Skip the roads, highways, rails, etc

[O3H]

A complete RE-think in transit for a region.
World’s first ELECTRIC vertical take-off and landing JET.
Skip the noise of helicoptors, but still land on buildings.
https://lilium.com/
https://youtu.be/Jterxus7V3g

[Zacha341]

How did they do away with the vertical rudder so associated with wing aircraft? Well not so much on the fighter jets, still?

[O3H]

If you looked in-depth, they use independently adjustable thrust motors
for the stability, removing the need of a "traditional" vertical rudder

[Meddle]

Attachment 36148

.....

[Zacha341]

Dig that, thanks. When I have more time I'll check that out. I do like aviation. Interesting that additionally birds do not require the vertical rudder...

If you looked in-depth, they use independently adjustable thrust motors for the stability, removing the need of a "traditional" vertical rudder

[Jimaz]

... Interesting that additionally birds do not require the vertical rudder...

They're less effective at low air speeds.

I saw another video that said this wasn't possible until recently because of recent advances in battery technology. I suppose that means we can expect other innovations elsewhere.

[O3H]

It is a true PARADIGM shift - a complete different model for transit.

Perhaps "some" select areas have no streets at all, zero, none.
Items drop in from above , including transportation in and out.
Faster than any Uber/Lyft and that translates into convenience .

VTOL may cause a re-think in logistics of people transport.

https://lilium.com/images/news/co-founders-eagle.jpg

https://youtu.be/yz9c_Ifa3sU

They definitely have competition from the upscale drone arena
https://youtu.be/OazFiIhwAEs?t=1m10s

Big City - point to point
https://youtu.be/jO24YaCYu80

The world is quickly changing, and it may require "breaking" patterns
https://youtu.be/DhKTCbbqbaE

[Atticus]

It is a true PARADIGM shift - a complete different model for transit.

Perhaps "some" select areas have no streets at all, zero, none.
Items drop in from above , including transportation in and out.
Faster than any Uber/Lyft and that translates into convenience .

VTOL may cause a re-think in logistics of people transport.

https://lilium.com/images/news/co-founders-eagle.jpg

https://youtu.be/yz9c_Ifa3sU

They definitely have competition from the upscale drone arena
https://youtu.be/OazFiIhwAEs?t=1m10s

Big City - point to point
https://youtu.be/jO24YaCYu80

The world is quickly changing, and it may require "breaking" patterns
https://youtu.be/DhKTCbbqbaE

Just what we need. People are bad enough drivers on the ground. Let’s put those same drivers in charge of mini planes. Sounds like a great idea.

[O3H]

Pretty sure the regulatory agencies will insist on typing in the location and then it becomes hands off aka autonomous flying/landing.
Software will eliminate the scatterbrained idiots controlling vehicles

[Jason]

This is a hilariously awful idea. Transportation is mainly a geometric problem.

Cars can drive very closely together when they need to [[bumper to bumper at worst). When they have enough space and the road is properly engineered, cars can travel very fast [[think of the autobahn). Those aircraft need a lot more space in between them than cars do, not only because of bad piloting, but just because of the nature of flying. Wind varies a lot, and simple gusts of wind can cause problems. And when cars hit each other it's usually just a small fender bender, with aircraft any kind of accident whatsoever means the passengers die, and any buildings or people at the crash site also die.

So considering the amount of buffer space each aircraft needs, you simply can't have thousands of these things flying in the air at once. The system would have barely any capacity. If it took 5 minutes to safely land, unload and load passengers, and take off, each station would have a max capacity of 12 passengers per hour. If a few dozen people arrived at the station at around the same time it would take hours to serve them all. For reference a single bus holds about 40 people. You could say that these things travel very fast so the wait times are compensated by fast travel times, but the faster they go the more buffer space they need in the air which makes the problem even worse.

If you have stations serving multiple routes [[for example, two suburban stations that both can go to a downtown station) then you have an uneven number of aircraft leaving and arriving at different stations, meaning that during peak hours you'd have 2 aircraft per 5 minutes [[1 from each station every 5 minutes) arriving at the downtown station, but only one can land per 5 minutes, so you'd have half of the aircraft in a holding pattern around the station and the wait times would skyrocket further.

If you have stations with multiple landing pads then you can multiply the capacity/frequency, but then you'd be turning downtown into an airfield. Cars are smaller and require less space for maneuvering, and require less space for storage.

Something that might work better is if the capacity for each aircraft was higher. Flying buses might hypothetically work from a transit perspective if it was an airport shuttle [[passengers slowly coming throughout the day rather than everyone needing to be at work at 9:00 AM) but probably not from a technological perspective.

I do agree that this could be very useful in places like rural Alaska where they already use small aircraft for getting around.

But in cities you can just build a simple rail line and instead of carrying 12 passengers per hour it could carry tens of thousands of passengers per hour.

[O3H]

I'll directly challenge the geometric thing for urban transportation
during most of the day when people move about, got to meeting, clients, etc. Mathematical Geometrics really only involves peak hours.

[O3H]

Time to re-vist that concept of wind over an airplane wing.
Create more wind, and you'll get more lift.

https://www.nasa.gov/centers/armstro...ts/FS-109.html

https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/...-of-propellers