Originally Posted by
Ascend Charlie
Why do they think that permission will be available for these things to land on rooftops or in streets or in parks?
Charlie:
Just to clarify,
Uber Elevate won't be landing willy-nilly on parking garage rooftops. Among the many partners signed up by the company for its project are property owners such as
Hillwood, who own (or are buying up) parking garages, the rooftops of which will be converted into FAA-approved helipads. Who is designing the helipads? Well, as a hint, Rex Alexander of
HeliExperts joined Uber Technologies last September as their Head of Aviation Infrastructure.
The average Joe or Joanne on the ground, having a quiet little skinny-dip in their backyard pool, will not appreciate the intrusion of a sky-taxi overhead. In Sydney some decades ago, the Alan Bond airship was banned from quietly drifting through the skies because of thoughts of invasion of privacy, and it was at 1000', not landing next door.
Valid point, but the plan is for flightpaths to primarily follow existing ground and air infrastructural systems, i.e. highways, railroads and heli lanes (e.g. around airports). This has a number of advantages, including both the privacy concerns you raise, as well as the ability to mask the air vehicle's noise signature. To this end, one of the roles being played by Bell in the program (other than coming up with cabin concept art) is to fly data-gathering flights mapping noise frequencies over highways, etc., the results of which will enable the project team to tune the air vehicle's noise emissions accordingly. (Given the air vehicle's distributed electric propulsion (DEP) design, it will be inherently quiet anyway.)
Originally Posted by OttoRotate
The idea is to have a completely autonomous vertical lift vehicle
Well,
eventually...
I've been a vocal skeptic of many a previous flying car concept on these pages, but I'm with AnFI on the potential for Elevate to deliver a seismic shift. Exciting times indeed.
I/C