Drone Taxi anyone?
The next big physics-constrained aviation crash challenge the FAA has to figure out will be drone-inspired Urban Air Mobility EVTOL vehicles. Those won’t have cabins suspended from a central rotor blade with auto rotation capability, so when active attitude control is lost, random tumbling will take over.
Imagine tumbling toward the earth in your malfunctioning EVTOL “taxi” from just 140 feet AGL. The passengers would have three seconds of free fall from initial rollover out of controlled hover until ground impact at over 60 miles an hour.
Although the autonomous control could be designed to launch a BRS rocket precisely when the vehicle momentarily passes through vertical, the parachute lines will wrap around the tumbling vehicle before the chute can unfurl and catch air, regardless of initial altitude.
