I'm going to laugh my ass off in 20 years when I'm flying around in a ride-share self-piloting VTOL aircraft
Hope and dreams are nice, but that simply isn't going to happen.
Two points:
1. There is little reason to make it VTOL, when it will end up being at an airport anyway. Assuming you make it self-piloting, it might as well be an airplane, which will always be cheaper than a VTOL anything.
2. The cost of these things, by the time they end up as commercial products, are likely to be pushing a million dollars. It becomes a luxury toy for rich people, assuming anyone buys it. But such toys already exist, they are called helicopters and work just fine.
It is truly fascinating how short-sighted aviation experts are.
I'm not nearly as short-sighted as you think... I just understand the economics behind the problem.
The Lycoming IO-360-L2A engine in the Cessna 172SP costs about $49,000 new. Rebuilt to factory new specs (with you providing a working, runout core), is $30,000.
The reason for that cost has to do with volume, there just isn't any. They may do a few hundred such engines a year, they are largely hand built/machined, and have been certified for a very long time.
For various reasons, you can't just take a car engine and put it in an aircraft. There are legal obstacles (consider the FAA just decided that all light drones over about half a pound had to be registered) to getting certification, then there are practical considerations, such as building in redundancy that doesn't exist in most car engines, such as dual spark plugs, dual power sources, etc.
Then there is making the engine light enough to put on a small airplane.
If it were easy, everyone would do it. A Cessna 172SP doesn't have to cost $400,000, if you could somehow build a million of them a year.
But you can't. In fact, only about 50,000 of them have ever been made, in all forms and trims, over a 50 year period.
You originally said that flying cars would never exist because physics
I did? I don't think that was me...
What I did say is that flying cars would never be common, would never be cheap, and would never be widespread.
And if that is not what you read, or perhaps if I wrote it poorly, then that is what I meant to say.
I point out that they aren't a replacement for regular cars but rather a better GA aircraft, and now you admit that there is [in fact] a market for them--perhaps even one that is 3x larger than the existing GA market (which supports several companies, BTW)
I wish them all the best at becoming better GA aircraft, but that market is riddled with failures.
As for supporting the existing GA market of companies, only Cessna and Cirrus have done anything with it, and neither company is getting rich off it. Many have come and gone, some keep in the market because of sunk costs, so why not.
Look at the A36 Bonnanza for example... It is really expensive, they don't build that many of them, and it largely exists because it has existed for many years and the sunk costs are paid for. It would never make sense to develop it from scratch today.
Likewise, the Cessna 172 exists because it is running on a very old type certificate with minor changes over the years. Cessna tried recently with the 162 light sport aircraft and discovered that doing an all new airplane was hard and expensive and now it is gone.
So now they build 50 year old designs.
Cirrus has a much more modern design, and after some teething troubles, seems to have survived the pain and come out to compete with Cessna. Good for them, but they still sell half a million dollar toys.
but we should all consider that a failure because there won't be one in every garage?
When people use the term "flying car", they generally are referring to something that the masses can own, that is easy to drive/fly and is cheaper than airplanes.
My point isn't that it is a failure because there won't be one in every garage, but because there won't be any in ANY garages, unless those happen to be located at an airport or WAY out in the countryside.
While that is a fair point, the 172 also requires several thousand feet of runway to be useful.
It also doesn't carry all that much, put a pair of 200lb people and a few bags into it and you're at max gross weight, it is more like a Ford Mustang, a 2+2 airplane. If you put 2 adults in the back and 2 kids in the back, you're not hauling much, or you have to down fuel.
It also costs a third of a million dollars.
A much better comparison would be a Robinson R-44, since it doesn't require a runway.
120 MPG at 16 gallons per hour, and it costs half a million dollars.
A mid-size crossover SUV going 70 MPH is burning about 3 gallons per hour, carries double the load of either, and costs $40,000.
It isn't even remotely close and it won't be any time soon, so it really doesn't matter.:)
They could triple the size of general aviation and it would still be very small.
There are several reasons why this just isn't going to happen. One of which is that any means of lifting a vehicle creates a lot of down wash, so it doesn't work at people's homes. So you need something that works as a road vehicle first.
Then you need to get that vehicle to someplace you CAN take off. Fair enough, you could have those areas setup, except all the problems with that idea, such as land use, how many takeoffs and landings per min/hour, etc.
Something that sort of looks like a car and is certified as a vertical lift vehicle might happen... for perhaps twice the price of a Cessna 172.
How big is the market for $600k flying car toys? Does it exist? Yes. Is it big? No, not really.
Lifting 2,000lbs, 1,000ft, and moving that weight forward at 100mph, takes a whole lot of X energy...
Airplanes use less energy than a helicopter does, but not nearly as much less as you'd think. A Cessna 172 (a new one) is about 2,500lbs, less than the weight of most cars, and it burns 9 gallons of fuel an hour, 7 if you know how to lean properly, to go 120 mph carrying 3 people and a few small bags, and it needs a runway.
If you need to go straight up and down, that is even harder.
Rest assured, I would LOVE to see flying cars, but until you solve the energy issue, they will remain pipedreams.
No, they really aren't... Read some gaming forums, the basic questions asked every day indicate that plenty of non-techies love to play games...
Isn't Linux ideal for them?
No... Windows, you run it, you run your game, it works.
Linux? Not so much. Maybe it works, depending on too many different things.
Saying that Linux is too technical for them does seem a little insulting given that a lot of PC gamers build their rigs from scratch.
No they don't. The number of people who build their own computer is a very, very, very small percentage of the total number of computers, even those used for gaming.
The majority buy a CyberPower PC or an Alienware or just a Dell/HP/Acer whatever...
Windows requires a massive multistep procedure to not leak data like crazy to Microsoft. Fixing it requires command line garbage, scripts, etc. Linux doesn't require any of that configuration- out of the box it just works. Windows you have to dick around with the wusa package manager and that binary registry just to get a fraction of the security and privacy that Linux has for free.
The majority of computer users don't care. If they did, they'd stop clicking on every "you won" e-mail that enters their in-box.
I'm a technical user, and *I* don't care either, for what it is worth.
Performance- Linux outperforms Windows at almost every task an OS does.
Meh, not in the ways most people care about. Does Linux run MS Word faster in some way that an end user will see over Linux? Oh yea, Word doesn't run there.:) It actually might, given the new direction MS has taken, but it hardly matters, Word is "fast" enough on just about any hardware.
Windows struggles just to support shit from the Windows XP era.
No it doesn't, it actually runs the vast majority of XP programs just fine. Some early ones and some poorly coded ones perhaps not, but the mainstream stuff works fine. The stuff that doesn't likely has had 10 new versions released since then and no one longer cares.
Some games do have trouble, largely because they were poorly coded, but a whole lot of early games run fine. My son loves playing Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds on Windows 10. Other than the resolution limits, it works fine, but that is the game's fault, not Windows.
Linux runs MOST windows programs, and MANY windows games.
I imagine it isn't EVERYTHING that is needed, but it seems mostly complete, at least to include inverter, panels, mounting hardware, etc.
The panels themselves they sell for about $1 per watt, but that appears to be for grade A panels. So they want about $6,400 for all the other stuff besides panels.
This is not a job that I'm prepared to do myself, I have a tall roof (2 stories, about 24 feet off the ground), it just isn't something that I am going to be installing myself.
So if the best price installed that I can get is $3.40 a watt, well, that explains why there isn't any solar around here.:(
Seriously, in a city of 250,000 people, there are fewer than 200 residential installs of solar. I have never actually seen one in person, only pictures.
So it is possible one of the problems is that there really aren't any serious companies doing the work here.
Even SolarCity won't install here (I called them, they said they won't work in this area due to the co-op not giving big enough rebates).
For $3.40 per watt, that included a "smart inverter", one that runs each panel to its max power, if one is dirty, blocked, or fails, it doesn't stop the others. It included wiring, permits, grid-tie, a second power box in the garage, and all the attachment hardware for the roof.
I imagine it is about double what the hardware costs, it just seems like a whole pile of money for the labor side.
The energy required to lift a pound of weight and make it go somewhere is far more than most people give credit for.
It takes 10 gallons of fuel per hour to make a light, 2 seat piston engine helicopter fly. It takes 16 gallons per hour to make a light, 4 seat piston engine helicopter fly.
A Honda Civic weighs more than either aircraft.
Using the latest in modern engines, you might cut those numbers in half, but you still aren't hauling anything or going very far, and you're burning a ton of fuel to do it.
I would ask the question... "Why does so much of the world pay more for power than we do?"
What is it that causes power in other places to be 25 cents per kWh when we pay 10 cents (or less).
I actually don't have any say in my home's power price, I'm in a co-op. It was cheap 9 years ago, but has gotten expensive. My office pays far less for power, just over 7 cents per kWh.
Solar isn't even close, even wind costs more than that at about 10 cents per kWh.
On the other hand, commercially available, UL-approved (so they don't void your fire insurance), solar panels are now cheap enough (WITHOUT subsidies) to beat grid power on price/performance on sunny sites in the temperate zone.
I wish people would stop saying that, it just isn't true...
Even with subsidies, they are STILL too expensive...
I priced solar just 2 months ago, talked to two local companies that sell solar, the end price is just nuts, about $3.40 a watt installed for a 10.5 KW system in Texas.
All that is covered by 'follow the directions of the police'. But is an autonomous vehicle going to understand the motions of an officer, and drive the wrong way on several streets? Humans had no problem with it.
It doesn't have to...
"Siri, override traffic rules, exit down the entrance ramp, password 12345"
Sure, a car that drives itself would be very handy for lots of people. I'm not saying that we don't make cars that can drive themselves, I'm questioning the reasoning behind cars that can ONLY drive themselves.
Not everyone can drive, but most people think they can.
With cars that only drive themselves, you could make the driving test much stricter and only allow people to drive cars that really can do it well.
I could see a yard stopper being automated moving trailers between a parking lot and the docks, but not anything more than that for a long time.
That has been done for years in Europe... Germany has had such a system at their docks for nearly 10 years now, much of the container movement is all done by computers and robots now.
I run a local trucking company just outside of chicago, and the current state of automated trucks is a joke, they still have along way to go.
That view is easy to see when it threatens your way of doing business.
It'll be like smart phones, it'll go from no one having them to every one having them and you'll wonder how it happened.
Plus it would require a complete redesign of the way the electrical cord and air lines are hooked up from the truck to the trailer
Yea, but since it will ALSO require brand new trucks and brand new trailers, so what? That is a trivial problem to solve when you're building all new vehicles.
There are many, many old docks that were even designed for the current max truck length of 53ft, and are supper hard to get into.
I hate to break it to you, but computers are already better at this than you are. With the proper sensors on the vehicle, the computer will do it perfectly, every time.
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I'm going to laugh my ass off in 20 years when I'm flying around in a ride-share self-piloting VTOL aircraft
Hope and dreams are nice, but that simply isn't going to happen.
Two points:
1. There is little reason to make it VTOL, when it will end up being at an airport anyway. Assuming you make it self-piloting, it might as well be an airplane, which will always be cheaper than a VTOL anything.
2. The cost of these things, by the time they end up as commercial products, are likely to be pushing a million dollars. It becomes a luxury toy for rich people, assuming anyone buys it. But such toys already exist, they are called helicopters and work just fine.
It is truly fascinating how short-sighted aviation experts are.
I'm not nearly as short-sighted as you think... I just understand the economics behind the problem.
The Lycoming IO-360-L2A engine in the Cessna 172SP costs about $49,000 new. Rebuilt to factory new specs (with you providing a working, runout core), is $30,000.
http://www.airpowerinc.com/pro...
The reason for that cost has to do with volume, there just isn't any. They may do a few hundred such engines a year, they are largely hand built/machined, and have been certified for a very long time.
For various reasons, you can't just take a car engine and put it in an aircraft. There are legal obstacles (consider the FAA just decided that all light drones over about half a pound had to be registered) to getting certification, then there are practical considerations, such as building in redundancy that doesn't exist in most car engines, such as dual spark plugs, dual power sources, etc.
Then there is making the engine light enough to put on a small airplane.
If it were easy, everyone would do it. A Cessna 172SP doesn't have to cost $400,000, if you could somehow build a million of them a year.
But you can't. In fact, only about 50,000 of them have ever been made, in all forms and trims, over a 50 year period.
You originally said that flying cars would never exist because physics
I did? I don't think that was me...
What I did say is that flying cars would never be common, would never be cheap, and would never be widespread.
And if that is not what you read, or perhaps if I wrote it poorly, then that is what I meant to say.
I point out that they aren't a replacement for regular cars but rather a better GA aircraft, and now you admit that there is [in fact] a market for them--perhaps even one that is 3x larger than the existing GA market (which supports several companies, BTW)
I wish them all the best at becoming better GA aircraft, but that market is riddled with failures.
As for supporting the existing GA market of companies, only Cessna and Cirrus have done anything with it, and neither company is getting rich off it. Many have come and gone, some keep in the market because of sunk costs, so why not.
Look at the A36 Bonnanza for example... It is really expensive, they don't build that many of them, and it largely exists because it has existed for many years and the sunk costs are paid for. It would never make sense to develop it from scratch today.
Likewise, the Cessna 172 exists because it is running on a very old type certificate with minor changes over the years. Cessna tried recently with the 162 light sport aircraft and discovered that doing an all new airplane was hard and expensive and now it is gone.
So now they build 50 year old designs.
Cirrus has a much more modern design, and after some teething troubles, seems to have survived the pain and come out to compete with Cessna. Good for them, but they still sell half a million dollar toys.
but we should all consider that a failure because there won't be one in every garage?
When people use the term "flying car", they generally are referring to something that the masses can own, that is easy to drive/fly and is cheaper than airplanes.
My point isn't that it is a failure because there won't be one in every garage, but because there won't be any in ANY garages, unless those happen to be located at an airport or WAY out in the countryside.
While that is a fair point, the 172 also requires several thousand feet of runway to be useful.
It also doesn't carry all that much, put a pair of 200lb people and a few bags into it and you're at max gross weight, it is more like a Ford Mustang, a 2+2 airplane. If you put 2 adults in the back and 2 kids in the back, you're not hauling much, or you have to down fuel.
It also costs a third of a million dollars.
A much better comparison would be a Robinson R-44, since it doesn't require a runway.
120 MPG at 16 gallons per hour, and it costs half a million dollars.
A mid-size crossover SUV going 70 MPH is burning about 3 gallons per hour, carries double the load of either, and costs $40,000.
It isn't even remotely close and it won't be any time soon, so it really doesn't matter. :)
They could triple the size of general aviation and it would still be very small.
There are several reasons why this just isn't going to happen. One of which is that any means of lifting a vehicle creates a lot of down wash, so it doesn't work at people's homes. So you need something that works as a road vehicle first.
Then you need to get that vehicle to someplace you CAN take off. Fair enough, you could have those areas setup, except all the problems with that idea, such as land use, how many takeoffs and landings per min/hour, etc.
Something that sort of looks like a car and is certified as a vertical lift vehicle might happen... for perhaps twice the price of a Cessna 172.
How big is the market for $600k flying car toys? Does it exist? Yes. Is it big? No, not really.
Sure it costs money to go faster, but lots of people have money and are willing to spend it to go faster.
Yep, but not enough of them to make flying cars a thing.
It is not a financial problem, it is a physics problem.
It's a good thing this isn't a helicopter.
It doesn't matter what it is...
Lifting one pound, one foot, takes X energy...
Lifting 2,000lbs, 1,000ft, and moving that weight forward at 100mph, takes a whole lot of X energy...
Airplanes use less energy than a helicopter does, but not nearly as much less as you'd think. A Cessna 172 (a new one) is about 2,500lbs, less than the weight of most cars, and it burns 9 gallons of fuel an hour, 7 if you know how to lean properly, to go 120 mph carrying 3 people and a few small bags, and it needs a runway.
If you need to go straight up and down, that is even harder.
Rest assured, I would LOVE to see flying cars, but until you solve the energy issue, they will remain pipedreams.
Gamers are, in the main, a tech-savvy crowd.
No, they really aren't... Read some gaming forums, the basic questions asked every day indicate that plenty of non-techies love to play games...
Isn't Linux ideal for them?
No... Windows, you run it, you run your game, it works.
Linux? Not so much. Maybe it works, depending on too many different things.
Saying that Linux is too technical for them does seem a little insulting given that a lot of PC gamers build their rigs from scratch.
No they don't. The number of people who build their own computer is a very, very, very small percentage of the total number of computers, even those used for gaming.
The majority buy a CyberPower PC or an Alienware or just a Dell/HP/Acer whatever...
No there isn't, not by a long shot...
Android doesn't count, unless it is rooted and something else installed. What Samsung puts on their phones isn't remotely "Linux".
Windows requires a massive multistep procedure to not leak data like crazy to Microsoft. Fixing it requires command line garbage, scripts, etc. Linux doesn't require any of that configuration- out of the box it just works. Windows you have to dick around with the wusa package manager and that binary registry just to get a fraction of the security and privacy that Linux has for free.
The majority of computer users don't care. If they did, they'd stop clicking on every "you won" e-mail that enters their in-box.
I'm a technical user, and *I* don't care either, for what it is worth.
Performance- Linux outperforms Windows at almost every task an OS does.
Meh, not in the ways most people care about. Does Linux run MS Word faster in some way that an end user will see over Linux? Oh yea, Word doesn't run there. :) It actually might, given the new direction MS has taken, but it hardly matters, Word is "fast" enough on just about any hardware.
Windows struggles just to support shit from the Windows XP era.
No it doesn't, it actually runs the vast majority of XP programs just fine. Some early ones and some poorly coded ones perhaps not, but the mainstream stuff works fine. The stuff that doesn't likely has had 10 new versions released since then and no one longer cares.
Some games do have trouble, largely because they were poorly coded, but a whole lot of early games run fine. My son loves playing Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds on Windows 10. Other than the resolution limits, it works fine, but that is the game's fault, not Windows.
Linux runs MOST windows programs, and MANY windows games.
No, it does not.
I'm pretty sure that people making and selling the games would care..
Sure, but the OP is in the extreme minority...
The reality is that the vast majority of games sold are sold for Windows. That isn't going to change any time soon.
Thank you for the link. Those are raw panels, but yes, that is about what I expected to see.
What do you think of this complete kit:
http://www.wholesalesolar.com/...
I imagine it isn't EVERYTHING that is needed, but it seems mostly complete, at least to include inverter, panels, mounting hardware, etc.
The panels themselves they sell for about $1 per watt, but that appears to be for grade A panels. So they want about $6,400 for all the other stuff besides panels.
This is not a job that I'm prepared to do myself, I have a tall roof (2 stories, about 24 feet off the ground), it just isn't something that I am going to be installing myself.
So if the best price installed that I can get is $3.40 a watt, well, that explains why there isn't any solar around here. :(
Seriously, in a city of 250,000 people, there are fewer than 200 residential installs of solar. I have never actually seen one in person, only pictures.
So it is possible one of the problems is that there really aren't any serious companies doing the work here.
Even SolarCity won't install here (I called them, they said they won't work in this area due to the co-op not giving big enough rebates).
For $3.40 per watt, that included a "smart inverter", one that runs each panel to its max power, if one is dirty, blocked, or fails, it doesn't stop the others. It included wiring, permits, grid-tie, a second power box in the garage, and all the attachment hardware for the roof.
I imagine it is about double what the hardware costs, it just seems like a whole pile of money for the labor side.
The energy required to lift a pound of weight and make it go somewhere is far more than most people give credit for.
It takes 10 gallons of fuel per hour to make a light, 2 seat piston engine helicopter fly. It takes 16 gallons per hour to make a light, 4 seat piston engine helicopter fly.
A Honda Civic weighs more than either aircraft.
Using the latest in modern engines, you might cut those numbers in half, but you still aren't hauling anything or going very far, and you're burning a ton of fuel to do it.
You would have to change the entire economic model of the US to do what you're suggesting...
Like I said, it doesn't work the way you think it does (or maybe wish it does).
Maybe so, but I haven't found anyone who will do it for $3 a watt, much less $2.
Perhaps the problem is a lack of competition, or simply a lack of people who know how to do it here.
But I have called around and shopped around, most companies simply don't have any interest, the two I spoke with were around the same price.
I'm all ears with any suggestions for a company in the North Texas area that does it for $2 a watt.
I would ask the question... "Why does so much of the world pay more for power than we do?"
What is it that causes power in other places to be 25 cents per kWh when we pay 10 cents (or less).
I actually don't have any say in my home's power price, I'm in a co-op. It was cheap 9 years ago, but has gotten expensive. My office pays far less for power, just over 7 cents per kWh.
Solar isn't even close, even wind costs more than that at about 10 cents per kWh.
Less than 1% of a change however when was the last time Australia had a mass shooting - 1996 just before guns were banned.
The two really can't be compared, but even if you want to...
What is the percentage of mass shooting deaths compared to all shooting deaths?
What about compared to shark attacks, or other random events?
suspend all patents and force corporations to work together with universities and the government
Even if you suspend all patents, how exactly are you going to "force" corporations to do anything?
Find the CEO and put a gun to his head?
It doesn't work the way you think it does.
On the other hand, commercially available, UL-approved (so they don't void your fire insurance), solar panels are now cheap enough (WITHOUT subsidies) to beat grid power on price/performance on sunny sites in the temperate zone.
I wish people would stop saying that, it just isn't true...
Even with subsidies, they are STILL too expensive...
I priced solar just 2 months ago, talked to two local companies that sell solar, the end price is just nuts, about $3.40 a watt installed for a 10.5 KW system in Texas.
You have never backed with a 53ft trailer, have you?
You didn't google what he suggested, did you?
This is a trivial problem for a computer to solve, it is not remotely hard to do, you simply need to have the right sensors on the truck and trailer.
It will have a large up front cost, but pay for itself over time.
All that is covered by 'follow the directions of the police'. But is an autonomous vehicle going to understand the motions of an officer, and drive the wrong way on several streets? Humans had no problem with it.
It doesn't have to...
"Siri, override traffic rules, exit down the entrance ramp, password 12345"
Sure, a car that drives itself would be very handy for lots of people. I'm not saying that we don't make cars that can drive themselves, I'm questioning the reasoning behind cars that can ONLY drive themselves.
Not everyone can drive, but most people think they can.
With cars that only drive themselves, you could make the driving test much stricter and only allow people to drive cars that really can do it well.
I could see a yard stopper being automated moving trailers between a parking lot and the docks, but not anything more than that for a long time.
That has been done for years in Europe... Germany has had such a system at their docks for nearly 10 years now, much of the container movement is all done by computers and robots now.
I run a local trucking company just outside of chicago, and the current state of automated trucks is a joke, they still have along way to go.
That view is easy to see when it threatens your way of doing business.
It'll be like smart phones, it'll go from no one having them to every one having them and you'll wonder how it happened.
Plus it would require a complete redesign of the way the electrical cord and air lines are hooked up from the truck to the trailer
Yea, but since it will ALSO require brand new trucks and brand new trailers, so what? That is a trivial problem to solve when you're building all new vehicles.
There are many, many old docks that were even designed for the current max truck length of 53ft, and are supper hard to get into.
I hate to break it to you, but computers are already better at this than you are. With the proper sensors on the vehicle, the computer will do it perfectly, every time.
What makes you think Rubio represents the people?
The summary said that he gets large donations from AT&T, so that is who he works for.
If you read note 17 of the agreement, even if every nation did everything in the agreement, it wouldn't hold temps to 2 C.
With the agreement, we likely would hold just under 3 C by 2100, and that is with everyone taking part.
Mitigation won't be enough, adaptation has to be part of it. We need to work on both.