'Pocket Airports' Would Link Neighborhoods By Air 257
cylonlover writes "NASA's light-aircraft partner, CAFE (Comparative Aircraft Flight Efficiency), is running a competition to design a low-cost, quiet, short take-off personal aircraft, that requires little, if any, fossil fuel. It envisions the resulting Suburban Air Vehicles taking off and landing at small neighborhood 'pocket airports.' At last week's Future of Electric Vehicles conference, CAFE president Dr. Brien Seeley outlined just how those airports would work."
Re:interesting (Score:4, Interesting)
Funny thing is most general aviation airports can be accessed without even seeing a security guard.
We have enough airports and airplanes (Score:1, Interesting)
Thanks to pork seeking Congressmen, there are lots of small, infrequently used airports in this country. Flying safely is hard. Small airplanes are expensive. This country has enough of both. We don't need more.
Less roads could save land (Score:5, Interesting)
I sometimes marvel at the size of a single road intersection: some of them are many times larger than an average person's yard!
Imagine how much land could be saved if we didn't have to dedicate so much of it to roads. I'm not sure that's what they're claiming but the thought is tantalizing.
FTA:
“The gridlock we face now is going to get worse,” Seeley stated, citing research into congestion on the world’s roads. “This is a form of insanity... We need to travel in 3D.”
Wishing more jobs offered work-at-home options! That would certainly help.
No way (Score:5, Interesting)
In our current political climate, there's no way Homeland Security would allow this to work in a manner any reasonable person would consider useful - it'd get "managed" and "secured" to death. You think airport delays are ridiculous - just think about the delays seen in these pocket airports because every commuter in your area needs to be scanned/groped before being allowed to start their commute.
Re:Plutocracy (Score:3, Interesting)
an obscure federal program that raises billions of dollars a year through taxes on every airplane ticket sold in the United States. The taxes can add up to 15% to the cost of a flight
Private aircraft are far more useful to their owners when there's a network of handy airports. Perfectly understandable, but why do scheduled airline passengers pay for them? If all Interstate highways had tolls that were paying for private race-tracks...
Re:3D travel today! (Score:5, Interesting)
Well-designed light rails or metro systems lead to even higher population densities in the areas they service. This is especially noticeable in crowded cities like Moscow, Beijing etc. where the prices of apartments drop off beyond the last metro ring, dramatically as in "orders of magnitude", because without the metro, tenants cannot reach anything in these otherwise gridlocked cities, making it uninteresting for "urbanite"-minded people.
Problem is: some 10-40% of all people will try to escape urban areas of high population density if they can somehow afford it, because that's what they ultimately and strongly want. These "pioneer"-minded people (for lack of a better word) are not abandoning the city because of bad metro systems, traffic jams, but fleeing noise and their fellow humans when there's too many of them close by. A high population density means a rapid decrease in effectiveness of police, law and social norms enforcement, which is the reason people are fleeing away from it. A metro system coming to them is simply iterating the cycle of "urbanites" flowing in and "pioneers" moving out.
Re:You lost me at "that requires little fossil fue (Score:4, Interesting)
Once you're done pooh-poohing the idea of electric airplanes, go and use your google and wiki-fu to look up the following:
* Yuneec e430 electric LSA
* Sonex E-Flight
* Cessna Skyhawk electric 172 POC
Re:Plutocracy (Score:3, Interesting)
Private aircraft are far more useful to their owners when there's a network of handy airports. Perfectly understandable, but why do scheduled airline passengers pay for them? If all Interstate highways had tolls that were paying for private race-tracks...
Because otherwise the little puddle jumpers would be intermingled between the big boys, clogging up scare slots. It's designed to be a win for both sides.
Re:Plutocracy (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps the fees at under-utilised airports should be higher due to the exclusivity afforded by this arrangement? No, they're massively subsidised [see article], sometimes practically free.
Aircraft miles-per-gallon (Score:2, Interesting)
You do realise that ground based vehicles use quite a bit more fuel per mile than those in the air don't you?
Even if they didn't, flying at constant speed without having to worry about stopping every few minutes the fuel savings would be enormous.
Not true at all.
I am a private pilot and I have two different airplanes to fly. (No I'm not rich either, I only take home about $42K per year)
One plane is a mid 1960's Piper Cherokee which I own outright (market value about $25K), the other is a homebuilt Vans RV-8 of which I'm a 1/8 partner, it cost about $80K to build).
The Cherokee cruises at about 127 statute miles per hour (110 knots) and burns about 9 gallons per hour of fuel doing so. If you disregard any headwinds/tailwinds, the simple math says that's 14.1 miles per gallon.
The RV-8 cruises at about 205 statute miles per hour (178 knots) and burns 11 gallons per hour doing so. That's 18.6 miles per gallon. Better fuel economy than the old Cherokee, and much faster and more fun to fly.
My 10 year old Chevy pickup gets slightly over 20 MPG on the highway.
What the airplanes do get you, however, is to your destination a hell of a lot more quickly than driving on the ground.
In the Cherokee, I get from north Texas to Oshkosh Wisconsin in 8 hours and burn 72 gallons of fuel.
In the RV-8 I made the same trip in 5 hours, and burned 55 gallons of fuel.
To drive it on my Chevy pickup would take at least 18 hours and I'd also burn about 55 gallons of fuel.