
Inside Larry Page’s Kitty Hawk: Returned Deposits, Battery Fires, Boeing Shakeup - atlasunshrugged
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeremybogaisky/2019/12/01/inside-larry-pages-kitty-hawk-returned-deposits-battery-fires-boeing-cora/#40ad689758ab
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leoedin
The anti-safety culture is kind of surprising. When they made previous
announcements I thought that safety was what they were bringing to the table.
Autonomous drones, even large scale ones, are pretty ubiquitous at this point.
People are building human-scale drones using off the shelf equipment in their
back gardens. The thing they're all lacking is properly safety certified
electronics. I would have thought the thing a project with deep pockets like
kitty hawk would bring would be the huge effort required to build a
certifiably safe done.

Having worked in other hardware startups though, I'm guessing what actually
happened was a few years of reinventing the wheel and learning on the job.
Safe systems don't look any different to non safe systems to an outsider, so
unless there's a real buy in from management it's very hard to build them.

~~~
crocal
Before talking about anti-safety culture, I observed that the real issue in a
purely hardware/software-driven culture is that people focus on technology.
For safety systems, this usually fails / overbudgets because there needs to be
some systems thinking /before/ about why and how the proposed system can be
declared safe. In the case of drones, I am afraid that the systems design to
make these devices acceptably safe is yet to be formulated (Note: these are
not planes, they fly close to the ground so they do not benefit from the
safety of altitude to have time to react in case of failure)

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Helicopters are certifiable for carrying passengers, and yet take offs and
landings have no altitude nor speed benefits.

In what way do multirotors / drones differ?

~~~
TeMPOraL
I know exactly nothing about aircraft safety, but since this is HN, I want to
throw out a guess: in case of landing, could it be that helicopters make the
blades spin very fast prior to beginning the landing maneuver, compensating
for extra lift with pitch control, and then keep them spinning fast throughout
the entire landing process, and brake them only after touchdown? This would,
in my mind, let them do a soft touchdown via autorotation in case of sudden
engine failure at any point of the landing maneuver (at least if the pilot has
fast enough reflexes).

~~~
Already__Taken
I'm going to go on a limb here, you'd need to put enough energy into the
rotors of: helicopter weight * recovery time (so distance * descent rate) *
gravity². that is a big number to get rotor mass * rpm to equal.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Autorotation is already the standard emergency landing practice in case of
loss of engine power mid-flight; I'm only guessing that landings could be
performed in such a way as to maintain the capability for autorotation
throughout the maneuver.

~~~
Already__Taken
That's what I was trying to explain, that energy to maintain rotor speed in an
autorotation is stored in the height. To replace that is a damn big number
you're putting somewhere else. Maybe landing rockets like the soyuz.

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OnlineGladiator
> “It was a pattern — if you talked about safety you were done, so you just
> didn’t,” said one former employee. “That’s just how it had to be if you
> wanted to keep getting a paycheck.”

Sounds like a problem with management, which isn't surprising. Sebastian Thrun
is a brilliant researcher, but he has yet to turn any of his ideas into
sustainable technologies or companies. Self-driving cars aren't real yet, and
Udacity is going through some rough times. To the best of my knowledge Udacity
has never been profitable (please correct me if I am wrong).

[https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/22/sebastian-thrun-
initiates-...](https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/22/sebastian-thrun-initiates-
aggressive-plan-to-transform-udacity/)

Maybe he'll turn around Udacity (I doubt it, although I really hope so). My
point is this man chases after shiny things, and then leaves as soon as
there's another shiny thing for him to pursue. He does the fun stuff with
early development, and then loses interest when you get to the hard slog of
making everything sustainable.

Similar to self-driving cars, he was able to get his flying machines working
well enough for some really awesome demos - but he can't commercialize the
technology because it's still demoware.

I want to compare this to Icarus because superficially it's so appealing, but
in the end Sebastian is going to be incredibly wealthy and never having really
lost anything. He will even likely continue to be heralded as a genius by many
(and sometimes rightfully so).

~~~
FabHK
That first quote is really a massive indictment for an aviation company - it's
diametrically opposed to how it should be ("safety culture" and all).

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danbr
I work at a company doing something very similar, owned by an aerospace giant
as well.

We are led to believe that safety is the most important aspect of any part of
our work. At least that’s what we’re told at group meetings and company-wide
meetings. But when push comes to shove and the (arbitrary) schedule demand a
test, hacky code is produced, checks fall off the list, and errors do happen.

Progress seems to be more important than safety. We are instructed to show
some sort of significant return on investment within 6-12 months for the
funding we’ve received. It’s pretty sad.

Telling mangers that we need to take it low and slow at first makes them angry
and ignore the engineers who do the good work in exchange for engineers who do
it fast.

~~~
jacquesm
Scariest comment on HN in a long time.

Also, you probably think you're anonymous and safe in setting this comment out
here but you and your employer are trivially identifiable from this comment
and a couple of others made on HN so you may want to petition the mods to kill
this comment on the off chance that your employer gets wind of this, it might
be a career limiting thing.

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grizzles
I wouldn't have expected a Google related project to deathmarch like this.
Energy density was always going to be the problem. The Lithium ion chemistries
are just not there yet. These guys know what they are doing:
[https://skai.co/](https://skai.co/) Vid:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhMP5237dGA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhMP5237dGA)

~~~
FabHK
Minor nitpick: Energy density is energy per volume. What's crucial here is
specific energy, ie energy per mass.

~~~
grizzles
<3

Some days I love hacker news.

~~~
OnlineGladiator
The most impressive thing is he did it in a friendly manner! Sometimes I'm
pretty bad at correcting people without sounding like an asshole.

------
jcims
It boggles my mind how many of these human transporter designs have the props
low to the ground. How the hell is a passenger supposed to egress in case of
emergency when the blades are running?

~~~
jessaustin
There are other reasons for rotors to be overhead, as well. Locating the
center of mass below the center of thrust makes a more stable system. Viewing
the ground, which is something that many passengers would desire, is much
easier when there isn't a bunch of machinery in the way. The further rotors
are from the ground, the less likely they are to strike debris when landing
and taking off.

I'm trying to think of reasons it would be good to have low rotors... maybe
something about noise experienced by the passengers?

~~~
rtkwe
Getting them high enough up would require a larger super structure supporting
them and would look pretty goofy to get them high enough up that a standing
person wouldn't risk hitting them. These can also be stopped pretty quickly
just by shorting all the motor leads together so stopping them in an emergency
isn't very hard.

~~~
jcims
I'll go with goofy looking and keep my legs. :)

~~~
rtkwe
The other thing is these are meant for operation over water so if you have
crashed it will be into water and the blades will stop very quickly due to the
drag.

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madengr
“No person has ever been harmed or exposed due to undue risk in over 26,000
test flights with over 100 prototype vehicles,”

Well that isn’t exactly difficult to achieve if no one was on it. I’d like to
know the data if it was carrying a crash dummy.

~~~
krisoft
Also that is such a contrieved way of saying “no person has ever been harmed
in over 26,000 test flights”. There must be something the “due to undue risk”
clarification hides.

~~~
geomark
I read that as there were injuries, but they were due to risks that had to be
taken, not risks that were carelessly taken.

~~~
FabHK
Good point. One could say that nobody has ever been injured or died in civil
aviation due to undue risk (except maybe where the captain let his kid fly the
jet for a bit, that might be considered "undue"...)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroflot_Flight_593](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroflot_Flight_593)

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csours
Steve Jobs was famous for his "reality distortion zone" \- simply not
believing that something could not be done.

Early on in a project you need vision and innovation, "fake it 'till you make
it".

Get a demo working, even if it only works 20% of the time or covers one use
case poorly.

But at some point, along comes actual reality.

~~~
Nasrudith
Faking it is really a bad model - the number of Steve Jobs "prepared to use
sleight of hand to hide loading times" is vastly out numbered by expensive
failed replacements.

The most defensible practice are at least inherently modular and could be
stitched together - really the deception would be highly unnecessary

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Danieru
> required to report safety-related issues to their managers, or through a
> confidential digital channel directly to the general counsel and human
> resources

What. How is it appropriate fo HR to be involved in reports of safety issues.
This reads like there was confidential channel to self selection layoffs.

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Animats
EHang is making short flights with people aboard.[1] The EHang 216, a one-
person drone-like craft, has 16 props on 8 booms, so there's some redundancy.
But not enough battery life to go very far.

[1] [https://youtu.be/7RjstNDRuCQ](https://youtu.be/7RjstNDRuCQ)

~~~
FabHK
Volocopter has been making manned flights since 2016 (see links below). It has
18 rotors (at least 3 can fail while leaving it completely controllable) and 9
independent battery packs.

And, in particular, it doesn't have the people-decapitating and knee-cap-
smashing rotors below the passenger capsule, but above (like a conventional
helicopter).

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OazFiIhwAEs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OazFiIhwAEs)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhNJUyT3HI8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhNJUyT3HI8)

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batsy71
The flyer has lot of anti-intuitive designs for example 6 massive fans
whirring around the pilot.

What if there is bird strike or the blades somehow dismantle from the fan and
fly towards the pilot.

Also this being made for non professional pilots/passengers what if a
passenger tries to board/de-board while the fans are still spinning?

At this point, I assume the aircraft keeps morphing into whatever the next
iteration of managers/designers deem highest priority to keep the company
afloat

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GhettoMaestro
I hate Forbes.com articles with a burning hate in my heart. The ads. Oh my god
- stop it!

