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Electric flying taxis in works for 2024 Paris Olympics [1]
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Date: 2023-06-23 20:35:27+00:00
smulder: smulder: Is it supposedly safer than a regular helicopter? It doesn’t seem to take up any less space
They actually are a lot smaller than a helicopter, and they don’t need a huge safety bubble around them to land like a helicopter does.
The other big advantage is their simplicity. It’s a battery system and a handful of electric motors. Little to maintain and little to go wrong. Helicopters are immensely complicated beasts requiring a team of technicians with years of training to maintain, not to mention they are incredibly loud and use huge amounts of fuel. They also make a hurricane everywhere they land and take off. Helicopter piloting is also extremely difficult. So difficult that not everyone can do it. Much like drumming, it requires mastering completely independent limb control, and every control input on a helicopter modifies multiple flight parameters. Going faster also makes you go up. Going sideways also makes you go down, etc. It takes years of training to get halfway decent at it, and it’s still dangerous.
These oversized drones don’t have any of those issues.
All that said, that doesn’t make this a good idea right now. The technology is not ready for more than maybe one or two demonstration flights. The idea that they’ll be shuttling people around town like an Uber during the Olympics is ludicrous. Crewed electric multi rotors are at least a decade, maybe two, away from that.
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[1] Url:
https://bbs.boingboing.net/t/electric-flying-taxis-in-works-for-2024-paris-olympics/251528
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