The Coming Air Age 319
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."
Re:Easy prediction: It'll Never Happen. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Easy prediction: It'll Never Happen. (Score:3, Informative)
Predictions like this were made during and after WW1 as well, for the private use of planes. For a time in the 20s and early 30s, it seemed as if it might be true: small biplanes like the Moth were cheap and easy to fly, and could be stored in the garage and assembled for a trip.
But I don't know why it never took off...maybe the intervention of WW2, cheaper cars, better roads...
Not so far off (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Easy prediction: It'll Never Happen. (Score:5, Informative)
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. (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Flying Cars are here (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Not yet ... (Score:3, Informative)
It won't happen with current tech, too expensive and liable to fail. We need something like anti gravity, ducks the punches thrown by physicists, or something similar that provides oodles of lift for a few cents.
Having surfed, skateboarded, snow boarded I'm all set to flyboard.
Carter Copters (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Easy prediction: It'll Never Happen. (Score:3, Informative)
So, it's not too bad, but compared to the number of general aircraft fatal/nonfatal incident ratio, it's higher.
Of course, that could be due to the higher incident of runway incursions and planes taxiing into other planes causing minor damage, which is included in these numbers. Those kinds of things don't often happen to helicopters, since, well, they don't taxi.
Safety (Score:2, Informative)
The truth about modern flight is, it's so safe that the only thing that will bring any plane down unsafely is a bad pilot or a catastrophic failure. This is why people don't survive airline crashes. An airliner doesn't crash unless it explodes, or has a major structural failure.
The hardware isnt much of an issue, but cost and training required is.
One Reason (Score:3, Informative)
It takes years of schooling in order to be granted a helicopter pilots liscense. This is very costly, and requires a lot of time.
It is not uncommon for people to go to college for flight (airplanes), and once successfully passing their flight exams to go on and study helicopter operation.
My little sister is currently studying to be a commerical airline pilot and it will take her 4 years at the number flight school in the USA. Then if she wants to persue helicopters she has to take more classes and spent a lot more time gaining the airtime in a helicopter with an instructor, only then will she receive her helicoptiers liscense from the FAA. The FAA is strick and sometimes tough, and this is for good reason, would you trust any idiot with a piece of machinery like this? If they crash the thing into a crowded area they kill a whole lot people.
Helicopters are not like cars, when you wreck a car, most of the time you can survive, or if you die, you don't kill anyone else. When you crash a helicopiter you are probably automatically dead.
It's already happened, sort of (Score:4, Informative)
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.
CYCLOGIRO - The helicopter of the future (Score:3, Informative)
Heat isn't exactly a force... (Score:2, Informative)
Mass, at least is equivalent to inductance, so gravity can cause an object to oscillate. Heat doesn't even have that. Heat will flow from warmer to cooler places, but thats about it.
It's Closer than you think (Score:2, Informative)
The specs [cartercopters.com] are pretty impressive. Coast to Coast on 1 tank of gas. 450mph cruise speed at over 35,000 feet, Zero Roll take off and short field landing. 5 Passengers. Plus luggage.
Here are some pics [cartercopters.com] and [cartercopters.com] vids. [cartercopters.com] They had a good demo [cartercopters.com] at the OSHKOSH Air Show [cartercopters.com]
Personal VTOL: The Moller Skycar (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Affordable personal flight is still just a drea (Score:2, Informative)
But internal combustion engines are much more efficient at trapping the expanding combustion gases and converting them to work. Turbines lose a lot of efficiency in the conversion of energy to mechanical work.
The difference isn't nearly as bad as it used to be, but turbines still aren't as efficient. They are much more reliable, however, so their overall cost of operation is less when scaled to suit airliner size aircraft.
Here's proof. One airframe design that has two variants, a piston-powered variant and a turbine-powered variant, is the Piper Malibu. The Mirage is piston powered and the Malibu is turbine powered. Here are the relevant specs:
Piper Malibu Mirage:
Piper Meridian:
Now, the power requirements due to air resistance vary by the cube of the speed, and the fuel burn varies directly with the amount of power used. So at 25,000 feet, the Meridian is using 1.44 times the amount of power that the Mirage is using. But if the specific fuel consumptions were the same, then the turbine would burn 1.44 times the amount of fuel, or 26 gal/hr. But it burns 37. And even if the fuel burn were the same, kerosene has a higher energy content than gasoline. So the turbine is less efficient.
Another way to prove it is through the specific fuel consumption values. A piston engine uses about 0.45 lb/hp per hour. The PT6 uses 0.53 lb/hp per hour. So the PT6 burns more fuel, from a source that has more energy.
Oh, yeah: and the turbine is a lot more expensive. But that probably has more to do with General Electric's monopoly (or so I've heard) on the processes used to produce the fan blades than anything else.
Re:Ground is better (Score:1, Informative)
The short of it is, just about anybody can fly an ultralight after a couple dozen hours of instruction from a certified ultralight instructor, but you can't fly them just anywhere. Don't plan on landing at - or even going near - particularly busy airports; landing on private property is okay, so long as you have the landowner's permission; public land _should_ be fine so long as you don't make a mess or piss anybody off, but don't quote me on that.
Technically, it's illegal to overfly crowds and developed areas, and the FAA will interpret that law as any gathering of one or more people and/or a single house, *if* you do something that pisses them off (that is, if you make a ruckus and get negative headlines, basically). There are other places it's illegal to fly, as well, and you should be thoroughly trained on the details before you're signed off for solo flight. Your local flight school people will know.
You do not need to file a flight plan unless you want a search-and-rescue operation to be mounted should you fail to call in to close the flight plan on time - that's all flight plans are really for, anyway. As for speeds, the maximum allowed by law for an ultralight is - er, I forgot. Sorry.