Originally Posted by
ATC Watcher
The noise aspect has been shelved and kept out of the debate, as many (wrongly) believe those electric aircraft will be silent. .
I don't think the noise issue has been shelved per se as there have been dozens of studies and research papers done over the past 10 years specially to address the UAM noise patterns with a number of them published in various aerospace journals. They have even developed computer models to assist in mitigating those noise issues. Noise has been a top 3 problem for UAM going back to the 70s with most of the current noise studies getting their basis from the NASA Heli-Star noise study in the 90s. From what I've seen and read, if they can't provide an acceptable noise signature within the targeted urban environments it will go the same way helicopters went when they were used for UAM. However, it seems public perception of noise from a helicopter vs an eVTOL follows 2 different paths.
And while most of the up and coming eVTOLs/VTOLs will have the design capability for
autonomous or remote piloted ops, I doubt there will be any pilotless pax ops in any reasonable timeframe. Cargo ops sure as they are currently testing this now with large drones. I think it will take another generation of people before enough of the general public will accept getting to the back seat with HAL driving up front.