2w ago

Flying cars crash into each other at Chinese air show

www.bbc.com

Flying cars crash into each other at air show in China

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/36069403

cross-posted from: https://lemy.lol/post/52477761

Fuck Cars @lemmy.world

technocrit @lemmy.dbzer0.com

2w ago

Flying cars crash into each other at Chinese air show

www.bbc.com /news/articles/cn5qk4de997o

World News @quokk.au

all_i_see @lemy.lol

2w ago

Flying cars crash into each other at Chinese air show

www.bbc.com /news/articles/cn5qk4de997o

34 comments

Just in case anyone was wondering why we don't do that.
- Now imagine hundreds of them populating the skies over a densely populated city, just to carry a few hundred rich people around.
  
  When you say it like that, it sounds better in some ways and worse in others.
- You need a fully automated and certified air traffic control first. That's only been discussed for a free decades now so any time now it'll arrive. Nah, nobody wants to put in any funding or take on the liability.
- Sure, a person might have said that. They'd have been right about the danger but wrong about our risk tolerance. It's hard enough to keep people from becoming water balloons in a simple collision on the ground (though things have definitely improved in that regard over the past century). It's also a much bigger problem to run out of fuel or have an engine failure in midair than on the ground in the vast majority of situations.
Not the air show. Just a rehearsal. One vehicle went up into flames. No deaths, one seriously injured.
Saved you a click.
And thus the reason we don't have flying cars. That was two. Imagine the flaming hell that would be raining down if we had commute traffic numbers in the sky.
- We don't have flying cars because people are fucking dumb, and because the viable options are loud as hell.
  We absolutely have the technology, and if there were a drive to make it affordable there would be more significant research into doing so.
  To do a flying car, you need to simulate friction in the air, with significant enough force to prevent colision, while also maintaining low enough noise pollution to be acceptable to the average citizens. This second part is why we don't have Personal helicopters, despite aircraft being relatively affordable (in my cursory search I found two Helicopters less than 200K, one barely more than 100k, if there were significant drive to make them mainstream for the public they'd presumably be much cheaper, benefitting from economies of scale.)
  Additionally, how do we as a society handle ATC for flying cars? Emergency stops? Impromptu repairs? Birds in the props‽
  I'm not trying to naysay the retrofuturistic image we all want for the world. I am saying it probably shouldn't include flying cars. Especially if they're just Personal quadcopters.
People can't even handle a zip merge, da fuck we need flying cars for, lmao, another technobro invention that only thinks about the individual and not the wider effect on society
- The sky is huge. In theory you should be able to avoid most crashes just by separation rules which can be automated. I didn’t make this up, it’s literally a thing that exists called Big Sky Theory.
“Flying car” is a bullshit term. They are aircraft and must be treated as such.
Is that even a car? It just looks like a massive drone.
- Cars travel on the ground. These are indeed massive drones with the capacity to lift humans. The media won't give up "The Jetsons" flying car term (regardless of how impractical and unsafe the concept of layman operating in 3D space is). These are just electric, multi-rotor aircraft. My rant is over.
  
  I don't know about your definition. The term comes from a two-wheeled chariot it seems (though the etymology of that seems to be a word meaning "to run"). It's been used from everything from chariots, to train cars, to street cars, to automobiles. They all share two things in common. They're an enclosed container meant to carry things, and they've got wheels.
  I don't think the wheel thing is fundamental to the definition anymore. Anything traveling on the ground is going to have wheels. The "flying" part let's you know how it travels, the car part informs you about the utility. I think it's perfectly clear what it means. What else should we call it that'd be more clear?
- yeah these drone conveyances are not exactly like the moller concept.
Damn, traffic was that bad huh?
Not flying cars. Didn’t even have wheels. Just hexacopters
- Wait? So they are called "flying cars" but if none of a cars functionality?
  
  The marketing does all the heavy lifting
We need this on every military parade.
even in the future nothing works
The chinese quality .ml always talks about
- You realize that China has dominated the smaller consumer drone sector for ages now? And that most countries are beginning to turn to Chinese drones for military applications?
  Still a better track record than the F35.
  
  Go back to your hole.
The "car" in question:
- That’s a better cyber truck than the cyber truck
  That looks fucking awesome
  
  Does it though?

34 comments