NASA's Highway in the Sky - Big jets and HSR obsolete?

[Anonymous]

60 Minutes had a segment on NASA's new air traffic control system which makes air space more usable and on small prop planes under development by private firms that (in one example) can take off vertically and fly at 400mph. Would allow point to point travel from small pads. No big time-eating airports needed. Does anyone know more details about this? Thanks.

[BaltACD]

Looks like a recooked idea from Popular Mechanics of the 1950's.

The Interstate system is breaking down under todays traffic level and irrespective of what technology claims, the higher the speed the more space that is required between vehicles....be they groundbound or aircraft. A neat idea that may have more applicability to avaiation as we know it today, not a panacea for the future.

[Jack_S]

QUOTE: Originally posted by tomtrain

60 Minutes had a segment on NASA's new air traffic control system which makes air space more usable and on small prop planes under development by private firms that (in one example) can take off vertically and fly at 400mph. Would allow point to point travel from small pads. No big time-eating airports needed. Does anyone know more details about this? Thanks.

I saw the show. I was not impressed. I worked in Aerospace and have a long interest in flying and I shudder to think of the average US driver flying these devices in large numbers. Ultralights and Gyrocopters are much easier than anything I saw there.

One craft featured on the show was a helicopter with counterrotating rotors that used the downwa***o strike vertical airfoils adjustable for right and left slant to control yaw. Pitch, fore/aft motion, and side to side motion was controlled by tilting the rotor shaft. Coordinating all this with the throttle opening for lift control seems to be only a little easier than in a helicopter. And even competent fixed-wing pilots have trouble with that.

Considering that most car drivers can't even recognize a skid when they are in one, I see one hell of a learning curve for operating one of these.

Jack

[daveklepper]

Then there is the matter of fuel economy. I'm sure those things are far more fuel guzzling than even the worst SUV. Energy independence or at least the threat of it is essential to (1) eventually remove the threats of Global terrorism, and (2) American political, economic, diplomatic, and military efforts are not tied to the needs of people who fight against democracy and freedom (with any of the following: money, locations for training, or simply theology).

[Anonymous]

Not to mention there are a lot of no fly zones all over America. How would they sign the air? As it is the people on the ground can't read signs.....

[Jack_S]

QUOTE: Originally posted by daveklepper

Then there is the matter of fuel economy. I'm sure those things are far more fuel guzzling than even the worst SUV.

Well, ultralights and Gyrocopters are pretty fuel efficient, mainly because they are small, light, and can go straight across country. But they are open to the weather and not suitable for everyday use for commuting and shopping. Only two of the "planes" featured on 60 minutes were any better in weather protection. With today's social infrastructure only cars can do it all, and only a car/mass-ground-transit mix is a reasonable substitute. And when things get really congested only rail can cope. See the NE Corridor.

[Overmod]

I believe the "Highway in the Sky" refers primarily to the display and information system; there's considerably more to SATS than that. This is a logical extension of the principles of IFR to a more directed, intelligent system ... it bears much more relation to the 'intelligent highways' programs (cf. the 'national ITS architecture' system) than to the present-day interstate-highway paradigm.

I don't think that any of the proposed designs for 'flying cars' are intended as 21st-Century Navions; I would expect that relatively sophisticated systems of dynamic control (both in the vehicles themselves, and 'distributed') would be integrated with the external position and ATC systems. Be worth going to Danville to find out.

I suppose sooner or later we're either going to see a Moller Skycar in production, or people will conclude the thing is a fancy scam... seems I've been reading that production is just around the corner since the 1970s. Anybody remember the Defender?

The vehicles that were mentioned by CBS appear to be most important as "innovative" forms of V/STOL... which is not a necessary component of the SATS programs. The much more important thrust of SATS is to eliminate much of the current set of risks (both actual and perceived) in general aviation as a whole, and I think the program can do that.

However, as a means of implementing 'flying cars for Everyman', as CBS seems to think, a technology-based system is at best lawyer bait, and even slightly impaired would start to pose major risks. There have been enough problems with 'glass cockpits' in commercial aircraft (nominally built and maintained to much higher $tandard$) to make a system that is essentially DEPENDENT on fancy graphical displays intensely risky. Trained pilots may even have difficulty, particularly in marginal conditions where it will be difficult to determine whether the system is starting to fail. It may not be fair to bring up the fluxgate compass... but I would be highly concerned that similar complex and 'nonintuitive' systems are involved here. One big problem is that it would be very, very easy for 'gentleman pilots' to trust the system enough to get way over their heads in terms of weather penetration, nonoptimal weight balance, etc. -- and when things turn bad, it's too late to realize there's a problem. Need I add that many of the people who could afford the fancy 'personal vehicles' are not particularly good candidates for pilots?

To bring this squarely back to relevance in this forum (without hijacking the topic) -- there is a rather ominous implication for Amtrak if SATS works as intended for general aviation. If you take a 'performance envelope' for aircraft that equates to the point-to-point timing that would be effective for HSR, but using now the figures for the small regional airports rather than large facilities, you wind up with something that can be remarkably fuel-efficient per passenger, with all the flexibility of a machine that does not require a precise fixed infrastructure (and the increasing maintenance and security concerns that go with that infrastructure) and that can easily serve a variety of additional stops in proximity to the chosen route. No particular reason why SATS won't allow such aircraft to operate effectively 24/7 in distributed 'paratransit'-like service. Not a substitute for private automobiles in most cases -- perhaps not a substitute for services that run 'downtown to downtown' at least cost. Not a substitute for consistent high-volume trains, either. But I wouldn't extend much hope for non-state-subsidized long-distance trains that only provide 'commodity' service ... the SATS general-aviation system would in all probability be faster, more direct, more capital-effective, easier to implement, vastly more flexible and convenient, and able to serve intermediate points much more effectively than trains do. Be interesting to see whether we see this aspect (rather than the whiz-bang George Jetson dream cars) being effectively developed and promoted by the industry and by the media...

[jchnhtfd]

Being both a pilot and a railroader (not to mention driver) these things fascinate me. IMHO, the idea of the general public -- i.e. the typical driver -- ever learning to fly, and doing it successfully, alternates between absolutely terrifying and absolutely hysterical. Not that flying is hard. Anyone who can really ride a bicycle, or sail, or ski well -- I don't mean hack around, but do it well -- can learn to fly. However, flying is rather unforgiving. You get very very few chances to learn from your mistakes. Lapses in attention are likely to have unfortunate consequences. And you do not break the rules: they are there for very good reasons. The attitude of a pilot to flying is very different from the attitude of the average driver to driving -- and this applies even to the top of the line hot shots; if you remember the movie 'Top Gun', this is the lesson the 'hero' had to learn -- the hard way.

Automation will not solve this problem. The fanciest glass cockpit in the world is absolutely no good if the nut holding the yoke forgets to add enough gas to the tanks, or tries to fly in weather conditions the bird can't handle. As we found out this winter, even the best commercial operations can, and are, grounded by weather. Can't have that for general transportation -- to which it would happen much more often.

Then there is the tiny question of where do you land and take off. Many many communities, at least on the east coast, now have very strict rules restricting, or in most cases prohibiting altogether, private flights from one's back yard -- and trying to locate or expand a regional or local airport brings out every NIMBY and Chicken Little from miles around. 'A plane (helicopter/gyrocopter/what have you' in every garage is a non starter.

Which is not to say that the 'Highway in the Sky' is a bad idea; it's an excellent idea. As Overmod correctly notes, it is a better approach to providing navigation, separation, and sequencing services to air traffic. Rather than depending on the present system (which is a vast improvement on what was available when I first flew, believe me!) which does have discrete paths which need to be followed (in bad weather, quite religiously!), it allows aircraft to fly more direct paths using GPS location and navigation. This allows far more efficient use of airspace, and could double or quadruple the number of aircraft able to use a given corridor (say, New York - Chicago) in a given time. By flying direct, it can also reduce fuel usage by a small, but significant percentage.

What it does NOT do is increase the capacity of an airport in bad weather. There is a very reasonable restriction that you cannot clear an airplane to land at an airport until the airplane that landed before has cleared the runway. The objective being to avoid piling up three or four 747s in a heap at the end, if something goes wrong with the first one. There are a number of airports in the country where this limitation is what controls traffic now, and the only solution to it is to enlarge those airports or build reliever airports -- and see my comments above on that prospect.

Unusually, I have to partly disagree with Overmod in his last paragraph. I do not see SATS general-aviation as a more effective solution that trains -- for general transportation. For small volume high value transportation, yes -- and it already is; the amount of business aviation traffic is astonishing (and these are not 'Piper Cubs', friends, but multi-million dollar jets, every bit as well and often better-equipped than commercial airliners) and growing rapidly, particularly with such innovations as fractional ownership. But for general public transportation? Sorry, no way.

Oh well...

[Kurn]

Imagine all the cretins up there with the yoke between their knees,munching on a Big Mac and yakking on a cell phone.................

[spbed]

I'll ask my bro he is a aero engineer & works for a contractor of NASA[:)][:p][:D]

Originally posted by tomtrain
[

Living nearby to MP 186 of the UPRR  Austin TX Sub

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