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Originally Posted by O2pilot
(Post 2623663)
Comparing a car to a plane is ridiculous. They have been working on self-driving cars for over a decade. They still haven’t deployed them yet. You can teach a teenager how to drive a car in 5 minutes its that simple. Making the jump to an airliner is an exponential leap, and its not tech that is the limiting factor, its the infrastructure. Boeing and Airbus would first have to start designing a plane to fly autonomously, which nobody will buy now. Also ATC and the existing human-powered system won’t integrate well with autonomous planes. The risk factor is basically ZERO for aviation, and much higher for cars. Also you over-estimate how expensive human pilots are. We are 7-8% of the total cost of a ticket. How much more is it going to cost to redesign planes to operate without humans. More than 7-8% of an existing plane for sure. How long will airlines have autonomous planes sitting around because nobody will fly in them. How long will manufacturers build them if airlines stop buying them? If just ONE crashes, then NOBODY will ever get on one again. Comparing cars to planes is ridiculous. I got this from listening to my brother-in-law who is an engineer at Waymo (you can google them). He said 30 years at the earliest for commercial aviation, and it won’t happen first in the US. He said its been a monumental effort with Billions of dollars of investments to just get a fricking car to drive by itself. He also told me when I asked “Why is it so important to self-drive a car. Its not that hard”. He said the #1 reason is the TIME OF THE DRIVER. When you commute to work, and its an hour is many cities, that time is virtually wasted. You could be working on something, sleeping, doing whatever, but NOT driving. That makes it very valuable to people. People on a plane already aren’t doing anything. So whether there are pilots, or not, it doesn’t matter to them.
No investor, venture capitalist, or startup founder wants to spend that kind of money, time and effort to knock 7-8% off the cost of an industry. There isn’t enough money there. Economics are what keeps us in our seat. Yeah, if there was some massive pilot shortage and 30% of all flights had to be cancelled and they needed to solve the problem of lack of pilots, there would be enough impetus to do this, but there isn’t. There are just enough pilots who are worried about being replaced because someone at McDonalds lost their job to a machine that takes a customer’s order, so airline pilot must be next. The level of self-importance of airline pilots never ceases to amaze me. I only have 15 years left as a pilot. I’m not worried about it at all. |
A brief history refresher:
1903 First airplane flight. 1919 First Atlantic crossing. 1939 First turbojet flight. 1947 Sound barrier broken. 1944 V-2 Rocket. 1961 First manned space flight. 1952 Sputnik. 1969 Men land on the Moon. 1935 DC-3. 1952 First jet airliner. 1969 First supersonic jet airliner. Seventeen years is more than enough for a revolution. |
Originally Posted by robthree
(Post 2624683)
A brief history refresher:
1903 First airplane flight. 1919 First Atlantic crossing. 1939 First turbojet flight. 1947 Sound barrier broken. 1944 V-2 Rocket. 1961 First manned space flight. 1952 Sputnik. 1969 Men land on the Moon. 1935 DC-3. 1952 First jet airliner. 1969 First supersonic jet airliner. Seventeen years is more than enough for a revolution. |
Originally Posted by robthree
(Post 2624683)
A brief history refresher:
1903 First airplane flight. 1919 First Atlantic crossing. 1939 First turbojet flight. 1947 Sound barrier broken. 1944 V-2 Rocket. 1961 First manned space flight. 1952 Sputnik. 1969 Men land on the Moon. 1935 DC-3. 1952 First jet airliner. 1969 First supersonic jet airliner. Seventeen years is more than enough for a revolution. |
All the unmanned piloting reminds me of the old statement, given an infinite amount of time, a typewriter, and plenty of paper a monkey will eventually compose the entire works of Shakespeare. In some lesser amount of time, in theory, an algorithm will be developed to reliably negotiate ground congestion at some of the busiest airports.
In 1969, the first lunar landing would have been a fatal disaster if former test pilot Neil Armstrong had not taken the controls away from the computer to fly over a rock field and land safely with only one and a half seconds of fuel left. |
Without following this thread or reading the previous posts, I will gather that there is some discussion as to the future of unmanned flight.
My input will be to say that we hired a retired Air Force gentleman who was a base commander in Afghanistan for 10 months. Guess what most of his time was spent writing reports on . . . crashes of drones. |
Originally Posted by robthree
(Post 2624683)
A brief history refresher:
1903 First airplane flight. 1919 First Atlantic crossing. 1939 First turbojet flight. 1947 Sound barrier broken. 1944 V-2 Rocket. 1961 First manned space flight. 1952 Sputnik. 1969 Men land on the Moon. 1935 DC-3. 1952 First jet airliner. 1969 First supersonic jet airliner. Seventeen years is more than enough for a revolution. |
Originally Posted by robthree
(Post 2624683)
A brief history refresher:
1903 First airplane flight. 1919 First Atlantic crossing. 1939 First turbojet flight. 1947 Sound barrier broken. 1944 V-2 Rocket. 1961 First manned space flight. 1952 Sputnik. 1969 Men land on the Moon. 1935 DC-3. 1952 First jet airliner. 1969 First supersonic jet airliner. Seventeen years is more than enough for a revolution. |
Originally Posted by ron kent
(Post 2624984)
Dude, we’re still flying guppies.
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Originally Posted by Grumble
(Post 2624982)
During all these achievements I’ve been promised a flying car. Still waiting....
Unfortunately it is the same picture they had on the cover 40 years ago. |
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