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Tail sitters like the Convair Pogo were a beast to land.

The transition from horizontal to vertical flight has always come with substantial penalties - weight, complexity, power, control and cost.

There's some truth still to old adage that what "looks right, flies right." To my eyes this thing looks all wrong.

Hm.. I RTFA and what I would expect to see in an article about a flying car, is well. . . maybe it flying.

It can't fly yet . . . then its not a flying car. Its a car with wings.
Look I found someone else who invented a flying car and you can build it at home for just a few dollars!!!

As a Cornell alumni myself, I am obligated to say "wow, very cool" ... although at first I thought this might be the first incarnation of the omnidroid from The Incredibles.

Cornell has had mixed success in building leading edge robots. Some of their more incredible robots are front and center (such as the work they contributed on the Mars Rovers), while others are barely useful (such as their early dominance in minitiarized robotic soccer). One of the school's oddest robots, which might have helped inspire the compensatory robot in this article, was this rather bizarre chair that could reassemble itself if it happened to fall apart. I don't think I'll be buying any of them for the dinner table!

Um, that flying car thing has a bit of precedence as well - the idea just needs to take off.
Commercially speaking, that is.

Where's my flying car?!

I knew a guy who had one. He liked to use the turn signals in the pattern and honk the horn at seagulls.

http://www.fiddlersgreen.net/aircraft/private/aero car/info/info.htm

...saw it at the Seattle Museum of Flight.

Also Fiddler's Green has some freely downloadable models.

Foreigners are plotting to revisit an ancient menace upon New York, and indeed the whole country! I would have thought this sort of terror was something that could have been left in the past.

It has to be a major hit with a SPECIFIC target group that actually spends money.

Oh, I already explained what I had in mind, along with the correct target group. See, the cost is quite reasonable, more so if we steal one.

This is going to get me on some terrorist watch list, isn't it? Note to the FBINSACIA (the tri-spy-agency): Just kidding. I was gonna put confetti in it, really.

Try this site for some other pictures of it.

I think that my favorite aircraft of all time was the Pilatus Porter. I have fond memories of flying into a stiff headwind and seeing a moose pass us just a little way below.

I mean sure, technology has improved, but not that much. With the example of the cruise missile, you really want a rocket because you need it to be fast moving and you need it to fly quite low to the ground (easier said than done).

While I agree about the ICBM, I suspect you are thinking way to high-tech about the cruise missiles. As an alternative to a ground hugging, rocket powered, flying bomb - how about a homebuilt with a transponder and a valid flight plan filed.

You really have to be watching the radar to catch these things when you are trying to shoot them down in wartime conditions because they are low to the ground. As for rocket powered, even our Tomahawks use a turbo-fan engine for flight (though a booster rocket for takeoff). These things are subsonic (550mph if you believe the listed spec) relying on stealth rather than speed. Compare that to the German V1 at 401mph.

I believe a cruise missile is within the skill set of the hobbyist. Course, I've built a composite aircraft and am restoring a 1948 Playboy (aircraft) today... so my view is a bit twisted.

What's the next? Will cars fly?

That depends on how much a flying car is worth to you.

Anyway, it's been done.

There's quite a difference between "their next flight could be their last" (emphasis added) and "if you don't lose at least one during testing, you aren't pushing hard enough" (again, EA). The former means that the job is risky, the latter, suicidal (that is, I interpret his meaning to be, "If one aircraft isn't lost, then we're not being risky enough").

Other notes:

1) I wasn't responding to Timothy, rather HobbySpacer, the article's submitter. At least, that's how the quotes lead me to read it.
2) I don't think that this person presumed that this statement was only meant for unmanned flights; the link included in this comment was for the X-15, which did have a fatal disintigration, as memorialized in the link he gave.
3) I didn't mean to suggest that I thought this vehicle was manned. I was responding to his comment about the X-15.

Sorry if I ruffled any feathers; I guess I wasn't sufficiently clear.

On November 15, 1967 he made his seventh and final flight in X-15 No. 3. He achieved a maximum speed of 3561 mph and a maximum altitude of 266,000 feet (50.38 miles). Upon re-entry the vehicle entered a spin at a speed of Mach 5 (five times the speed of sound). At approximately 18,600 feet the vehicle began to dive followed by high frequency pitch oscillations. The vehicled isintegrated when the forces reached 15 Gs (15 times Earth's gravity), killing Adams.

The X-15 plane (scroll down the page for program history), which flew for the first time in 1959, exceeded Mach 6, and flew over 100,000 ft.

The project was eventually cancelled, after a combination of spectacular crashes, exceedingly high costs, and the success of NASA's programs.

It is interesting that the X-plane pilots viewed themselves as the true masters of high-altitude and space flight. In their opinion, they were in control of their missions from start to finish, unlike the Mercury astronauts, who were simply strapped down on top of an explosive bottlerocket. Indeed, the first astronaut was a chimp!

Bob