet wide. It's designed to fly up to 50 miles at a time. Boeing and its competitors such as Airbus are betting that small, self-flying airplanes -- technically dubbed electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) -- will revolutionize transportation, especially in urban areas. Boeing believes the vehicles, more commonly referred to as air taxis or flying cars, will be a solution to traffic congestion.

Comments

WTF?

[eminencja]

I don't why Boeing is doing this but I don't believe that "Boeing believes the vehicles, more commonly referred to as air taxis or flying cars, will be a solution to traffic congestion." Imagine that half of the cars in LA lift off... Reminds me of a comedy where a party secretary takes a taxi ride in Moscow(?) and wonders why so many people crowd at bus stops. "They could all be riding taxis comfortably" says he.

Re:WTF?

[Zorpheus]

It is a solution to traffic congestion for the people who can afford to fly, not for the peasants stuck in traffic

Re:2D Space

[stealth_finger]

autonomous vehicles can barely handle 2 dimensional space... and people think we're ready to tackle the intricacies of safely navigating 3D space? good grief, flying is not even remotely similar to driving a car. You need to worry about your airspeed, generating enough lift to safely take off, fly and land, you need to worry about wing-loading during turns, the vehicle would need to be able to interpret the way the wind 'feels' against the control surfaces when flying in order to judge what's going on, lest the aircraft fall from the sky... this is not the best way of doing this....If anything, an autonomous aero-stat would be safer. no aerodynamic forces to worry about, and it's slow... but even then...

Drones have been flying a lot longer than they have been driving and they are actually pretty good at it these days. I still wouldn't get in one and let it fly in close proximity to loads of other ones though.

Re:It's a first test flight

[dryriver]

I know some people who tried to build their own helicopter. The first test flight was about 1 minute of hovering in place about 3 feet off the ground. Why? Because a) nobody wants to destroy/crash a prototype that took years to put together by taking it up to 300 feet the first tame it takes off, b) there is a risk of killing or injuring the test pilot without doing a first careful "hover at minimal altitude" test and c) even that 60 seconds of hovering gives you some sense of how the aircraft and mechanical components of it behave when it is no longer sitting on hard ground. Once the data gathered is analyzed, you might do a test flight where you hover 10 to 20 feet above ground. This is not a car where, at worst, you slam on the brakes and the thing stops. Aircraft get severely damaged when they fall from high altitudes. So just about everyone starts with a brief, careful hover test.

Re:where do they all land?

[stealth_finger]

It doesn't land. You fast rope out of it and hit the ground running