The Goaf,
If I may address your comments of "fact" a few pages back.
I would like to submit that my previous comment prior yours is also fact. Insight, experience, knowlege, and decision making skills are required to operate an AC to the level that no machine will have the capability to do (my guess) for hundreds of years.
Your facts are true. We are moving in an unending progress of new and better technologies that we develope to better our lives, to ensure our survival, and to understand the universe. No one is debating you facts.
HOWEVER, I can see you are not a Commercial Airline pilot as you do not understand the real reason why a pilot will always be controlling an aircaft. At least until your "facts" of technology produce an intelligent, thinking, computer equivalent to the decision making of a human.
Let me put this issue to you another way. We have amazing robotic technology now that is also jumping leaps and bounds every day. Even to the point where we can build unbeleivably complex machines, cars etc, one after another. But couple that with the amazing medical technologies we have today, I put to you, can we take a sick human being needing surgery, put him on a conveyor belt and have a surgery performed by robotics? Surely the technology exists to program billions of proceedures into a computer? The answer to this proposal is the same reason pilots will always be controlling an aircraft. Because, no two people, or situations are alike, you absolutely need the experience, knowlege, and insight of a sergeon to perform a sergery, as you also need a pilot to fly and manage an Aircraft. In addition, running an AC is also like running an Office. You have employees, all of which have their own issues, and sometimes problems. You have to manage them too. You ARE the office manager. Can a computer run an office, and deal with people?
Yes, the technology exist to put the AC on autopilot and even perform an Autoland. I know, because I do it all the time. But what happens if one of the gear doesn't come down? Or the hydraulic system fails? Or an Engine fails, or is on fire? Or, there is an obstruction on the runway the computer can't see? Or the autoland system fails, the autopilot, the navigation computer, the air data computer, the IRS computer, etc etc etc...Just look into the MEL of an Airbus and see how many things and situations can go wrong. And what about variables in airports, weather, traffic, passenger situations, etc, etc, etc,.....Getting my point?
You need a computer that can think on the level of an experience pilot to deal with the safty of an aircraft if you are to have a true pilotless aircraft, and that is a long way off. We are talking artificial intelligence. And that is sci-fi at this point. Anyone for Issac Asimov?
Without AI, one would have to basically put it on the runway yourself, then let it go, everything must stay out of its way, there must be no variables, and nothing must go wrong. Do the words "controlled experiment" mean anything to you? Because that is all a pilotless aircraft will be until AI exists, when and if that is possible.
One last point for you, it seems to me that with your "facts" of technology you aren't really making a point of a pilotless aircraft, but a remote controlled aircraft. The pilots will be on the ground, but they will still be there. And guess what, we already have those.
Ed.