Primary land transportation system for thousands of years was the horse. Either ridden by itself, or hitched to a mechanism that allowed it to pull thousands of pounds of wagon and material.Originally Posted by Ron Blum
A bit over a hundred years ago, the horse became obsolete. The internal combustion engine turned out to be a far superior basis for human transport.
So...did horses disappear? Are they viewable only in zoos?
Of course not. They became recreational rides; people don't ride them/hitch them to wagons for serious transportation, but they do it just for the fun of it.
Hmmmm... "recreational rides". Remind you of any Experimental Aircraft Associations you know of?
Ohhh, my old soapbox about how General Aviation needs to evolve. Lemme brush some Duz flakes off the top before I step up and repeat what I've been saying on various forums for years.
Why doesn't the average citizen like General Aviation? There are probably two major reasons:
1. It's dangerous, and
2. It requires learning an esoteric skill many people are afraid of.
(#3 is that it's expensive, but that's a market thing. Make it popular again, and prices will go down.)
The key thing is that #1 and #2 are related. Take a simple, classic airplane like the Cessna 172. About 72% of the accidents are due to pilot error. 60% are plain mistakes at the controls (pilot miscontrol), and the other 12% are judgement problems (running out of fuel, VFR into IMC, etc.).
Oddly enough, the blame can be laid at one simple, low cost component: The 1/8" aviation control cable.
114 years after the Wright brothers, we're STILL controlling the airplanes the same way they did: By physical manipulation of aircraft surfaces to make the plane move in the direction the pilot thinks he wants. It's idiotic. We have self-driving cars, now...why not self-flying airplanes? Sever the damn control cables and put a computer to work. Why force an airplane operator to know how to fly coordinated turns, and achieve a target airspeed and glide angle, and manage their fuel, and fiddle with the mixture and carb heat, and a myriad other things that have NOTHING TO DO with the desire to travel from point A to point B? A computer could do that far better.
Give the operator a control screen for them to tell the plane where to go, and let the plane go there. Give the owner a little tiller if you want, to let them drive the plane on the ground. But once they tell the plane to fly, it should be able to find the active runway, take off, and head to the destination. Geeze, we're all putting ADS-B systems on our planes, so traffic avoidance is simplified.
Put a CAPS onboard, and let the computer activate it if it detects a safety issue. Give the occupants a big red handle, too, so they can pop the chute if they're scared. Winds too strong to land? Let the computer fly the plane over to an area safe for a CAPS descent, and activate it at the right time.
IFR conditions? Ain't gonna scare the computer. Running out of gas? The computer won't let you. No more stalling, no more spinning, no more undershooting, no more forgetting to lower the landing gear.
That's not flying, you say? That's not being a pilot?
Well, yes, that's true. But remember, we're not talking recreation, here. We're talking what aviation was originally designed to do...provide aerial transportation. Get human error out of the loop, and you'll eliminate a ton of accidents. The increased safety will get more interest, as will the ability to fly above the traffic.
Nothing prevents hard-case guys from continuing to manually fly their Fly Babies, Nieuports, and RVs.... just like thousands of citizens spend their leisure going out the saddle up ol' Dobbin for a quick canter through the park.
Ron "Come on, Concorde!" Wanttaja
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