Boeing’s Flying Car Has Taken Off

Re:Boeing’s Flying Car Has Taken Off by eropple on Wednesday January 23, 2019 @01:27PM (#18981017)

Not a single car, but a lot fewer than Elon wants you to believe. We already know that the baseline technology being proposed works. Guided buses have been in use for a long time now. But there's a reason it's used with buses, not individual cars. And it's for a pretty simple reason: the loading process into the tunnels can't be fast. Much hay is being made about minimal surface disruption, but elevators are slow. As is driving into a guide tray that moves the car along.

donoteat01 does pretty fantastic video work about a number of urban planning topics and he's shot this one full of holes already. You should watch it if you're curious. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dn6ZVpJLxs

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Boeing’s Flying Car Has Taken Off by njarboe on Wednesday January 23, 2019 @02:31PM (#18981810)

"the loading process into the tunnels can't be fast"

Why is that the case and can it be fixed? I would say that this problem would be easier to solve than the problem of getting a orbital class rocket booster to go into space, launch the second stage, and then return to the launch pad and land.

Musk likes to work from first principles to try and understand what is possible. What is the physics behind why you can't have a very full, steady stream of vehicles going through a tunnel? Nothing really. The vehicles just have to be very well controlled. With a good auto-vehicle you should be able to pack them in and have them enter and exit into the stream of traffic. Like a real road, only better. Why would you not want someone of Musk's caliber to not try to do this? My dad would rather have him working more on getting the automatic car working so he can continue commuting to work. I can understand that objection, but he says the Boring Company is only about 2-5% of his time. If you want something to happen you try and decide if it is possible, and then try and do it. Not spend you time figuring out how not to do it.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Boeing’s Flying Car Has Taken Off by jandrese on Wednesday January 23, 2019 @02:39PM (#18981897)

From what I can tell the bottleneck is a single slow freight elevator. It doesn't seem like a fundamental problem with the underlying technology, just an implementation detail.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Boeing’s Flying Car Has Taken Off by eropple on Wednesday January 23, 2019 @02:36PM (#18981868)

It can't be fast because the constraints he's laid out don't allow them to. Elevators don't work that way. Neither does braking safety. (Run the numbers yourself, or go watch that donoteat01 video. It's farcical on its face.)

The rest of your post is weird heroification and I'd have to bleach myself after interacting with it, so I won't.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Boeing’s Flying Car Has Taken Off by BurningFrog on Wednesday January 23, 2019 @11:31PM (#18985987)

> the loading process into the tunnels can't be fast

True, but a loading/unloading time of 30-60 seconds only means the tunnels are less feasible for short trips.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Boeing’s Flying Car Has Taken Off by eropple on Sunday January 27, 2019 @05:23PM (#19014116)

This is true--but then a top speed of 140mph, as asserted by Elon and company, is unlikely to be feasible because the cars involved won't have time to accelerate to that speed before needing to decelerate at a human-comfortable speed for arrival (which then causes knock-on effects on everybody else in that tunnel system, and I hope their braking systems all work perfectly forever).

And we haven't even gotten into how a top speed of 140mph will burn the hell out of street tires.

It's just...dumb. It's not thought out. It's aggressively reality-averse. It's thought-leadery as hell.

[ Parent | on HN ]