Re:The High-Stakes Race to Build the World’s First Flying Taxi
by starpilot on Tuesday November 05, 2019 @04:43PM
(#21457035)
> Both are much simpler than an helicopter
They are mechanically simpler, but aerodynamically and electrically vastly more complex. These designs are only possibly due to modern engineering, otherwise they would have been invented before the helicopter.
Re:The High-Stakes Race to Build the World’s First Flying Taxi
by marcosdumay on Wednesday November 06, 2019 @10:03AM
(#21463232)
It's mechanical complexity that brings unreliability and high maintenance.
Electrical complexity is more reliable by orders of magnitude, and aerodynamics won't fail mid-flight.
As people already pointed, redundancy. Those systems have a lot of engines.
The simplest ones have fixed engines, and the most complex ones have then engine move in a single axis. Both are much simpler than an helicopter.
Electrical motors inherently require less maintenance, what isn't as large a change as it seems.
All the e-VTOL designs I have seen can glide, what places them on the same category as airplanes, that require much less maintenance than helicopters.