Are pilotless planes the future for domestic flights? Passengers could travel on hydrogen-powered aircraft across Britain within five years under government-backed plans

https://www.dailymail.co.uk ^ | 23 January 2021 | By DARREN BOYLE FOR MAILONLINE

[Grampa Dave]

Thanks for posting, "What can go wrong!"

[bgill]

Didn't we already play a game of stuff falling from the sky?

[Vigilanteman]

That worked out so well that they issued a set of postage stamps to memorialize the achievement:

As I recall, there were three of them in the series. But the above was the only one I was able to get when I was a boy over a half century ago . . . and the stamps were almost as old back then.

[catnipman]

“But humans are not going to ride in robot plane, will want Emergency Human up front.”

it’s been said that the main reason modern aircraft include a living human pilot onboard is that in the event of a catastrophic failure or accident, the living human pilot has HUGE incentive to try to save his own life ...

[Vigilanteman]

Now I understand why the stamps are so rare. They only sold less than 200,000 of them TOTAL and destroyed the rest. This was 1930, so only about 7% of the pricey stamps printed were sold. Just wow!

[Patriot777]

They’d best keep those monstrosities over the ocean and run them like a giant UCAV cargo only. Second thought, don’t do anything. Go to the pub and have a pint and watch “Keeping Up Appearances”.

[Organic Panic]

It’s government backed. So it must be good.

[Organic Panic]

Glitch

[DanZ]

Will they be running Windows XP?

ONLY is they have 5.25" floppy discs

[Seaplaner]

There is another term for pilotless airplanes...

...passengerless airplanes.

[BiteYourSelf]

Yup first thing I thought of.🙄

[BiteYourSelf]

DOS4.🙄

[Zuriel]

Instead of worrying about highjackers, we’ll be worrying about highhackers.

[EEGator]

Nothing complex about the z-coordinate addition...

[EEGator]

“Would you like to play a game?”

[Thank You Rush]

I was going to say it’s been a long time since we’ve seen a really big explosion so why not? For us in the USSA, it’s been 20 years!

[norwaypinesavage]

"possibly using hydrogen as fuel making them environmentally friendly."

This is either a bald faced lie, or the author is just incredibly stupid. Large quantities of hydrogen are made today out of fossil fuels. Making hydrogen from electrolyzing water it just too energy intensive to be commercially viable, and gives off just as much CO2 as burning it. There will not be enough wind turbines and solar panels in 10 years to do it then, either. Hydrogen is not an "environmentally friendly" fuel today, nor will it be so in a decade either.