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Offline Wyddr

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Re: Cool Stuff You've Seen Outside of 40kOnline
« Reply #280 on: July 11, 2020, 02:08:36 PM »
This isn't even taking into account the frankly *stupid* amount of energy this will cost. Even with some pretty damn efficient electrical engines, they amount of energy needed to keep something afloat in air (especially something that is about as aerodynamic as a slighty rounded rock) is, uh, A LOT.

QFT

I mean, why the hell don't we just pursue better lighter-than-air transportation options, honestly. If you want flying cars, what you really want are just Yhwh-condemneded balloons. Solves a metric ton of the problems right then and there--cheap, safe, low energy, reliable. All that's left is the density issue (balloons take up a lot of space).

I don't want flying cars. Personal airships? Yes, please.

Offline Alienscar

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Re: Cool Stuff You've Seen Outside of 40kOnline
« Reply #281 on: July 13, 2020, 09:38:10 AM »
starwars, 5th element, back to the future... all basically the same concept, each "lane way" had its own altitude that effectively stacks, with areas to rise or lower into the other lanes. Traffic would flow better than we currently do with our roads. You couldn't have "traffic control" like we currently do at airports though.

Air traffic isn't just controlled around airports though. The airspace of a country is controled everywhere. In many ways you have just described the existing method of air traffic control as height is the way that our airways is controlled. Even so called uncontrolled airspace has ceiling limit that users can't fly above.

As I have said I honestly think the biggest hurdle faced by flying cars would be the ability to fly over built up areas as presently there isn't much that is allowed to.


But yes, despite how stupid it is to get drunk, high or sleep deprived, and try to drive/ride people still do it... even airline pilots have been caught doing those things.. so yeah it would have to be an automated system to avoid disasters..

Automated or not I am not sure I would like to see our skies full of vehicles wherever I looked.

This isn't even taking into account the frankly *stupid* amount of energy this will cost. Even with some pretty damn efficient electrical engines, they amount of energy needed to keep something afloat in air (especially something that is about as aerodynamic as a slighty rounded rock) is, uh, A LOT.

Erm the CityHawk runs on a hydrogen fuel cell. It doesn't get much more efficient (pound for pound) than that.
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Offline Looshkin

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Re: Cool Stuff You've Seen Outside of 40kOnline
« Reply #282 on: July 13, 2020, 12:37:45 PM »
starwars, 5th element, back to the future... all basically the same concept, each "lane way" had its own altitude that effectively stacks, with areas to rise or lower into the other lanes. Traffic would flow better than we currently do with our roads. You couldn't have "traffic control" like we currently do at airports though.

Air traffic isn't just controlled around airports though. The airspace of a country is controled everywhere. In many ways you have just described the existing method of air traffic control as height is the way that our airways is controlled. Even so called uncontrolled airspace has ceiling limit that users can't fly above.

As I have said I honestly think the biggest hurdle faced by flying cars would be the ability to fly over built up areas as presently there isn't much that is allowed to.

All airspace is divided up by level of control. So airways and airfields have the most stringent controls upon them.

There is a heck of a lot of 'Class G' airspace though. To operate in class G, the aircraft doesn't have to be talking to anyone. They don't have to have flight plans. They don't have to have specific equipment that allows other airspace users to be able to 'see' and avoid them (Traffic Collision Avoidance Systems).

Essentially, it can be the Wild West...the only reason it isn't is the relatively limited number of users.

I'm not sure about the US and other countries, but in the UK, military aircraft aren't allowed below 2000' over a built up area, unless that built up area falls in an approach or departure lane. We are also not allowed to fly at low level within 0.5nm of towns over a certain size (basically, if it has a hard, black line border on a 1/250000 scale map. Permission to overfly built up areas is granted for things like medical or police helicopters.

So in essence...any introduction of large amounts of new airspace users would have to result in very stringent rules being placed upon their use. Users would likely have to undergo training and periodic checks to maintain a license. ATC would be impossible on a scale seen in the likes of Blade Runner or 5th Element.

So yeah...it's a can of worms that I don't think the most optimistic aerial vehicle developers have necessarily looked at enough.
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Offline Sir_Godspeed

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Re: Cool Stuff You've Seen Outside of 40kOnline
« Reply #283 on: July 13, 2020, 10:46:58 PM »
Erm the CityHawk runs on a hydrogen fuel cell. It doesn't get much more efficient (pound for pound) than that.


It would be a whole lot more efficient to just shove that fuel cell into a regular car, or basically anything else that isn't punching against gravity.

Offline Wyddr

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Re: Cool Stuff You've Seen Outside of 40kOnline
« Reply #284 on: July 14, 2020, 08:27:29 AM »
Erm the CityHawk runs on a hydrogen fuel cell. It doesn't get much more efficient (pound for pound) than that.


It would be a whole lot more efficient to just shove that fuel cell into a regular car, or basically anything else that isn't punching against gravity.

I want a personal dirigible, dammit!

Offline Alienscar

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Re: Cool Stuff You've Seen Outside of 40kOnline
« Reply #285 on: July 14, 2020, 09:46:42 AM »
Erm the CityHawk runs on a hydrogen fuel cell. It doesn't get much more efficient (pound for pound) than that.


It would be a whole lot more efficient to just shove that fuel cell into a regular car, or basically anything else that isn't punching against gravity.

Yes it would, but that doesn't deliver a flying car.

I want a personal dirigible, dammit!

I am fairly sure that I read somewhere that airships are still a thing. Don’t hold your breath though as helium is bloody expensive to produce and fast running out.

I would love to live in a world where the speed of an airship was acceptable for day to day living.
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Offline Wyddr

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Re: Cool Stuff You've Seen Outside of 40kOnline
« Reply #286 on: July 14, 2020, 02:08:53 PM »
I am fairly sure that I read somewhere that airships are still a thing. Don’t hold your breath though as helium is bloody expensive to produce and fast running out.

I would love to live in a world where the speed of an airship was acceptable for day to day living.

NASA was testing one a few years back, but that was about it. Not very much has been put into them (particularly as relates to speed) and it stands to reason it could be a fruitful area of investigation.

But yeah, helium is something of a bottleneck not easily avoided. I would argue they would still be more practical and achievable than anything resembling a "flying car." There's just no need or call for such an object. It's probably more fruitful to call them "better helicopters" or "big drones" and at least then you're more accurately describing the vehicle in question. 

Offline Alienscar

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Re: Cool Stuff You've Seen Outside of 40kOnline
« Reply #287 on: July 15, 2020, 09:34:27 AM »
That's a good point actually Wyddr. How important is the 'car' aspect of a flying car. As you imply, if you have a vehicle that can take off and land wherever you like then why bother with a road.
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Offline Wyddr

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Re: Cool Stuff You've Seen Outside of 40kOnline
« Reply #288 on: July 15, 2020, 01:04:55 PM »
I was mostly arguing the fact that "car" is associated with personal use as a conveyance, rather than only by commercial and government concerns for business purposes. Nobody really takes a helicopter to the market and nobody would bother shipping their packages by personal drone - it's inefficient and unwieldy to do so.

Given that, as we keep pointing out, flying "cars" as such are impractical and unlikely to ever exist, you certainly are going to still need roads.

If you really, honestly want to talk about improved personal transportation, you should probably not focus on the "flying" part and start focusing on how you can better improve mass transit systems to obviate the need for personal vehicles like cars. 

Offline magenb

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Re: Cool Stuff You've Seen Outside of 40kOnline
« Reply #289 on: July 15, 2020, 08:09:17 PM »
mass transit systems to obviate the need for personal vehicles like cars.

Mass transit systems are agents for nurgle.

On a more serious note, air space is easier to scale and potentially more cost effective than road systems, at least for the public purse, it'll cost a lot more to own though. A lot of SCiFi envisioned these as options when there are huge volumes of populations, but they also assume very similar working conditions a lot of the time.

Given our current tech, you can see many jobs not needing to be done on site, or even with human labour. It is plausible that more jobs will become "work from home" positions with limited or no office time. Retail shopping spaces may eventually fall away to online delivery systems, even the delivery could be limited to, food, clothes, 3d printing material and the odd items that's not printable in our life times, that could reduced even further should startrek's replicator tech come into play.

So the _need_ for flying cars might never show up, but hey coolness factor ;)

 
Given that, as we keep pointing out, flying "cars" as such are impractical and unlikely to ever exist, you certainly are going to still need roads.

This depends on the design, helicopters are not a great way way of getting around due to their size and how they are controlled, so the infrastructure for them becomes a problem, eg you couldn't have a multi-level parking station like we have for cars. But a car like those in the 5th Element, suddenly they are very practical and could have similar parking stations where you just fly into each level.

Offline Wyddr

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Re: Cool Stuff You've Seen Outside of 40kOnline
« Reply #290 on: July 16, 2020, 09:57:03 PM »
This depends on the design, helicopters are not a great way way of getting around due to their size and how they are controlled, so the infrastructure for them becomes a problem, eg you couldn't have a multi-level parking station like we have for cars. But a car like those in the 5th Element, suddenly they are very practical and could have similar parking stations where you just fly into each level.

Part of the point here is that the design is the problem. There is simply no way to get around that the energy needed to keep an object that is heavier than the air up in the air is vastly, vastly greater than the energy needed to move things along the ground. Barring magical anti-gravity technology (don't hold your breath), there is no way to make flying conveyances similar to cars and also have them more affordable than cars (except maybe - maybe balloons).

The decrease in centralized living space you describe (where we don't need to commute as much, etc.) only makes cars better - you need fewer roads, they are easier to maintain, and congestion on those roads becomes a thing of the past. You don't need the infinitely scalable nature of the "sky" anymore, save maybe over long distances, since you can still reach higher speeds up in the sky (and then we're talking about replacing airplanes, and I could certainly see the argument for small, cheap, drone-piloted airplanes replacing large airliners over most flight patterns. But, again, not cars, not privately owned, and not being used in congested airspace).

We are never going to develop a network of privately owned, independently operated flying vehicles that operate in urban areas for the purpose of short-range travel. In other words: the operative definition of a "car" will never apply to any such vehicle. Driving on the ground works just fine and stands to only work better if things decentralize. What we will probably see is delivery drones of some kind and probably more compact helicopters of some fashion, but those will only be used for commercial or government purposes, as I said above, since they'll either be too small to be of use as a vehicle or too expensive to own.

The only instance in which flying cars make any degree of sense is in an environment in which travel along the ground is impossible or so impractical to make forcing an object like that up in the air easier than just building and maintaining a road. So, exclusively vertical environments or places where the terrain and/or weather is so hazardous that road maintenance is completely impractical. If we want flying cars, then, we're going to have to look to establishing cloud-colonies on Venus first.   

Offline Sir_Godspeed

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Re: Cool Stuff You've Seen Outside of 40kOnline
« Reply #291 on: July 17, 2020, 11:24:58 AM »
The only instance in which flying cars make any degree of sense is in an environment in which travel along the ground is impossible or so impractical to make forcing an object like that up in the air easier than just building and maintaining a road. So, exclusively vertical environments or places where the terrain and/or weather is so hazardous that road maintenance is completely impractical. If we want flying cars, then, we're going to have to look to establishing cloud-colonies on Venus first.

Leisure/entertainment is also a possibility.

Someone might own a AI-assisted "flying car" for the same reason people own a boat or jetski today.

That presupposes a lot of advances in self-driving safety, new legal regulations, and lots of other stuff, though.

Keep to driving them over open land, preferably.

Offline Grand Master Lomandalis

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Re: Cool Stuff You've Seen Outside of 40kOnline
« Reply #292 on: July 17, 2020, 12:08:51 PM »
One thing this conversation has brought to mind is that a lot of our view on the possibilities and practicalities of flying cars is based on our current knowledge of technology.

With our current technology, are flying cars possible?  Yes.  Practical?  No.  But look at so many technological advances that have happened that made things impractical into practical.  In 1946 we knew that breaking the sound barrier was possible, but didn't know how to do it in a practical sense until the X-1 project.  30 years ago, we knew self driving cars were possible, but we didn't know how to make them practical.

Now, flying cars are possible, but they aren't practical.  I think give them 15 to 20 years and technology might develop in power and design that could possibly make them a practical idea.
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Offline Sir_Godspeed

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Re: Cool Stuff You've Seen Outside of 40kOnline
« Reply #293 on: July 17, 2020, 05:21:55 PM »
One thing this conversation has brought to mind is that a lot of our view on the possibilities and practicalities of flying cars is based on our current knowledge of technology.

With our current technology, are flying cars possible?  Yes.  Practical?  No.  But look at so many technological advances that have happened that made things impractical into practical.  In 1946 we knew that breaking the sound barrier was possible, but didn't know how to do it in a practical sense until the X-1 project.  30 years ago, we knew self driving cars were possible, but we didn't know how to make them practical.

Now, flying cars are possible, but they aren't practical.  I think give them 15 to 20 years and technology might develop in power and design that could possibly make them a practical idea.

Breaking the sound barrier isn't a bad example. They tried making it a mass transit thing, but the price just wasn't worth the benefit. Nowadays sonic booms are relegated mostly to the military and other highly specialized areas.

We could be totally wrong, of course, like with someone predicting that private computers wouldn't  ever be a thing, but on the other hand it would be weird to make future predictions based on wild fabulations.

Offline Alienscar

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Re: Cool Stuff You've Seen Outside of 40kOnline
« Reply #294 on: July 18, 2020, 05:39:29 PM »
Breaking the sound barrier isn't a bad example. They tried making it a mass transit thing, but the price just wasn't worth the benefit. Nowadays sonic booms are relegated mostly to the military and other highly specialized areas.

It is funny you mention supersonic travel as a Concorde replacement called the Overture is being developed right now
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Offline Grand Master Lomandalis

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Re: Cool Stuff You've Seen Outside of 40kOnline
« Reply #295 on: July 24, 2020, 07:51:03 PM »
First, a bit of context. 

The Royal Canadian Navy is pursuing the option of changing their junior enlisted ranks to better reflect the state of the navy in a more gender neutral manner.

Right now, the ranks are Ordinary / Able / Leading / Master Seaman.  They reached out to the Navy, as well as the public, with a poll to find what would be the preferred rank system going forward.  Whether they changed the ranks from Seaman to Sailor, or switch to a Sailor 1st grade type system.

The posts on social media have been plagued by toxicity.  So, the Deputy Commander of the Navy made a post on Facebook (that I'm sure will also come down through official channels) that not only condemns the negativity, but makes clear that the man has zero beslubbers to give on the matter any more.

There is no questioning where he stands on the matter.  Statements like the one he made make me proud to wear the same uniform!

Without further ado...
Quote from: Rear Admiral Chris Sutherland; Deputy Commander Royal Canadian Navy
Deputy Commander of the Royal Canadian Navy here. I have been made aware of the discourse occurring on on-line forums since we adopted our rank-change initiative, and I apologize for not chiming in earlier but frankly I needed a minute to come to terms with some of the comments that have been posted. First off, I would like to say that in my 33 years of service, I have had the privilege to work alongside the most incredible cohort of talented and professional sailors, who represent the diverse backgrounds that our great country is made of. I am proud to serve alongside the many different women, men, trans and non-binary members who bravely don the RCN uniform in order to serve our country and defend the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

This is why I strongly support our Rank Change Initiative, as I believe it is long overdue that ALL Royal Canadian Navy processes and policies, including our Ranks, reflect, honour and recognize the service and sacrifice made by ALL of our SAILORS. I would like to thank those of you who have provided constructive feedback and respectful dialogue on this issue, as these kinds of consultations are critical to designing an RCN that is fit for the sailors of the future.

To those of you who have made hateful, misogynistic and racist comments, I am shocked that you think that your comments would be acceptable, and that you are not able to recognize that those you are disparaging are the very people dedicating their lives to afford you the freedom to comment. These comments serve as a reminder of our need to call out cowardly attacks such as these, and remind us also that we should take every opportunity to show support for minority and marginalized groups.

To those of you currently serving with these beliefs, I would like to emphatically state you have no place in our Navy. If you cannot live by or support the values of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, then you cannot defend them. Should any serving Royal Canadian Navy Sailors have concerns or questions about this initiative and why this is considered a priority for our organization (and would like to engage in constructive discussion on the topic), please contact me directly.

Yours Aye,
Rear-Admiral Chris Sutherland
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Offline The GrimSqueaker

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Re: Cool Stuff You've Seen Outside of 40kOnline
« Reply #296 on: July 24, 2020, 08:33:29 PM »
Very nice.
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Offline Sir_Godspeed

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Re: Cool Stuff You've Seen Outside of 40kOnline
« Reply #297 on: July 24, 2020, 10:32:16 PM »
Big ups!

Offline Alienscar

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Re: Cool Stuff You've Seen Outside of 40kOnline
« Reply #298 on: July 25, 2020, 03:18:38 AM »
Cool as...
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Offline Irisado

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Re: Cool Stuff You've Seen Outside of 40kOnline
« Reply #299 on: July 25, 2020, 05:24:02 AM »
That a very impressive statement and I am glad to see someone making it so unequivocally.
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