Originally Posted by
LineTroll
In 30 years I see VTOL technology being utilized in transport aircraft to minimize the space needed for air travel. As cities increase in size and real estate becomes harder and harder to secure in great enough numbers for the amount of air traffic that we will see in the future, traditional airports will decrease and we will see more heliport style air stations.
In a very few limited applications, yes.
VTOL's are inherently far more complicated and less efficient than standard fixed-wing aircraft. They are also slower, and are unlikely to have long-range applications (more than a couple of hours).
I think the V-22 design will be reasonably well suited for certain short-range applications, but they will have to be fanatic about maintenance...there are quite a few moving parts and subsystems on that design which are single-point safe. Failure = Death.
Fixed wing transports only have three single-point safe parts: Two wing spars and the vertical stabilizer.