1193
Time is a circle (lemmy.world)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social 9 points 1 day ago

What about those giant quadcopter type things they keep wanting to build to fly from building rooftops in cities for some reason?

[-] AA5B@lemmy.world 2 points 4 hours ago

Everyone thinks the sky is big, without considering just how unscalable flying cars are

  • no building is designed for large scale entry/exit at roof top. Most don’t support any
  • the low altitude airspace over a densely populated area is very limited. Given current separation, minimum altitude, speed limitations, a city can support only a small number of flying cars. And no, “smart” vehicles don’t change the laws of physics, even if they help us get closer to them
  • a flying car will always be more expensive than a not flying car, which will always be more expensive than transit

Let’s stop worrying about new ways for the ultra-rich to avoid the frustrations the rest of us have to deal with, we’ll all be better off if they also have an incentive to design more effective cities and transportation for everyone

[-] CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social 1 points 2 hours ago

I wasn't, to be clear, advocating for them, just pointing out that they were one of those things tech bros keep suggesting over and over again. I don't suspect they're something to really worry about, because I don't really expect the economics of them to work out.

[-] ltxrtquq@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 hour ago

I wouldn't expect the economics of private jets to work out either, and yet...

[-] Iron_Lynx@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago

Within cities?

Look, aircraft are Hella noisy and if stuff goes bad, they'll smash into buildings. Using them for intra-urban transit is not safe. Besides, I don't know if multicopters can autorotate, which only adds to the safety concerns.

So why not bring it slightly closer to the ground. Maybe put the transportation device on a bridge or viaduct. And while you could put some stairs up from the streets, you may even choose to link buildings into them directly. Most tall buildings have lifts, after all.

Next, giving each building its own link into the system would be excessive. You can achieve 90 percent of the utility if you have larger entry hubs for multiple buildings, and expect people to walk the last mile.

Anyway, back to the vehicle, since a vehicle for a handful of people is rather inefficient, why not build the vehicles for many dozens of people? Why not build it to connect multiple vehicles? If you run, like, four of these, every five minutes, most people will be able to walk up any time and just go.

And to make that movement more efficient, let's have our vehicles roll along a specifically designed path, optimised for minimal friction by using hard wheels on a hard surface.

There, I replaced the quadcopters with a train.

[-] SkyezOpen@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago

If they really want rooftop travel, a gondola system could probably work.

[-] Iron_Lynx@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Works assuming the rooftops are roughly in line of sight. That is something I assumed not to be definitively true in the other comment..

[-] CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social 1 points 1 day ago

Oh I mean you can replace them, but when nothing of the original system remains you're not so much optimizing the idea as throwing it out to use trains instead

this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2024
1193 points (98.5% liked)

memes

10205 readers
2258 users here now

Community rules

1. Be civilNo trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour

2. No politicsThis is non-politics community. For political memes please go to !politicalmemes@lemmy.world

3. No recent repostsCheck for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month

4. No botsNo bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins

5. No Spam/AdsNo advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live.

Sister communities

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS