brewcrew4you wrote:If you are in a car and it breaks down, you (usually) can pull over to the side of the road. In a plane, you crash.
I'm guessing that if flying cars became commercialized, there'd be numerous backup systems that would not allow the vehicle to crash. However, the main thing that would need to be worked out, in my opinion, is auto-pilot and some sort of airway 'freeway' sort of thing.
Unfortunately, you can't engineer planes so that they "don't crash". Every year, at the EAA show in Wisconsin (a big air show, and a bunch of amateur pilots fly in) a handful of folks crash their little Cessna's all over the state trying to fly over for the show. These are people who actually have taken flying lessons, maintain their aircraft, etc. Now, if you put Joe Blow out there in a plane, who doesn't even know how to change his own oil in his car, there's a decent chance that preventative maintainance won't be properly performed. You'd end up with smoldering cane/plar carcasses everwhere.
brewcrew4you wrote:If you are in a car and it breaks down, you (usually) can pull over to the side of the road. In a plane, you crash.
I'm guessing that if flying cars became commercialized, there'd be numerous backup systems that would not allow the vehicle to crash. However, the main thing that would need to be worked out, in my opinion, is auto-pilot and some sort of airway 'freeway' sort of thing.
Unfortunately, you can't engineer planes so that they "don't crash". Every year, at the EAA show in Wisconsin (a big air show, and a bunch of amateur pilots fly in) a handful of folks crash their little Cessna's all over the state trying to fly over for the show. These are people who actually have taken flying lessons, maintain their aircraft, etc. Now, if you put Joe Blow out there in a plane, who doesn't even know how to change his own oil in his car, there's a decent chance that preventative maintainance won't be properly performed. You'd end up with smoldering cane/plar carcasses everwhere.
What I'm saying is that the only way the planes would crash if they became commercialized would be mechanical reasons. Auto-pilot would take away any real driving that would be done. Also, I'm also fairly certain that due to the fact that these 'planes' would be small-scale (meaning smaller engines), backup systems could help after a mechanical failure.
davidmarver wrote:I'm guessing that if flying cars became commercialized, there'd be numerous backup systems that would not allow the vehicle to crash. However, the main thing that would need to be worked out, in my opinion, is auto-pilot and some sort of airway 'freeway' sort of thing.
Unfortunately, you can't engineer planes so that they "don't crash". Every year, at the EAA show in Wisconsin (a big air show, and a bunch of amateur pilots fly in) a handful of folks crash their little Cessna's all over the state trying to fly over for the show. These are people who actually have taken flying lessons, maintain their aircraft, etc. Now, if you put Joe Blow out there in a plane, who doesn't even know how to change his own oil in his car, there's a decent chance that preventative maintainance won't be properly performed. You'd end up with smoldering cane/plar carcasses everwhere.
What I'm saying is that the only way the planes would crash if they became commercialized would be mechanical reasons. Auto-pilot would take away any real driving that would be done. Also, I'm also fairly certain that due to the fact that these 'planes' would be small-scale (meaning smaller engines), backup systems could help after a mechanical failure.
Crashes are inevitable, but I think the rate of collisions in air would be dramatically lower than the rate cars collide. That, coupled with the backup system Marver and the article suggested, would make air travel a lot safer.
theclefe wrote:Crashes are inevitable, but I think the rate of collisions in air would be dramatically lower than the rate cars collide. That, coupled with the backup system Marver and the article suggested, would make air travel a lot safer.
With normal flying around I would agree with this, but don't discount "Flying under the Influence." Landing would cause some problems.
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roninmedia wrote:Another point in why other nations can catch up quickly to the United States in economic prowess. They can not only copy the technology advantages but they have an advantage of instantly building state of the art infrastructure without incurring the costs of tearing down the old. I thought about when I was at an engineering firm interning and we were discussing alternative fuels and we talked about the horrendous cost we would have to undertake to convert our gasoline infrastructure to say hydrogen fuel or electricity.
An economist from Peru named Hernando De Soto wrote a couple of books that also suggest that another factor that 'helps' underdeveloped countries along that line is that the systems through which land is titled are much less secure and it is easier to build new stuff b/c a lot of development is on land with little or no secure title to it so, if you want to build something, you can just run in through w/o having to haggle about eminent domain, buy people off, feud over what fair market value might be, etc.
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by brewcrew4you » Fri Aug 03, 2007 10:19 pm 
