Originally Posted by
RckyMtHigh
I would say the only real benefit of unmanned tacair is not risking the political fallout of a shootdown. Look at the latest Syrian strike - no one came close to penetrating their airspace. Why risk it when you can launch missiles or a wave of drones from over the horizon? I thought I heard that the next gen fighter was going to be optionally manned. I could be wrong there.
You're confusing low-intensity, politically-sensitive, stand-off meddling with war. Nobody in the military is making that mistake.
The priority for combat aircraft is winning against peer competitors. They can use MQ-9 if they need to bomb third-world ground formations and ensure none of our people get hurt.
Originally Posted by
FlyGuy1986
How are people going to feel when you can get them LA to Paris in an hour on an unmanned scramjet? Oh it's a fully configurable detachable cabin equipped with a ballistic escape system in case of any issues. Or you can sit with your knees in your chest for 14 hours on the current fleet of aircraft because it's got a pilot up front.
You can do that with manned aircraft. Getting rid of pilots doesn't make it faster. From a technology readiness level, supersonic airliners or even scramjets are far more plausible than un-piloted pax aircraft. Artificial Generalized Intelligence does not exist, and no one knows how to make one. To say nothing of the ethical, certification, and reliability/safety issues if it did exist.
Originally Posted by
FlyGuy1986
Maybe Musk is going to bore tunnels across the US and link cities together with 700 mph mag lev trains running off green energy.
Maybe someday. But that infrastructure is going to cost about $1 Billion per mile (in the flatlands). The flight levels are free, and you can stack and offset planes. You need to break this down to the basics: Greed. Who's going to pay for it, and what do they expect to get out of it? If you can't answer that, it's not happening.
Kind of like going to the moon... we did that to beat the Ruskies. If Uncle Sugar is going to write the check, he'll need a darn good reason. If businesses are going to write the check, they'll need to be able to articulate technology readiness and an ROI timeline to the BoD.
Originally Posted by
FlyGuy1986
I don't know what the future is for airline travel. I do know we went from a powered kite with one dude laying on it to landing on the moon in 65 years. 20 years ago no one was thinking you would be walking around with a powerful computer in the palm of your hand that instantly connected you to the entire world. Something will come along to revolutionize travel. I'm not smart enough to know when and what form that will take.
The horse and buggy manufacturers never thought the automobile would catch on.
Interesting conversation though.
I'm not saying it's not going to happen, I'm saying many folks don't understand all the hurdles. I am by no means going to ignore history and make blanket statements about what cannot happen in the future.
Frankly I'm a tad disappointed in the lack of progress in aerospace and space since I was a kid. I expected more by now. Politics and economics got in the way of cool whiz-bang new stuff.