Uber To Take Over GA From 2020
Fujii, there is already a full thread on the rotorheads about Lilium, including reasons why it won't work, even though the model in the video can fly.
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Many technological advances were preceded by naysayers until those naysayers were proven wrong. Those naysayers were often the best in their fields.
It's not that it won't happen, it's just that it hasn't happened yet.
It's not that it won't happen, it's just that it hasn't happened yet.
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The big fly in the ointment is the energy density of what ever is used as a power source. Petrol (gasoline) has 53 times the watt/hour capacity of a lithium ion battery.
In other words for every kilo of petrol you need 53 kilograms of lithium ion battery.
You're forgetting that internal combustion engines at best convert 20% of their fuel energy to power. Whereas an electric drive can achieve over 90%.
This brings the specific energy problem down close to a factor of 10 rather than 50.
It's still a big hurdle to overcome, yes. But there are other battery technologies in the wings that may help close the gap.
You're forgetting that internal combustion engines at best convert 20% of their fuel energy to power. Whereas an electric drive can achieve over 90%.
This brings the specific energy problem down close to a factor of 10 rather than 50.
It's still a big hurdle to overcome, yes. But there are other battery technologies in the wings that may help close the gap.
This brings the specific energy problem down close to a factor of 10 rather than 50.
It's still a big hurdle to overcome, yes. But there are other battery technologies in the wings that may help close the gap.
There's a terrifically long way to go before anything like this can become anywhere close to mainstream. Solving the motive problem is probably one of the easier challenges.
Folks,
There was some fascinating stuff in a recent AW&ST, the results of a US Gov. sponsored competition, think hybrids, just like some present cars, and think a whole new approach to a swivel wing distributed thrust VTOL --- part of a big increase in efficiency was use of AC, instead of DC power, and thrust varied by prop pitch change at constant rpm. .
I would not be too quick "lay down the law" about what's possible and what's not.
Boeing and a partner are seriously looking at a Regional airline size hybrid.
Part of the design is to swap out batteries during a <30 minute transit.
As I said, fascinating.
There is an old engineering adage: "We do the improbable immediately, the impossible takes a little time".
Tootle pip!!
There was some fascinating stuff in a recent AW&ST, the results of a US Gov. sponsored competition, think hybrids, just like some present cars, and think a whole new approach to a swivel wing distributed thrust VTOL --- part of a big increase in efficiency was use of AC, instead of DC power, and thrust varied by prop pitch change at constant rpm. .
I would not be too quick "lay down the law" about what's possible and what's not.
Boeing and a partner are seriously looking at a Regional airline size hybrid.
Part of the design is to swap out batteries during a <30 minute transit.
As I said, fascinating.
There is an old engineering adage: "We do the improbable immediately, the impossible takes a little time".
Tootle pip!!
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Can we improve battery power to that point? Within 5 years, I would say no, but beyond that? I think we would be foolish to doubt it.
Elon Musk has arguably personally pushed the world ahead 10 years from where it would otherwise be. You can bet there are many billions being spent quietly around the world to compete with his battery factory.
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Yeah, I've seen this one before. It rings a lot of alarm bells to me.
- Chinese company rushing to be "first to market".
- Dubai government that will do anything to "put itself on the map", to hell with safety regulations, or proper standards and certification.
- A company whose track record to date is selling toy drones through Amazon and Best Buy.
- A company which has apparently "partnered" with a bunch of other IT companies... don't see anyone with any actual commercial aeronautical design experience in there.
- Their own specs advertise a max power of 152 kW, with a battery pack of 17kWh. This would provide maybe 6 minutes of flight at max power with no reserve.
- Using a consumer 4G LTE link to control the device, with the only backup being some kind of autonomous "find a safe landing site and land". Wow.
- Does 4G LTE even work anywhere near 3500m (claimed max altitude)?
- No mention of any kind of ballistic chute recovery system if the above fails.
- There don't appear to be any "off-the shelf" certified parts being used. Everything has been designed in-house: Props, motors, batteries, hardware and software. But don't worry about that, they're using composites just like "spacecraft"!
...
Look, my scepticism may be unfounded, maybe it will be a raging success.
But, for starters, from a design point of view, contra-rotating coaxial props?
They have been proposed on just about every ground-breaking aerial vehicle since Sir Isaac first invisaged the helicopter (because it seems to make sense on paper). But it's never got past the prototype or concept stage because turbulent aerodynamics dictates that it simply doesn't work (on anything larger than a toy).
Reminds me of the "gull-wing" doors that appear on just about every headline-grabbing concept car that appears in motor-shows, and has done for decades. They do that because it looks cool, and looks great on paper. Never makes it to a real car of course, because in practice it's a dumb idea. Yeah, I know Elon Musk just did it on the Model X, maybe he'll be the first to get it right.
This thread has emphasised that storage specific energy and efficiency is key to electric flight. Even if this vehicle does successfully fly with its contra-rotating props I doubt it would be very efficient.
This strikes me as a scaled-up toy drone. I'm sure it's software is sophisticated enough to conduct a successful demo flight. This company is possibly very good at toy drone software. But is it designed to be mission-critical? Does it run on mission-critical hardware? What sort of fault checking does it run? What sort of automatic fail-over exists? We're only told it has "two" flight management systems. Is that two Rasberry Pi's? Rockwell-Collins and Honeywell make mission critical flight management systems, but I'll bet they didn't even get a phone call from this mob.
Think about the software and hardware requirements in a modern fly-by-wire aircraft. Think about the amount of redundancy, design, testing and certification (and expense) that goes into making it safe. We all know how reliable consumer-grade computers, consumer-grade operating systems, and consumer-grade software is.
A multi-rotor aircraft is about as stable as a unicycle. A computer glitch for a fraction of a second turns it into a plumetting hunk of carbon-reinforced epoxy resin.
Running "100 successful test flights" and launching commercially in Dubai may be great for headlines and possibly fundraising, but I won't be volunteering to be a crash test dummy in this little baby in the near future.
Were there any humans in these "test flights"? I doubt it, because if there were they would have made sure it made headlines. How many of these "test flights" actually flew 25kms from A to B? Is that video of it flying over snow-capped peaks even a real video? Where are the videos from all these "successful test flights"? Surely there must be 100 of them!
Launching commercially as an air-taxi in Dubai this Summer? That's northern Summer... That's a month away. Awesome. Looking forward to it. Don't worry that it takes Airbus or Boeing 5 years of exhaustive testing and certification to get a new aircraft in the air, these blokes will have it up and running in no time.
If they are too proud to even employ an articulate English speaker to create the English-speaking version of their website, what does that say about their employment of experienced aeronautical professionals to design their human-carrying toy drone?
I might wait for Sir Richard or Elon Musk to develop one before I get too excited. At least they would have the funds and skills to do it properly, and get it right. The fact that neither has done so yet probably speaks volmes: I'm sure they're both keen to do so when it becomes properly viable.
- Chinese company rushing to be "first to market".
- Dubai government that will do anything to "put itself on the map", to hell with safety regulations, or proper standards and certification.
- A company whose track record to date is selling toy drones through Amazon and Best Buy.
- A company which has apparently "partnered" with a bunch of other IT companies... don't see anyone with any actual commercial aeronautical design experience in there.
- Their own specs advertise a max power of 152 kW, with a battery pack of 17kWh. This would provide maybe 6 minutes of flight at max power with no reserve.
- Using a consumer 4G LTE link to control the device, with the only backup being some kind of autonomous "find a safe landing site and land". Wow.
- Does 4G LTE even work anywhere near 3500m (claimed max altitude)?
- No mention of any kind of ballistic chute recovery system if the above fails.
- There don't appear to be any "off-the shelf" certified parts being used. Everything has been designed in-house: Props, motors, batteries, hardware and software. But don't worry about that, they're using composites just like "spacecraft"!
...
Look, my scepticism may be unfounded, maybe it will be a raging success.
But, for starters, from a design point of view, contra-rotating coaxial props?
They have been proposed on just about every ground-breaking aerial vehicle since Sir Isaac first invisaged the helicopter (because it seems to make sense on paper). But it's never got past the prototype or concept stage because turbulent aerodynamics dictates that it simply doesn't work (on anything larger than a toy).
Reminds me of the "gull-wing" doors that appear on just about every headline-grabbing concept car that appears in motor-shows, and has done for decades. They do that because it looks cool, and looks great on paper. Never makes it to a real car of course, because in practice it's a dumb idea. Yeah, I know Elon Musk just did it on the Model X, maybe he'll be the first to get it right.
This thread has emphasised that storage specific energy and efficiency is key to electric flight. Even if this vehicle does successfully fly with its contra-rotating props I doubt it would be very efficient.
This strikes me as a scaled-up toy drone. I'm sure it's software is sophisticated enough to conduct a successful demo flight. This company is possibly very good at toy drone software. But is it designed to be mission-critical? Does it run on mission-critical hardware? What sort of fault checking does it run? What sort of automatic fail-over exists? We're only told it has "two" flight management systems. Is that two Rasberry Pi's? Rockwell-Collins and Honeywell make mission critical flight management systems, but I'll bet they didn't even get a phone call from this mob.
Think about the software and hardware requirements in a modern fly-by-wire aircraft. Think about the amount of redundancy, design, testing and certification (and expense) that goes into making it safe. We all know how reliable consumer-grade computers, consumer-grade operating systems, and consumer-grade software is.
A multi-rotor aircraft is about as stable as a unicycle. A computer glitch for a fraction of a second turns it into a plumetting hunk of carbon-reinforced epoxy resin.
Running "100 successful test flights" and launching commercially in Dubai may be great for headlines and possibly fundraising, but I won't be volunteering to be a crash test dummy in this little baby in the near future.
Were there any humans in these "test flights"? I doubt it, because if there were they would have made sure it made headlines. How many of these "test flights" actually flew 25kms from A to B? Is that video of it flying over snow-capped peaks even a real video? Where are the videos from all these "successful test flights"? Surely there must be 100 of them!
Launching commercially as an air-taxi in Dubai this Summer? That's northern Summer... That's a month away. Awesome. Looking forward to it. Don't worry that it takes Airbus or Boeing 5 years of exhaustive testing and certification to get a new aircraft in the air, these blokes will have it up and running in no time.
If they are too proud to even employ an articulate English speaker to create the English-speaking version of their website, what does that say about their employment of experienced aeronautical professionals to design their human-carrying toy drone?
I might wait for Sir Richard or Elon Musk to develop one before I get too excited. At least they would have the funds and skills to do it properly, and get it right. The fact that neither has done so yet probably speaks volmes: I'm sure they're both keen to do so when it becomes properly viable.
Last edited by Derfred; 4th May 2017 at 18:02.
The Raspberry Pi is a hobbyist play thing but you'll be surprised how close it gets.
It's a general purpose computer with 64gb SD card, passively cooled 1.2ghz 64bit quad core CPU, no moving parts (vibration resilient), hdmi, ethernet, WiFi, ultra low power requirements (3-5W) in a tiny form factor (45g).
Looking good so far until we look at operating temperature rages. The Pi FAQ says the main SoC is good from 0-70 C. Unsure about the solder/PCB -- probably as good as my 760 radio solders which seem to keep breaking every year. I read one test which says it worked at 50C but started freezing at 55C. You're right - it's just too amateur. But that's not what people use.
Ok let's knock it up a notch to the Nvidia Jetson TX2 board. Expect about $600 retail. (US $399 for a thousand of them).
https://devblogs.nvidia.com/parallel...lligence-edge/
Firstly the thermal is -25-80C. That's more like it. 8-15W power usage (still tiny). But the specs are also a lot bigger: 2ghz quad core CPU, very powerful graphics chip (I'll get to this in a second). 8gb high bandwidth ram, 4K video encoding/decoding, 85g weight, dual CAN bus controller, high bandwidth video/sensor/data links, gigabit Ethernet, 802.11ac 2x2 wifi, blah blah etc etc. It's awesome.
Ok so this is what people mean by consumer hardware disruption: it's specifically designed for things like self driving cars, drones and so on.
Now the fun: the gpu isn't designed for playing games. It's for machine learning, which is how cars can drive themselves in real time. The chip in this thing (Pascal architecture) is one of the most advanced things in the world right now, save custom asic's developed by Google/Facebook for specific machine learning applications in data centres. Once trained from bucket loads of real world data, it can take in high bandwidth sensor data and output smart decisions like where to steer/fly.
Watch this and let me know if you think the regulator can keep up with this kind of technology:
https://youtu.be/BLlwm5Dq7Is
Self driving cars have already forced the hand of most worldwide regulators to accept them. The public get what they want.
There are challenges to short range flying drones because we're still at the version 0.1 stage (remember when smartphone didn't even exist? 2007). That EHang is a proof of concept at best, but it is happening.
I can honestly see dozens to hundreds of self flying drones on pre-programmed routes doing 10-30min trips across congested cities carrying 1-2 pax for $10-20 a pop in the near future, if somebody can solve the hundreds of puzzle pieces.
The argument "if Richard Branson hasn't done it yet so it must be Snake Oil" is false. Often we must wait for multiple technologies to simultaneously mature & reduce in cost to economically unlock opportunities. For self flying cars it has not existed until now. That is cheapish Lion batteries (sub $500/kWh), tiny cheap sensors, high performance lightweight embedded computers, machine learning algorithms & research, mobile payments and so on. Things I hope really happen soon are some battery breakthroughs in supercapacitors for ultra fast charging plus better specific energy (lighter) batteries.
10 years is a long time...How exciting for aviation! I reckon we'll see it. But it won't be Uber!!
It's a general purpose computer with 64gb SD card, passively cooled 1.2ghz 64bit quad core CPU, no moving parts (vibration resilient), hdmi, ethernet, WiFi, ultra low power requirements (3-5W) in a tiny form factor (45g).
Looking good so far until we look at operating temperature rages. The Pi FAQ says the main SoC is good from 0-70 C. Unsure about the solder/PCB -- probably as good as my 760 radio solders which seem to keep breaking every year. I read one test which says it worked at 50C but started freezing at 55C. You're right - it's just too amateur. But that's not what people use.
Ok let's knock it up a notch to the Nvidia Jetson TX2 board. Expect about $600 retail. (US $399 for a thousand of them).
https://devblogs.nvidia.com/parallel...lligence-edge/
Firstly the thermal is -25-80C. That's more like it. 8-15W power usage (still tiny). But the specs are also a lot bigger: 2ghz quad core CPU, very powerful graphics chip (I'll get to this in a second). 8gb high bandwidth ram, 4K video encoding/decoding, 85g weight, dual CAN bus controller, high bandwidth video/sensor/data links, gigabit Ethernet, 802.11ac 2x2 wifi, blah blah etc etc. It's awesome.
Ok so this is what people mean by consumer hardware disruption: it's specifically designed for things like self driving cars, drones and so on.
Now the fun: the gpu isn't designed for playing games. It's for machine learning, which is how cars can drive themselves in real time. The chip in this thing (Pascal architecture) is one of the most advanced things in the world right now, save custom asic's developed by Google/Facebook for specific machine learning applications in data centres. Once trained from bucket loads of real world data, it can take in high bandwidth sensor data and output smart decisions like where to steer/fly.
Watch this and let me know if you think the regulator can keep up with this kind of technology:
https://youtu.be/BLlwm5Dq7Is
Self driving cars have already forced the hand of most worldwide regulators to accept them. The public get what they want.
There are challenges to short range flying drones because we're still at the version 0.1 stage (remember when smartphone didn't even exist? 2007). That EHang is a proof of concept at best, but it is happening.
I can honestly see dozens to hundreds of self flying drones on pre-programmed routes doing 10-30min trips across congested cities carrying 1-2 pax for $10-20 a pop in the near future, if somebody can solve the hundreds of puzzle pieces.
The argument "if Richard Branson hasn't done it yet so it must be Snake Oil" is false. Often we must wait for multiple technologies to simultaneously mature & reduce in cost to economically unlock opportunities. For self flying cars it has not existed until now. That is cheapish Lion batteries (sub $500/kWh), tiny cheap sensors, high performance lightweight embedded computers, machine learning algorithms & research, mobile payments and so on. Things I hope really happen soon are some battery breakthroughs in supercapacitors for ultra fast charging plus better specific energy (lighter) batteries.
10 years is a long time...How exciting for aviation! I reckon we'll see it. But it won't be Uber!!
