Photo credit: Pixabay
by Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition
The Engineering.com website reports on how one air taxi manufacturer worked to make its battery-powered electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft (eVTOL) quiet. The Joby Aviation S4 “hexacopter” can carry four people for 150 miles at speeds up to 200 mph. It’s still waiting for Federal Aviation Administration certification to fly. This link from Joby shows that its hexacopter, so-called because it has six rotors, is quieter than other aircraft.
I’m a skeptic. I remember seeing illustrations of flying cars on covers of Popular Science or Popular Mechanics magazines decades ago. I haven’t seen one yet. For the Joby hexacopter, I’m particularly concerned about the VTOL mechanism and its use in flight. The Marines’ Osprey VTOL has crashed several times, with the crashes largely attributed to pilot error.
Maybe I shouldn’t be so skeptical. I remember reading Dick Tracy cartoons when I was a boy, with the detective talking into his wrist radio. When the cartoonist introduced it in 1946, it was pure fantasy. Now my wife talks into her Apple iWatch. I guess only time will tell.
