can we just please get some normal, boring, safe, efficient trains that actually function instead of this gizmo bullshit?
Right? I’d love some decent trainage in the US.
But when I inevitably win the lottery and become a billionaire overnight I won’t want to share a filthy train car with other people, I’ll want flying taxis that charge $100 a kilometer.
I’ll never understand the eternal hype around “flying cars”. Fuckers out here can hardly drive on a 2d road. Now you want to introduce a third axis on them?
I guarantee that if the general public gets their hands on a real “flying car”, it’ll take about 2 weeks before some drunk idiot commits a mini 9/11.
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The FAA mandates extensive training for anyone who wants to fly, regardless of the form of the aircraft.
Apparently not if the mass and maximum speed are both low enough. The Jetson One (which has been taking preorders for at least a couple of years but still isn’t shipping) says it won’t require a license in the US.
It looks pretty impractical, produces an obnoxious amount of wind during landing and takeoff, and has a range of only 30km, but, still… it or things like it probably will actually be a reality for some rich people pretty soon.
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& you are correct about airspace being regulated. Just because an ultralight doesn’t require a license doesn’t mean you can just fly it anywhere with no training on how to get airspace clearance either. I imagine they will eventually develop something like an automated version of the LAANC clearance process for drone pilots, but it will take a while to develop the regulations for sure, if they even get that far.
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Right? Cool, now the road goes over your house! Along with the Amazon drones.
Drink idiots hit things in cars all the time.
Make the test to acquire your license actually difficult to the skill level required instead of the “you can take two left turns and park shitty, here’s your license” level of difficulty that most states use for road vehicles.
Dog if you make one mistake you can kill so many more people than in a crash. This is a horrible idea.
So require more training and certification for use?
Are you guys all seriously hung up on the word “car” here and trying to imply that eVTOLs can’t just come with its own infrastructure and pilot requirements independent of what we currently have?
It doesn’t have to be like cars, where the skill level of the driver can be non existent and still pass licensing.
I just can’t believe I’m in the tech community of a supposedly leftist website having to argue for a technology that beyond small local airstrips (literally a grass field with charging stations and basic rest stop equipment) needs no additional ground infrastructure.
The opposition? Begin large scale rail projects that will require we carve through a lot of natural resources as well as acquire the resources to build it with.
I just have to double check to make sure I didn’t fall into the wrong internet rabbit hole.
Im saying that it doesnt matter if the requirements are super high, it’s still dangerous and I don’t really see how the use cases are justifiable. It also doesn’t scale well with a lot of people. You could easily just build rail or use a bus and make a bus lane.
I just can’t believe I’m in the tech community of a supposedly leftist website having to argue for a technology that beyond small local airstrips (literally a grass field with charging stations and basic rest stop equipment) needs no additional ground infrastructure.
The opposition? Begin large scale rail projects that will require we carve through a lot of natural resources as well as acquire the resources to build it with.
🤣
I got my driver’s license when I was 18, after studying for the test and practicing for several months on a learner’s permit.
Now I’m 40. I’ve never been retested. I have completely forgotten what’s on the exam. I’ve developed a whole bunch of bad driving habits, particularly with the advent of smart phones. And nobody is going to challenge my license renewal so long as I can pass an eye exam every 10 years.
Trains and Trams please and thank you
No. Only the promise of a single-person direct-to-destination fee-for-service that ends up being a giant scam.
We will never build mass transit in this country. You can’t make us.
You forgot your /s
Fuck that just built trams and trains
there are literally rails behind my house why is there not a tram on it to go across town idk. Cargobonly passes once every hour lmao
Do you have any idea how much time and resources it would take to construct high speed rail across the US compared to small local airstrips for VTOLs?
Do you have a idea how much more efficient it would be?
Do you know how much more utility and efficiency actual public transport has?
Flying is a horrible option for short range public transport.
An order of magnitude less than carrying the same cargo via VTOLs.
Jesus Christ I don’t even know why I bother arguing with people who will constantly move the goal posts. We aren’t talking about cargo, we are talking about transporting people, fucks sake.
This place really did take the dumbest of reddit.
Fucking waste of resources.
We already have “flying cars”. They’re called helicopters, and you need training and a license to fly them. Just like you’ll need for this thing and just like you need for a normal road-going car.
Ohio is also the state which has the highest per-capita production of astronauts, with only New York and California producing more in terms of raw numbers.
I wonder, what is it about Ohio that encourages people to flee the planet with such zeal?
Ya, it’s almost like once you’ve seen Ohio you have this urge to get off the ground. The planet even, if possible. You no longer want to touch anything else attached to Ohio.
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You’re right, failure is possible so we should never try anything, ever.
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I’m hoping regulations get in the way of this. The FAA is barely comfy letting people fly a drone beyond line of sight with a waiver, fully automated flight for untrained passengers is going to take some doing.
Wasn’t there some controversy with who had the first flying machine? There was supposedly some guy in CT that flew an aircraft before the brothers?
EDIT - found this article Three states bicker over ‘first in flight’ claim
Go to India and they will tell you that Right Brothers stole an Indian genius sketch and killed him
I’m making this claim based on the Wright Bros exhibit at the Smithsonian Air and space museum…
One of the genius things that they did was invent scaled testing (I’m not 100% sure I can make this claim, but I’d be happy to learn it I was wrong). Rather than building the device and testing it, which killed a lot of people through history, they built miniature components and tested them individually to prove concepts, and THEN built their production version in iterations.
Like, to test airfoil designs, they built a table top sized wind tunnel, put a miniature airfoil in, and evaluated its performance, and made determinations for the final product. This SIGNIFICANTLY lowered design costs and prototyping at the time.
This also happened to result in an airplane.
Probably helped lower some risk, too.
