Why Elon Musk Doesn't Like Flying Cars (yahoo.com) 183
boley1 quotes Business Insider:
According to Elon Musk, the main challenges with flying cars are that they'll be noisy and generate lots of wind because of the downward force required to keep them in the air. Plus, there's an anxiety factor. "Let's just say if something is flying over your head...that is not an anxiety-reducing situation," he said. "You don't think to yourself 'Well, I feel better about today. You're thinking 'Is it going to come off and guillotine me as it comes flying past?'"
Typically Boring Comment (Score:5, Interesting)
He also doesn't like them because his company, The Boring Company, wants to provide a competing transportation solution.
He also doesn't like them because people will report on that, and then people will talk about his boring company. It's extremely profitable dislike.
On the other hand, I agree with him. Adding more air traffic is inefficient at best.
On the third hand, there's probably plenty of places where tunnels won't work. That's not a reason not to build tunnels where they will work, but we still need something which handles those situations. I still like elevated PRT.
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How much market overlap do you think there is between electric cars and flying cars? Now remove those people that can just afford both as they are 'richer's toys' anyhow. Who's left?
As to electric flying cars, hard range limit based on battery energy and power densities. 15 minutes, w. your ass, in the wind. Less w a shell. What was that battery density Moore's law analog rate? You can work out about when they might start to work for a commute.
I just want the revenue for the 'flying car fails' youtube
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Now rich is a race too?
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Practicality (Score:2)
I think you still have it the wrong way around. Neither hydrogen powered cars nor flying cars are new ideas.
No they aren't new ideas but they also aren't feasible ideas. Particularly flying cars.
When Elon Musk decided to get into the car business, he was already against hydrogen powered and flying cars and went the electric way.
That's because both hydrogen cars and flying cars have (so far) irreducible problems limiting their market potential. Hydrogen cars has a fueling infrastructure problem we are in no danger of solving as well as some fuel storage problems that are similarly challenging. Flying cars aren't a thing because we lack A) a power source with an adequate power/weight ratio, B) the control systems to use them safely, C) the infr
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I'm glad you understand.
Re:Typically Boring Comment (Score:5, Insightful)
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Also, energy requirements. Ground vehicles are so much better at lower speeds.
Slower speeds are not a plus for any sort of vehicle. Their original brief is to get us places faster.
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True, but flying vehicles would spend a lot less time stuck in traffic, even if they had to fly over existing roadways for safety. Just opening up an additional dimension to roadways would increase capacity massively.
You would be correct to say "opening up an additional dimension to roadways would increase capacity slightly", massively is ridiculous.
Let's actually think about this.
The capacity of a high speed road (call it a freeway or what-have-you) is about 1800 vehicles per lane per hour (one vehicle every two seconds per lane) and each lane is 12 feet wide.. Thus each vehicle occupies an area of 180 feet by 12 feet and travels at an average speed of about 60 MPH.
A flying vehicle will go faster, but that will be like
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How many hands do you have?
As many as needed to illustrate the point, of course.
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Can make != can afford to make. The Big Dig cost almost 10x its estimate.
Quadcopters are Transportation 2.0 for deaf (Score:2)
One can hear a helicopter kilometers away. Now imagine having thousands of those in the air all the time. Unbearable unless they first pass a law to surgically make us deaf. Then it's OK.
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Not so much with the new generations. Local cops got a new 'ghetto bird', sounds like it's 'differential is about to fail' (I'd pull over if my car made that noise), but it's _much_ quieter.
I think the pilot navigates by eye and uses a local set of intersections as a reference, you can see him find it, then vector to where he's going. Must be an old fart, gotta have GPS.
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We reduce aircraft noise today by keeping them as far away as we can: 1000 feet vertically, a mile or so horizontally. And good luck beating the noise performance of a helicopter with your flying car.
the general public dont need flying cars (Score:5, Interesting)
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You're right. However, autonomous cars are almost certainly going to happen, albeit after a longer delay than most folks think. Once the problems of navigation in two dimensions are routinely handled by hardware and software, extending the sensors and computer control to three dimensions probably won't be that big a deal.
I think other issues like safety, maintenance, insurance, security might be a bigger problem than driver skill. Hopefully none of the latter will be needed, otherwise no structure or liv
General public need to stop driving everywhere (Score:5, Insightful)
The bigger question is why we have to move around so much. Why does ever journey in modern suburban life require driving? I live in a city, and can walk to restaurants, walk to work, walk to the supermarket. I accept this is not for everyone, but suburban life sits at the other end, where getting a pint of milk requires driving. Add in congestion and parking issues and it is like a real-life rube-goldberg machine for living.
Stop this obsession with single use planning zones, and the need for humans to turn up in person everywhere and much of these problems can be fixed. It's not like we fixed the time it takes to deliver mail by having a fleet of hypersonic aircraft that can deliver letters anywhere in the world in less than an hour. We just used different technological solutions instead and got far better results. Similarly, the solution to traffic congestion is to stop this ridiculous need for the inhabitants of a city to shuffle back and forth between two areas everyday. The original argument for single use planning was that it would improve quality of life. It evidently does not, because the highest real estate prices now are for quality housing in dense urban areas where people can walk around their local communities.
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Shoot, I thought we'd have all figured this out from SimCity. Put a small store on every other corner and your traffic issues go away!
Seriously, though the places that I've lived where I could walk a half-mile to get anything I need on a daily basis have been delightful. Human-scale living is far better than car-scale, far more interesting, far less stressful, far more healthy and active. Anyone who knocks it probably hasn't tried it.
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Because property prices in cities are often prohibitive. People trade their time for cheaper accommodation.
With all the money going into drones... (Score:2)
... it is just a matter of time before someone ships himself instead of 100kg of Amazon purchases.
My fear would be 16 year old neighbor getting his flying car permit, I see Elon's point. Howeve,r a personal drone that appears to be as safe as some of these self driving cars are on the way to becoming would get people over the fear factor.
As for the noise, at least it will be short lived, unlike the neighbor's lawn mower that I'm listening to now.
The problem (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem with flying cars is... well they are flying. Which means they are in the air over our heads all the time. When a normal car malfunctions it is only traveling in two dimensial space and on a designated road, which means the damage is minimal given the cirumstances. When a flying car malfunctions he will not only crash into other flying cars in the same two dimensial space he will also fall in the third dimension and on other flying cars below him creating a cascading disaster and they will fall onto buildings, bridges, schools, stadiums e.t.c.
The only way flying cars will be a reality is that if they are treated exactly like airplanes, with all the pilot training, monitoring and security measures that comes with that or they will have their own "sky roads" which they follow, but in that case the point of flying cars are greatly reduced.
Re:The problem (Score:5, Insightful)
More succinctly -- Broken Cars STOP. Broken Aircraft DROP
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Tell that to someone whose brakes go out while they're driving.
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And more to the point, "broken helicopters" (to pick the closest analogy to many flying car concepts) don't just "drop"; the props autorotate, braking the vehicle on descent.Check it out for yourself [youtu.be].
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Quads can't, no variable pitch blades.
Hex or Octo is required to have any redundancy. But for that to work, you have to overbuild all the motors, so it can land, basically, as a quad.
You could 'emergency mode' the motor controllers, put the motors into high output/low life 'mode' when in emergency landing mode (ref: see 1 million electric truck racing threads), but then you've got an all motors maintenance issue. Weather you overbuild, or switch to 'war power' your putting non-routine stress on a motor
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And you don't see the solution to that?
It's really simple. Regulators mandate safety standards so that - in real world conditions - you don't have cars constantly falling out of the sky due to failures or running into buildings. Engineers determine the designs to meet those standards. If they can't, they don't get to sell it.
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You require swashplates etc on multirotors and you end them. Even making them variable pitch like a modern airplane prop ends them.
They go from being cheaper and simpler to more expensive and much more complicated.
Multirotors have to stick with the plan; redundancy. Redundant Array of Inexpensive Impellers.
More also means smaller cheaper props. Propellers are wear items and aren't cheap.
If the multirotors props are shrouded, autorotation isn't possible even with variable pitch. Unshrouded props on
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happened to me in my first car that was 17 years old, I used the parking brake to stop, some of that redundant system magic.
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happened to me in my first car that was 17 years old, I used the parking brake to stop, some of that redundant system magic.
According to slashdot logic, that's unpossible as it would definitely have caused your car to spin out or some other such BS, because "the parking brake is not an emergency brake"
Which is a load of hot cockery, but what can you do? Congrats on not dying.
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Since it mostly breaks on the back wheels you do get much reduced breaking. But it is better than nothing.
Yeah, you can maybe get a max of 40% of the braking force. And if you try to threshold brake with the rear, you probably will spin. On the other hand, the car I drive around most has a wholly separate drum brake for parking inside of the hat of the disc brake, which I gather was designed by Bendix way back in the way back. My 1981 300SD actually had Bendix brakes, but I have a 1982 now and it has ATE calipers. They use the same design, though.
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Falls start to become fatal from about 50 feet, and are nearly always fatal from above 100 feet. So for flying cars to be reasonably safe, you'd have to limit them to about 50 ft altitude. Factor in uneven terrain, and that altitude ceiling means there's very little advantage to flying cars vs ground-based cars.
It's also worth pointing out that Musk's Boring idea is the same thing a
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"Tell that to someone whose brakes go out while they're driving."
Happens from time to time when master cylinders fail. Mostly people manage to get the vehicle stopped with engine braking and or the parking brake. Or they end up in a low speed collision with something solid like the vehicle in front of them.
Now having a ball joint fail causing the front wheel to tuck under the car... That's a different story.
But mostly car engines stop running and the car just sort of coasts to a stop.
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Tell that to someone whose brakes go out. And furthermore, broken helicopters don't just drop (helicopters being the closest analogy to a VTOL flying car). The props autorotate [youtu.be]. I'd much rather be in a helicopter that's lost its engine than an airplane.
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I'd much rather be in a helicopter that's lost its engine than an airplane.
Sadly, multicopters (where multi > bi) don't autorotate, and the "flying cars" which are about to hit the market are all multicopters.
I'd rather just be on the ground, so I don't have to worry about whether I will fall out of the sky, unless I'm going someplace across an ocean. Moving quickly on the water is quite inefficient, so far.
I agree, but not for the same reasons as Musk (Score:4, Informative)
I am a major skeptic about the whole flying-car idea. For many reasons, but not the same reasons as Musk.
Here, I am disagreeing with one of Musk's points out of technical nit-pickery, but I DO agree with his overall conclusion that flying cars are not the right answer to personal transportation.
I agree they will be noisy. That will never be fully solved. (And expensive and unsafe, but that's off topic.)
But, Musk's wind objection -- I just don't buy it.
Yes, aircraft generate lift by displacing air downwards. Some inclined plane (either the wings, or the rotor blades) deflects air downwards, creating an equal and opposite force upwards. So yes, all flying machines "create downward wind". Some do it highly efficiently (at optimum cruising speed, a typical fixed-wing plane or even to a lesser extent a helicopter). Some do it a little less efficiently (a fixed wing plane at very low airspeed), and some do it horribly inefficiently (a helicopter or drone hovering).
The efficiency is largely a function of the craft's forward speed through the air, for a very basic Newtonian reason. F = ma.
The upward FORCE (which must counterbalance the aircraft's weight) must be matched by downwards ACCELERATION of some MASS of air. Acceleration is not velocity, it is rate of change of velocity. Therefore, lift comes from the act of imparting new or increased downward velocity on some mass of air. Absolute velocity doesn't help, only increase in velocity. Hold that thought, we'll get back to it.
An aircraft moving forward horizontally encounters a steady supply of new air that does not yet have any vertical velocity. OTOH, once an aircraft that is hovering, has imparted downward velocity on a column of air, it remains within that accelerated column as it tries to accelerate more mass downwards. The established downward velocity of the air doesn't help, only the acceleration (increase) in downward velocity of some part of that air. To solidify this concept, think of "swimming up a waterfall".
Hopefully this illustrates why hovering is highly inefficient, and cruising is much more efficient.
Enter simple economics. Any economically VIABLE system of flying vehicles spends the minimum time hovering and the maximum time cruising. This is the reason helicopters are used only for specialized tasks or by rich people, while fixed wing planes are used for general transportation. While I don't personally believe that flying cars will take off (bad pun semi-intended), if they do, simple economics dictate that they won't spend much time milling around close to their terminals hovering. They will rapidly get a move on along their course. Once they are moving en-route, their "downward wind" is over such a dispersed area that is is essentially immeasurable.
I don't know what exact means they'll use to transition from takeoff to cruise -- rotors, fixed wings, adjustable wings, whatever -- but they won't be concentrating their "downward wind" in one small place for very long. If one's vision of personal air transportation involves any significant time hovering close to the terminal, then economics dictate that it won't succeed. And downward wind during cruise is simply not a problem.
There will be some localized wind right at the terminals, but if you've ever stood nearby when a helicopter takes off, you know that it is windy very strong but very localized, and does not persist long after the helicopter moves away.
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And replying to my own post with a slight topic drift. I am also somewhat skeptical (but less so) about Musk's alternatives.
Boring is a great solution where the cost can be justified, but I'm skeptical of the economies of scale that it's widespread adoption seems to depend upon. And, I'm highly skeptical of the safety proposition -- how do you rescue passengers from a stranded pod in an evacuated underground tube?
I really want Hyperloop to succeed. I'm just not sure I want to drink all the Kool Aid invol
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how do you rescue passengers from a stranded pod in an evacuated underground tube?
TBC is not dependent on hyperloop. You can fill the tunnel however you want. You could just put normal roads in there, or normal rail, or light rail, or a PRT monorail (monorail? monorail!) or a moving walkway or a canal or... use your imagination [youtube.com]. (Personally, I'd imagine away the wheels, and use rail of some sort, whether single or dual. But I imagine the idea is to have dual-mode vehicles that can actually use the network without the sled.)
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The hyperloop becomes a 'roller coaster'. If it's even possible for one to get stuck, you have to space them so they can ebrake before they hit the stuck one. Really needs a way to 'switch tracks' so traffic can divert to stops rather than get them all stuck.
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How much pressure do you get from weak vacuum? At the speeds they're planning on running...I think they'd be smegged.
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Congratulations, you have it entirely backwards.
The maximum efficiency of a prop, in newtons per watt, is 1 / (v_wake + v_freestream), where velocity is in meters per second. The faster you're moving (the freestream velocity), the less thrust you get per watt. Which is why large props are more efficient (more air moved at a lower wake speed), particularly at low speeds, and same for high bypass jet engines.
Now, in terms of "energy per 100km" or "miles per unit energy", obviously a hover yields "infinite jou
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Your objection to the annoyance factor of "downward wind" overlooks the fact that if they are an important means of transportation there will be a lot of them, going over every few seconds, and so what for one "flying car" is "widely dispersed" is not when the total traffic is considered.
Also the argument that "they won't spend much time milling around close to their terminals hovering" is little comfort for anyone anywhere near these terminals, which would need to be in cities to be useful. In fact, withi
repelling gravity? (Score:2)
>> because of the downward force required to keep them in the air
huh! Author must be living in alternate universe...
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Why, umm, yes. To keep your machine in the air, it has to exert a downward force on a shitload of air. Newton's Third and all that.
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The greatest innovation of Apple Computer was their Newton device, which generates the neccessary gravity to keep cars and users from flying off our planet because of the centrifugal force.
Man, you telling us that all we have to do to go to Mars is turn our Apple devices upside down? That's gotta be good for a Nobel Prize.
had them for a 110+ years (Score:2)
so we've had prop and jet propelled flying cars, buses and trucks for over a century. Also spacecraft, which are even scarier when they crash on land
Those are NOT flying cars (Score:2)
They tend to be things like silly-looking airplanes with folding wings, strap-on mini-helicopters, and oversized drone-like craft. Flying cars are what we see in Blade Runner, Back to the Future, The Fifth Element, etc. I.e., devices that meet the following requirements:
1) Almost completely quiet; at worst, a humming sound.
2) Able to hover and maneuver effortlessly.
3) Able to take off and land anywhere effortlessly.
4) Affordable.
I would add a fifth requirement:
5) Fully computer-controlled - most people
Haven't we seen the flying car tried before? (Score:2)
I remember, quite a while ago, reading in Popular Science magazine about the "Moller Air Car", which was another experimental project that claimed to be on the way to selling people personal flying machines, easy enough to pilot so you basically just used a joystick to tell it which direction to go.
That idea seems to have crashed and burned, so to speak.
I think the big challenge with any of these things is going to be getting the FAA to approve their use by the general public. I mean, let's face it. They co
Anxiety-reducing (Score:2)
However, riding in a narrow, sealed, and windowless capsule inside a sealed steel tunnel whizzing around under ground at nearly the speed of sound is nothing but relaxing, eh Elon?
And *I* don't want flying cars, either (Score:2)
Not until *your* EXPENSIVE insurance pays for a computer-controlled, RADAR-guided anti-aircraft gun to be mounted on my roof, to shoot down the teens, the drunks, the "lost control of my vehicle" seniors, and YOU SLASHDOTTERS who are texting while flying, before you crash into my second floor bedroom.
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It would make more sense to live in a bunker. If you shoot down an incoming aircraft it just means flaming chunks will be hitting your roof.
Re:Look at all the anti vehicle protection round p (Score:4, Informative)
If flying cars are available the defenses will be useless.
They already are, if that's what you mean by useless. It's already possible to practice flying in simulation, then get some manuals and learn how to actually start up a plane, then stroll onto an airfield someplace and steal one since so many of them have basically no security.
You won't be allowed to control a flying taxi manually, and they will be totally dependent on their computers to fly so you're not going to be trivially overriding them from inside the cockpit.
Re: Look at all the anti vehicle protection round (Score:2)
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How much time did he end up doing? I never heard, just that he crash landed and got busted.
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It does not matter, cars are involved in hundreds of thousands of minor accidents every year. Once you put the word flying into anything so the word minor disappears from the accident, no such thing as a minor flying accident, just how many died and how many survived and do that over a metropolitan area and add how many innocent bystanders died. The more flying vehicles the greater the number of accidents, done and finished.
Underground automated transport corridor, makes by far the most sense and is bound
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Like 9-11 and Peal Harbor, that might work. Once.
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Does that ring any bells?
Need coffee...
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Like 9-11 and Peal Harbor, that might work. Once.
Once per airfield, for several repetitions, before anything substantive is done — if history is any indication.
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If flying cars are available the defenses will be useless.
Naw, the flying cars won't work well enough to be a security problem.
Seriously, You're absolutely correct. I expect that once the problem becomes apparent, the use of Personal Air Vehicles will be SEVERELY restricted. Might still be some usage for taxis and delivery services -- if the vehicles can be made safe enough, if they can't land on people, and can really be kept out of restricted areas including military bases, public areas, parks, etc, etc, etc.
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Now that you mention it, these flying cars are sounding better and better. I'm starting to reconsider.
I bet you could put the turbine/gensets, batteries, controllers and motors from a large one into a little one. Build custom 5 blade 3d printed titanium impellers, start pulling some Gs.
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Ehm, how is a "flying car" - which, in the current incarnations that actually are able to fly, really means a roadable airplane, including the requirements to have a pilot license and flight training - different from renting/stealing a Cessna from the nearest general aviation airport and smashing it somewhere?
The entire point of the IS calling for use of cars was because *anyone* can drive one and they are trivial to obtain. Neither of which is true when it comes to anything flying.
I somehow don't see this
Re: Elon Musk (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are GAY WITH EACH OTHE (Score:5, Funny)
The real reason Elon Musk wouldn't want flying cars is because his [SECRET!] boyfriend Jeff Bezos would actually have to fly the car due to FAA regulations.
The real reason is because Elon is boring.
Re: Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are GAY WITH EACH OTH (Score:2)
Flying cars aren't going to become more practical. Cars, with all those amenities cannot fly. You want an air conditioner? Too bad. It will make the flying car too heavy. A flying car isn't really a flying car at all. It doesn't make sense because your optimizing the vehicle for two different things. Honestly the noise and wind issue is the least of my concerns.
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Flying cars aren't going to become more practical...
Yeah, but flying-car projects are attracting investors, which flies even if their cars don't. That said, there is a niche for fuel efficient flying vehicles that can take off and land vertically. Lithium Aviation's all electric prototype suggests they might fill that niche profitably. And there may be others who can do the same, or even carve out their own niche. Capitalism doesn't have to make sense, just money.
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By that, I assume you mean that his investment in his new Boring Company means he has a vested interest in preventing flying cars: they're never going to use his tunnels.
Re:Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are GAY WITH EACH OTHE (Score:5, Informative)
The tunnel is actually plausible. Tunnel boring can be done for about $10,000 per foot. So a 20 mile stretch from San Jose to Palo Alto, with a tube in each direction, would cost roughly $2B, which is affordable. For a 10% ROI, it would need to generate about $600k per day in tolls. If the toll was $10 each way, that would be 30,000 round trips. Since it could draw traffic from both US-101 and I-280, that is plausible.
Flying cars for mass transportation, with existing tech, are a fantasy.
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The tunnel is actually plausible. Tunnel boring can be done for about $10,000 per foot. So a 20 mile stretch from San Jose to Palo Alto, with a tube in each direction, would cost roughly $2B, which is affordable. For a 10% ROI, it would need to generate about $600k per day in tolls. If the toll was $10 each way, that would be 30,000 round trips. Since it could draw traffic from both US-101 and I-280, that is plausible.
Flying cars for mass transportation, with existing tech, are a fantasy.
Talk about knowing your facts! Impressed. I too think flying cars for the masses are a fantasy. They do attract investors, though. There's probably a niche market for flying cars in a tax bracket higher than I'll ever see.
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For a 10% ROI, it would need to generate about $600k per day in tolls.
It would need to generate $600k per day in profit, so you have to account for operating and maintenance costs on top of that.
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If the toll was $10 each way,
Holy crap! Who the F would pay $10 each way on a toll? It costs me $20 to fill my little Honda up with fuel, your proposed toll would cost me an entire week's would of fuel in one day's worth of tolls.
$10 a trip toll would never fly, no one would pay that much to commute one way to work each day.
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People who don't want to spend an extra hour+ in stop and go traffic would be my guess.
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Holy crap! Who the F would pay $10 each way on a toll?
It depends. How far does this tunnel take me? If it will get me not just down the same route as the 280 but also get me under the mountains so I don't have to take the 17, I would probably pay even more.
It's not really that simple, though. You could put any old highway in the tunnel, but nobody wants to actually drive themselves in a tunnel for that long. If you're going to be in a tunnel, you're definitely going to want to watch TV, or read a book, or take a nap, or screw... or do any of the other number o
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Tunnel boring can be done for about $10,000 per foot.
I'm not sure where you are getting this number from. Tunnel boring cost is highly dependent on the size of the tunnel (approximately proportional to area or radius, I forget which). It is also extremely prone to cost overruns, as in the Big Dig. For a car tunnel you also need to provide ventilation, emergency exit systems, signalling, and other costly additions.
Instead of building a tunnel from San Jose to Palo Alto, you could build an elevated highway for a much lower cost. Alternatively, you could build a
Re:Really? (Score:4, Informative)
Most airplanes are circumscribed to landing and taking off in special areas called airports and their use is highly regulated. That diminishes somewhat the worries people have of seeing their neighbors (who they've seen driving into trees and parked cars) attempting to master flight.
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I'll give you 2 but not 1 as the subject is "flying cars", which is to say ubiquitous transportation. If they aren't "taking off and landing wherever they want" then they aren't flying cars. & if not, what is the point?
Besides which, even with automated pilots, there's still the issue of noise. I have close friends that live near St Tropez where the over-use of helicopters by those rich enough to afford their use has already produced a reaction in the neighbouring communities, restricting their use. Fly
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The assumption is that if flying cars were common, there would be vastly more locations. As they basically function like helicopters (in most conceptions - VTOL), they need only something equivalent to a helipad, not an airport. Which is much cheaper and smaller footprint than an airport.
To get to the point of allowing takeoff and landing from, say, a driveway, you'd have to have a long track record of excellent proven safety, and levels of noise reduction that current technology doesn't yet support. It's
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Rei, you quite visibly do not live in close proximity with or under the flightpath of a helipad that is used daily (150m). The acoustic pollution of anything large enough to transport people will quickly render their daily use so obnoxious that neighbours will band together and outlaw them (as is coming to pass in the south of France around St Tropez). Small drones delivering packages do not have the same weight & noise constraints.
Re:Really? (Score:4, Informative)
He does have a point in that anything owned and operated by the general public tends to be maintained to a lower standard than anything owned and operated in an industry which has rigorous maintenance standards and penalties for not following them, such as the airline industry...
Even with private aircraft and pilots, the pre-flight walk rounds can take more time than the flight - precisely because it is necessary to ensure some level of safety.
That is what terrifies me about the flying car concept - all the ideas are around private ownership and operation. Knowing that some people in the UK are more than willing to not maintain their cars to the level of passing a £35 governmental standard test (the MOT, once a year) and instead drive potentially unsafe cars around illegally, I don't want that situation when those cars take to the air...
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He does have a point in that anything owned and operated by the general public tends to be maintained to a lower standard than anything owned and operated in an industry which has rigorous maintenance standards and penalties for not following them, such as the airline industry...
Nobody is trying to sell flying cars to the mass public- yet? I hope not, too. The flying cars which will actually be overhead any time soon will all belong to corporations, possibly the ride"sharing" companies, maybe taxi companies. Maybe Google, or Amazon, who knows.
Even with private aircraft and pilots, the pre-flight walk rounds can take more time than the flight - precisely because it is necessary to ensure some level of safety.
Well, it's going to be a whole lot less necessary with aircraft which resemble nothing so much as a scaled up R/C quadcopter. Presumably most of them will be at least octocopters, with at least one design which is supposedly going to be in the
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So you're predicting the batteries will be monitored for approximately the first 7 years?
I don't know why it's common to say the numbers in this order, probably because it started out as just "24x7" as an abbreviation of "twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week". But 7 years ought to cover it. How long do you think they're going to keep using the same batteries in a shared aircraft, anyway?
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So your concept is that something statistically likely to crash and injure people would be approved by regulators, rather than manufacturers being forced to prove reliability in real-world usage conditions before being granted approval?
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What % of test failures are lack of maintenance and what % are illegal tunes?
Some 'tunes' are idiotic and dangerous, (e.g spring cuts, camber, blown alcohol on the street), but are still 'different' than 'lack of brakes' etc.
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No. The people my comment is directed to, understand it just fine. Not being idiots and having some understanding of vehicles.
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About private aircraft, it is not completely true.
In France, we have certified aircraft and ultralight.
The requirements are much more drastic on certified aircraft : the exam is more difficult, there are medical checkups, sustained activity requirements, scheduled and exceptional maintenance done by certified mechanics, etc...
With ultralight, anything goes. Once you and your plane have a license, you are good to go for the rest of your lives. No more question asked, except for the radio equipment. Maintaina
Re: Really? (Score:2)
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Yes, because when people talk about flying cars, they totally mean manual piloting.
Um...
THANK YOU! Everybody believes in free energy (Score:2)
Everybody seems to think energy is free. Flying cars use so much more energy it is amazing that it never comes up; instead there is nothing but talk of other problems involved. Those problems are nothing, getting past the physics and cost are the insurmountable problems. Just look how people deal with gas going up in price and their car's millage... that is just pushing you along the surface, it doesn't lift you. Then there is the waste energy given off as HEAT-- when you consume massive amounts of "free
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Please show* how flying cars would cause the oceans to boil.
(* hint: you can't and they wouldn't. Not that anyone claims that all normal cars would ever be replaced by flying "cars" (really personal VTOL aircraft) )
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Everybody seems to think energy is free
Well, nearly free. Just need a few more windmills. For details, check in with the Slashdot editors.
(Or ask Donald Trump. He'll explain how coal powered flying cars are gonna make America great again.)
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eh, there really are experiments to see if for example antimatter has antigravity type interaction with regular matter. No such thing has been detected yet though. Also there have been experiments to see if there are other forces than the ones of the Standard Model plus gravity.
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Helicopters do in fact guillotine people from time to time. If your neighbors are landing one in their driveway while you walk past, you really should be worried enough about it to keep a close eye on it and be careful.
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I am sorry for your humor-impaired state, and wish you a speedy recovery as your robot body searches for valuable minerals on the plains of Europa.
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Seriously, if you keep the bloody things below say 500 meters above terrain and keep them out of controlled airspace, you may not need ATC. They can just negotiate right of way with each other. .. In principle anyway. ... Might even work.