Re:Lilium achieves first main wing transition for all-electr...
by wasmitnetzen on Monday June 13, 2022 @06:43AM
(#31723551)
Even existing regulated airplanes kill people on the ground every now and then. The risk is small, but I feel like the benefit of transporting ~100 people weighs out the risk much better than transporting ~1.
Re:Lilium achieves first main wing transition for all-electr...
by simonh on Monday June 13, 2022 @07:12AM
(#31723777)
Fair enough, as I said in my first comment and have re-iterated in my later comment, that's fine. It's a reasonable concern. The safety issue is not really in contention.
My issue is with the argument that simply being wealthy enough (literally 'just because' he is wealthy enough. Check the comment I was replying to.) to do this is by itself reason enough to ban it.
All this redirection back to safety is a smokescreen to distract from the actual issue I'm concerned with.
>Congestion is not solved by small expensive air taxies
If you expect a new transport to 'solve congestion' as a requirement for it to be allowed, we're not going to allow anything. Incremental improvements can add up.
I just find these "I can't have it, so you can't either" arguments so short sighted. Lots of technologies start out the domain of the wealthy before achieving scale and mass adoption. Maybe we won't all be mass adopting air taxis, but some of the technologies that come out of these things may well end up in our cars, or houses, or benefiting us indirectly.