Slashdot Mirror
NASA Tests Flying Scooter For Commercial Take-Off
Ant writes: "
NASA will
discover tomorrow
whether a
prototype
airscooter - a
jetpack-like device
propelled by fans -
could really be a
viable mode of
transport.
If successful, the
airscooter trial at
Nasa's Ames research centre in California could form another
stepping stone in the development of personal, individual
aircraft that allow commuters to speed over traffic jams, doctors
to fly to emergencies and soldiers to leapfrog minefields.
The SoloTrek Exo-skeletor Flying Vehicle (XFV) is designed to
allow a pilot to stand upright, with fans 3ft in diameter above his
head that lift him into the sky, allowing flight at speeds of up to
80mph for up 1Å hours on a tank of petrol." Despite the cool graphic, note that what's being tested is an engine, not the whole rig pictured -- that's just a tease. Consultation with the UK branch office revealed no clue of how long "1Å hours" is. Any ideas?
Yes, that is the symbol for an angstrom, however, I believe that they meant one Ampere-hour, which means it will run at one amp for one hour for that amount of fuel. It's the rate of fuel usage and the power derived from that amount of fuel.
No, power is in Watts. Amperes measure the current; and Ampere-hours measure electrical charge. All this doesn't apply very well here.
I think they probably meant 1 1/2 hours, and the funky symbol for 1/2 got warped somehow.
this site isn't much more than one of those end of magazine deals where they advertise x-ray vision glasses, and penis pumps.
the dude has a couple trashcans cut in half resting on a plank backpack. Hell, would you send me
"#FLJP Plans----$22.00 #FLJZ Assembled and tested----$11,500.00
If I were to spend my winter afternoon creating a story and a mock-up like this?
- passion
A sqwwaaaaakin' good time! irc.rabidpenguin.org
/ \
\ / ASCII ribbon campaign for peace
x
/ \
Axtually, the fan exhausts are to either side of the person, not directly on to him. I imagine the wind force would be pretty similar to the wind forces I experience riding my motorcycle on the highway. You should try it sometime - wind in your hair and all that. OK, wind in the helmet, but same idea!
Then again.. things that can cost well over a million dollars just to own - let alone keep up - aren't exaclty main stream. The problem with the Jetpak and convertible car-slash-airplane were not because people didn't have proper training - it was because both of them weren't feasible at the time.
And I doubt that they'd make flying one of these things as complicated as flying a plane if they actually want to market these things. Planes aren't mainstream because of their price - they aren't mainstreamed, and they are not necissarily designed to be.
I think the idea here is to see if having a personal aircraft is possible, not if it'll work if you strap an ape to it and show him how to work the controls.
As far as the safty thing - look at what happened with railroads.. People were horrfied by the incredible speed they could reach (10mph). Several people of power wanted them (more or less) outlawed.. Saftey has a tendancy to catch up after innovation.
It is probably too late to really talk to anybody here but...
I've seen a lot of comments regarding how unsafe these things are and comparing them to the lack of safety in automibiles.
One of the greatest troubles with automobiles is the lack of space in which to drive them. Everywhere you look there is something to run into and lots of those things also happen to be moving at relatively high rates of speed.
Well, once we open up the third dimension a lot of that crowding goes away. People will have time to blink out for a bit in most places. Speeds are much lower than traditional aircraft, so there is an excellent chance for even a fairly negligent driver to see an oncoming obstacle and move, especially as a lot of these obstacles are fairly large.
You won't see a lot of commercial use of these devices until their carrying capacity and fuel efficiency increases dramatically. Commercially it will be a niche product...EMT's whizzing to injury sites, police on patrol, etc.
A lot of ground vehicle accidents involve commercial vehicles, and not merely because they are on the road a lot. A lot of commercial drivers become inured to the responsibility of conducting a vehicle.
There are still the problems of takeoff and landing, which are the most dangerosu phases of flight operations. To some extent technology can help an operator manage the troubles there.
There is the problem of engine failure. This can be handled with parachutes, airbags and additional safety gear like helmets and ankle/knee braces.
Finally I imagine that, like motorcycle riders, personal air vehicle operators will exercise greater caution than your average automobile operator. Have you ever noticed how motorcycle drivers pull over very quickly during adverse weather ? I know I have seen many drivers pull over under bridges and call for a ride. Ever notice the conspicuous absence of motorcycles under many weather conditions.
People act as stupid as they think they can get away with, witness motorcycle drivers flying around at 90 or 100 mph. Of course they only seem to do this under dry road conditions with good visibility. People in cars act very stupid because they think they are safe. They are wrong of course. People in jet packs or the like will have to be very aware that they are in danger.
Finally a lot of people who are afraid to drive do so because "They have to." A lot of these people have poor eyesight, poor reflexes or a variety of anxieties about the entire driving process. A lot of these unsafe drivers will simpley choose to stick with ground transportation. We can use stricter licensing to eliminate others.
We can also tie having a personal aircraft license to having a safe ground transportation license. This may make for safer ground drivers, as people vie for their air licenses. Further the only people with air licenses will have at least a moderate record of transport safety.
There are solutions to the problems. They will be found because people want to do this. They will be found because governments want this. (They don't like having to maintain our roadways, anything that can make that problem go away will be helped along.)
The most influential arguments against this technology I've seen on Slashdot come from pilots. Flying is complicated and very technical. Humans and computers can combine to overcome these problems. The Airbus planes are a step in this direction...but not there yet. Imagine having a system like that on a simpler aircraft to assist the pilot. The upside is that the aircraft can be flown more simply by more novice pilots. The down is when the computer screws up and takes away necessary control from the pilot like the A320 at the Paris Airshow a few years back. The answer is not here yet, but it IS coming.
So maybe not next week or next year, but it will get here sooner rather than later. I look forward to it.
Don't post innacurate information
If you do, I swear by my pretty floral bonnet I will end you.
Clearly hasn't been paying much attention to humankinds history.....we're continually doing things that would have seemed impossible/highly stupid in the past.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
I don't want to fly around the sky in the future with the same people I drive around the roads with in the present...
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
Gravity would clean up midair accidents quick!
(Nevermind about the people UNDERNEATH the accident!)
:)
--
Since the team of trained squirrels administrating Slashdot care so much about your explanation like there is no tomorrow, the black helicopters are coming to torment you with their sonic lasers. But they will not fix the problem, of course.
It's a well-known fact that far more people die in automobile accidents than plane crashes. In part, this is because at any reasonable speed, being close to the ground just means you're closer to obstacles you could run into. Another (bigger) reason is that any idiot can drive a car, but flying planes generally requires rigorous training and testing, especially doing so commercially.
Personally, I think driving cars should be similarly restrictive; there's no reason someone who doesn't know how to use their turn signal, not drink before driving, obey traffic signals, and think on their feet should be behind the wheel of a chunk of metal traveling 80+ mph. But the popular demand just won't allow that, and as roads become more congested similar pressure will be exerted towards making personal flight easier/safer.
"If you look 'round the table and can't tell who the sucker is, it's you." -- Quiz Show
I'm sure as soon as these things start getting popular, someone will make a line of oversized ones for absolutely no particular reason other than to consume more fuel and take up more space... oh yeah, and to look butt ugly!
I'll just stick to my Vespa, land scooter for now.
There is no technology available now or forseeable in the future that will make it safe to fly a personal plane into a thunderstorm or into ice. There is no technology that will take away your ability to fly into them. The only technology that can do that is technology that keeps you on ground, always.
"If God had wanted man to fly, he would have given us wings."
"Flying is for the birds, not man."
etc.
What a dope you are. You can't see the sky for the clouds...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Look if you want central control, stick to public transport - trains trams buses etc. Trains are far easier to do safely.
;).
Computers aren't going to help much - we don't have the eyesight and agility of birds, plus we don't have as good a flocking ability/instinct- you really need that when you have tons of people flying together. You already have people not respecting each others space in 2D, it's going to get worse in 3D.
We aren't as resilient too. Imagine a mid-air collision between a few of these things. Once the pilots are knocked out by an impact 500 feet in the air, things aren't going to be so glamorous.
Avoiding power lines, cables and tethers is going to be bad too. How many of you can see cables >500 feet away so that you can avoid them at 80 mph?
Firework season is going to be fun too
Link.
if you are sending it overseas, how do you send it by land?
knee-jerk? check. post? check. okay, time to read the article.
This toy's been in development a while - the web site's Solotrek.com. Hope they can make it fly - and navigable by mere mortals, not just Special Forces folk.
I love vegetarians - some of my favorite foods are vegetarians.
Should I get a UPS when these arrive? I allready lose power when some idiot knocks over a power pole, now people will be frying on the power lines.
--
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No notes on airbags, Bewulf clusterability, onboard mp3 players or OnStar buttons (in case of problem press & scream - quickly!)
Yes, but if you read the fine print, there's an option to install a big red "Don't Panic" button.
Douglas Adams rules.
I have saved some of my Starcraft replays here
between the Great Space-Fungus, and personal helicopters, I'm staying in my wireless-networked house.
I can catch Mir fungus in space, or get chopped up in some 16-learner's permit-holding cheerleader's prop blades on my way to work.
No Thank You.
A host is a host from coast to coast, but no one uses a host that's close
I know power is watts or Amp Volts or anything equivalent, but you get the meaning I was getting at, right? I know it doesn't make sense, and it's probably a mangled character, but it does make a tad more sense than an angstrom-hour, right? that's like a meter second, which isn't used all that much in classical mechanics if I'm not mistaken . . . but it's still funny
-Leo
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
The symbol is one for an angstrom -- which is 10^-10 meters. I think if that distance was significant, there wouldn't be much market for these things.
We've only got a few months left in the year 2000- I want my personal Jetpack we were all supposed to have by now!
* 17.8816
That's more like a 50 foot drop. (like you'll care when you hit bottom). Now you know why a seat-belt is considered such a good idea.
`ø,,ø`ø,,ø!
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
This can be fun and useful in really wide open spaces. But if we can't get people to flock properly then I think it is too dangerous to allow high densities of people up in the air at once, especially in cities and other populated areas.
People won't keep to speed limits either. 130kph (36 metres/sec) doesn't give you much time to avoid power lines, nylon kite string, wires 200 metres away - assuming they even see them. Highly trained military chopper pilots have problems with stuff like this, I doubt the public are going to do even half as well. You don't get swans and geese flying street level in New York City, and that thing isn't going to be even as agile.
In event of an accident the chances are high that the pilot won't just kill himself in a densely populated area. 200 kilos of stuff landing on ground pedestrians/motorists from 5 stories up is usually fatal.
The hype is probably to get funding from more sources.
I'd want to fly one, but I think we should only fly in air fields.
Cheerio,
Link.
What can I say... This has to be the coolest thing I've ever seen. Unforunately this is probably vaporish but it's still nice to dream.
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));
"If successful, the airscooter trial at Nasa's Ames research centre in California could form another stepping stone in the development of personal, individual aircraft that allow commuters to speed over traffic jams..."
...until they collide with a swarming mass of other commuters attempting to avoid said traffic jams....
Science, like Nature, must also be tamed, with a view turned towards its preservation.
__________________________________
all misspellings were intentional.
Don't you mean allow commuters to get caught in flying traffic jams?
No, you don't. You rely on at least two very highly trained and experienced human pilots, who control the plane and make the go/no-go decisions.
The reasons for flight not becoming as commonplace as automobile driving are related to human decision-making and knowledge, not to technology. And let's face it: for flight to become that commonplace, the very same idiots that drive on the roads today would be flying in the air, making decisions as poorly up there as they do down here. How many morons have you seen drive really slowly in the left lane, or drive side-by-side and exactly the same speed as the guy in the lane next to them? These are the people we're talking about. They're the same people that "just want to get their work done" but don't want to learn how to get their work done. It's the type of person who doesn't want to make any decisions, they just want to get from point A to point B as easily and quickly as possible. Flight requires decision making that precludes such a person from sitting in the left seat, and all the electronics in the world aren't going to help.
Hell, there are enough trained pilots who try to be like that as it is: they're the people that ask the weather briefer whether or not they should go, rather than making that decision for themselves.
--
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
I disagree. Anything that removes stupid people from the gene pool (preferably before they breed) is a good thing.
</humor>
Actually, stupid people are why this will never really take off (no pun intended) in the US. Just look at general aviation. An alternator for a '73 Ford costs $50, the alternator for a '83 Cessna costs $300. Same alternator, save the FAA approval tag on the Cessna. Why is the Cessna more expensive? Liability insurance: your '73 Ford seizes up, are you going to file a multimillion dollar suit? Your Cessna crashes, will your heirs?
www.eFax.com are spammers
Working from memory (most likely wrong), 1 fundamental time unit = 10^-44 seconds = 2.78*10^-48 hours.
So 1 hour = 3.6*10^47, so 1Å*hour=3.3*10^25 hours. That's one hell of a fuel supply :)
P.S. Yes, I know it's really only 1-1/2 hours :(
Why, they're thrill seeking maniacs!
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
There is no
The average person (and most above-average persons) are simply unable to be focused enough to drive safely in 2 dimensions, let alone 3.
I mean, even myself.. I make every attempt to be a good driver, and usually I'm quite successful, but there are always times when you look the wrong way...
What we need is better public transportation, better forms of mass transport, not even *MORE* forms of personal transport. THey are wasteful, resource wise, and inefficient.
Yes, the first helicopter-like machines (autogyros) were built to use autorotation. They had propellers and engines to move them forward, and they had blades that had been tilted back a little to catch the air and rotate, causing them to lift.
Ewige Blumenkraft.
No, I think the other guy was right, he was just trying to be witty. There is nothing actually relevant about saying "people objected to X which is now widespread, so your objections to Y must be equally wrong." The fact that naysayers aren't always right is pretty useless for evaluating an argument against something.
Its like if someone was talking about their hopes for a presidential candidate and I started making hopeful comments about our new chancellor adolf hitler who will bring us out of this recession. There has been no useful critique of the real subject at hand.
And of course the differences between fears about the mechanical workings of a new device and the unavoidable practical implications of thousands of people zipping through a 3D area with no markings of lanes are so great as to make the comment just a silly throwaway line.
Have you ever been on the boston esplanade for the fourth of july? There's lots of boats out having fun. Most of them are rafts and canoes, but there are a few power boats zipping around. There's big signs on the bridges warning people not to leave wake, but every few minutes some moron will zip through leaving a wake that rocks smaller boats on both shores.
Now imagine that everyone was in the fast boats, and instead of a fairly straightforward trip up on down the river, you had some people going across and some suddenly dropping in from above because the fast part of your trip is through where they stop, and someone just sort of stopping and circling because they were getting their bearings, and....
You can't make these problems go away with silly "quotes" about a completely different situation. It can be funny, but "aren't we feeling clever" is the only real response, because it is not useful or relevant.
-Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
just what the world needs.. Fly-by shootings.
We will have gang wars up in the air! It'll be just like Cowboy Bebop.
Yeah, the thing may well fly. That isn't what the pilots are saying is impractal (in the next 10 years). If it works doctors may fly to patents, or paramedics. After a lot of training. Infentry may fly over minefileds, again after training (maybe somewhat less because someone might decide to risk it rather then letting them get shot cleaing a mine field under fire). But who will you not see flying? The guy who drives 45 in the fast lane. The guy who doesn't check his tires every few days. In fact almost anyone that wouln't pay a big chunk of cash and go through a longish training program with the risk of failing the test at the end and not being allowed to fly.
At least until we get some pretty damm bug free auto-flight/landing/takeoff code, and you know how little bug free code is out there... (NASA comes pretty damm close on the shuttle code, but it is very expensave and slow code to have written, and doesn't to as much real-time machine vision and control system work as this would...)
That skycar(on the main page) looks badass! Looks like something Speed Racer would fly.
This is just what we all need, o wow a flying scooter.
could you really?
Long as the sea between russia and alaska is frozen over, sure. (and weren't they talking about a bridge?)
I believe that it is theoretically possible to walk from the tip of south america to capetown. Massivly impractical, but possible. When you're on foot, a straight line is rarely the best route between two points.
-Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
And do you know how many cars with busted taillights/underinflated tires/rusted out bodies I've seen on the road?
Remember, people: it would have to pass FAA certification before it could be produced, and maintenance on it would fall under the same rules that govern certified aircraft: only licensed mechanics are allowed to work on it, only FAA-approved modifications are allowed, an inspection is required every year, etc. The very things that make aviation so expensive will likely bury this thing even if it's otherwise a complete revolution in aviation.
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Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
I passed the FAA Private Pilot exam when i was 12. I'm 16 now...all things considered i should have my drivers licens (you need to be 16 in Virginia), but i'm lazy. I can't get my piolots license until i'm 17 but so what. The point is that from watching other drivers apparantly moving on 2 axis is too much trouble for them. Add the 3rd demention and the fact that if you crash you WILL die, i don't believe most people want to deal with it, and rightly the vast majority of people shouldn't be trusted to fly.
my father also is a commercial airline captain so if there is one thing i know it's flying. It's not an incredibly easy thing to do.
William D. Freeman http://members.xoom.com/EvilGNU -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.12 GCS d- s+:++ a---
Sure, but they operate on a much higher level than the rest of the plane. There's a layer or two of software between the pilot's control inputs and the actual physical mechanisms being actuated. Besides, ever hear of autopilot?
Also, isn't landing largely computer controlled? And how about the radar units in the control tower? Believe me, despite the fact that the pilot and copilot are issuing commands to the plane, your safe arrival at the airport relies on a lot of software.
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
Program Intellivision!
> And don't even bother talking about the idea of automatic, computer-controlled flyways and such nonsense. You may love your OS, but you would not actually risk your life on it. It only takes a drop of about 20 to 30 feet to kill you.
:) I just wouldn't trust anyone else's code without seeing many other people live first, or rather zero people die. :)
:), and I'd really hate to see the same stupid things in the air. It pretty much has to be automated if the average person gets a chance at it, nevermind the energy costs. And that's how it should be for cars too, just waiting for the technology to catch up.
I wouldn't have a problem with it if I wrote it.
We need to automate the existing ground system before we try to automate systems in the air. Until someone does that (Microsoft is trying, just watch out for the Blue Windshield of Death as it speeds toward your head) we shouldn't even consider this. Most people shouldn't be driving (and I'm not excluding myself from that
hmm... when I went down to LA a few weeks ago, I was surprised at how much better people drive there than they do here in SF bay area. Maybe it's just me, but I think people drive worse up here. Oh well, I hate the way people drive everywhere I go. Just can't win :-(
When you add up the unique risks, the two activites come out about as risky as the other. On the ground there are more obsticals and chances to wipe out. In the air, minor mechanical problems will kill you and crosswinds will do more than make you yank at the wheel. Look out for those! -BZZZZaaaap!- power lines, oh my.
Let's not forget the public nuisance factor. You can put stuff in front of your house to bounce runaway vehicles, but what can you do for your roof? If you like leaf blowers, your gonna love these.
All and all, I'm with you but it's a loosing battle. It would be much better if people would just build their towns to reasonable population densities with mixed development and a good grid. That way, you would not need a car, much less one of these bad jokes. Unfortunately, Anglo construction especially US, is so bad that these things will come. People will mitigate the hazards associated with flying, and owning one will be equated to freedom, or something like that. Many forms of them will be built, from the humble scooter to the minivan and they fun to use and they will kill lots of people.
And the world overhead will laugh when my 1970 VW van finds it's telephone pole.
I would imagine they would include such a capability. Any engine redundancy would be pointless unless one engine could turn both fans (V-22 Osprey can do this).
My, aren't we feeling witty today. Flying in a plane is perfectly safe, the poster never denied that. What the poster did suggest is that if people started commuting daily via personal flying devices (PYDs) then the risks of accidents would be much greater. Airline aircraft undergo expensive maintainence checks/repair work after each flight by trained mechanics. A PYD perform be like a car, and nobody does a complete maintainence check on their car every time they take it out. PYDs will face mechanical problems that plague cars, such as failure, stalling, a flat tire (broken fan?. However, when your car stalls you can usually safely manage to get it off the road and out off harms way. When your PYD stalls at 300 feet you are quite fucked. That is why flying a PYD is more dangerous than driving, and that is why a number of people will refrain from it.
Forget PP-ASEL/AMEL - have you ever tried a helicopter? They don't exactly glide well when the donkey quits - mess up an autorotation and you're extremely dead. I seriously doubt this thing can even autorotate. And don't give me any of this BRS nonsense either: a ballistic chute will probably never have zero-zero (zero airspeed, zero altitude - or near enough not to kill you) capabilities without costing a fantastic amount of money.
The other snake-oil solution is Moller's skycar. That thing will never fly. He's been hawking it for years, but it's never got airborne. Moller has an interesting dream, but only the gullible invest.
Dylan Smith (PP-ASEL, IR)
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
> The inherent absurdity of using an aircraft to pop down to your local newsagent. But then, we
/. don't.
> probably once thought this of cars.
It is absurd to drive to the local newsagent - at least it is for people like me, who've never lived more than a 5-minute stroll away. I can understand that if you're living somewhere a little more remote it would be necessary, but I'd expect most of
"What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist." Salman Rushdie
...how a 16-vehicle disaster looks in three dimensions.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
All the world seems in tune on a spring afternoon
As we poison the pigeons in the park!
Sorry - it seemed appropriate. And I really dislike pigeons, as you'd expect after living in London for a year. It's hard to understand why some people feed the bloody things. I fed them when I was 8, but most of the people whom I've seen doing it don't have that excuse - they're just irresponsible.
"What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist." Salman Rushdie
Would you have ignored the Wright brothers too?
--- Can i borrow your Clue-Stick(tm)? I need to go beat a few people with it...
I read an interview with Lucas where he explained the 12 parsecs thing. Apparently, Kessel is in the middle of a "black hole cluster." The path to get in is very circuitous because a pilot has to skirt all the event horizons. The more powerful (i.e. fast) a ship is, the closer it can come to the event horizons without being pulled in. The Millenium Falcon is SO FAST that it can straighten out the run enough to bring its distance under 12 parsecs.
The big question is whether the explanation came before or after the apparent mistake :)
B
"Fifty million Americans can't be wrong," said Rep. Billy Tauzin. Gore - 50,999,897 Bush - 50,456,002
Well, why would I bother flying (or physically move to point B from A) when there are better options such as telecommuting?!!
As some may have pointed out, that it will take another 50 years to have "flying cars" I say, in 5 years we will have "flying e-commuting".
In few years, from my house or office, I will be able to be "anywhere" without leaving. In addition, any thing that I go out to get will be delivered to me.
Leaving my office or home will be needed for pleaser and fun only.
-- George
Karma stuck at 50? Add 2-5 inches.. err.. 2-5x Karmas Count to your pen1es.. err.. Karma all naturally and private
And let's face it, you probably drive a car, ride a bicycle, or take a bus and thus share the road with those idiots every single day. The difference is that I can put *considerably* more space between myself and them in an aircraft than I can in a car.
Additionally, licensing would probably inherit the primary-safety-first attitude of the aircraft administration powers-that-be rather than the "let any moron loose in a lethal weapon" attitude that persists in some (not all, try getting a car license in most of Europe) countries with regards to cars. Hopefully, therefore, many of the morons would either have it educated out of them or wouldn't get a license.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
http://george.arc.nasa.gov/dx/basket/storiesetc/sc ootpx.html
Oracle and unix guy.
...about 1 7/8 hours, based on the illustration which says "150 miles" and the text that says "80 mph".
Not A Sig
http://www.solotrek.com
Something I think about every time I see articles like this...
We have ample evidence that people have problems driving in TWO dimensions. Why do we want to add a third?
--
Brandon Hume
hume -> BOFH.Halifax.NS.Ca, http://WWW.BOFH.Halifax.NS.Ca/
Brandon Hume
hume -> BOFH.Halifax.NS.Ca, http://WWW.BOFH.Halifax.NS.Ca/
How many times can you write an old story? Just ask Slashdot.
Hasues
futang futang!
Truth be told, nearly everything you say applies just as well to cars as it does to planes.
Bullshit. Bullshit bullshit bullshit. People (including me) drive in conditions every day that would kill you in a private plane. People expect to and do drive in snow storms, freezing rain, harsh winds, thunderstorms, etc etc etc. People drive to freaking Starbucks when the State Police are going on the radio to say "Stay home unless you absolutely have to because we need the roads clear for emergency vehicles." You try that stuff even once in a flying machine, and you probably will die. Maybe the first time you'll get lucky, but on the second or third, you'll die. Not "stuck in a snow bank waiting for AAA" - dead.
Any problems with uncontrolled/stupid flight or equipment failure can be solved with a ballistic recovery system
Bullshit again. Read "I Rode The Thunder" for a description of what it's like to be under a parachute in a thunderstorm. The guy was trapped in one for over an hour, got the shit beaten out of him by the hail and the wind, and major frostbite.
Just for reference, I've had about twenty-five hours of instruction.
Lose the arrogance and the ignorance, or quit flying before you kill somebody. I've lost a couple of friends because one of them got away with flying in clouds with ice in them the first couple of times, and didn't get away with it the last time. I also lost my Aviation Medical Examiner because he took off in fog without an instrument rating and flew into a hillside. I guess he figured his hand-held GPS with an obstruction database would show him the hills.
A polyanna "technology will take care of it" attitude has no place in aviation. Pilots live or die on the strength of the go-no go decisions they make on the ground, and the vast majority of the non-flying public is neither equipped to make those decisions, nor do they have the patience or time to learn to make those decisions.
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
What is this futuristic transporation marvel? A motorcycle.
http://www.moller.com/skycar/
Now, THAT is the coolest vehicle I've seen.
"I have no special gift, I am only passionately curious." - Albert Einstein
doctors to fly to emergencies
Yeah, air scooter accidents.
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I would have had first post, but my drool shorted out my keyboard.
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--
The gravitational constant of protein has changed. - Turbine
I can't wait to see that! I guess you could strap the carseats to the back, in front of the rear door. I wonder how well the air bags would work...
~Sean
I think I have the answer to a lot of the problems people are coming up with here: Limit personal flyers to only using the current road system and most of the current traffic rules. Sure, it won't work 100% everywhere, but we can adapt by taking baby steps.
... limit the population density of our cities so we don't have such traffic problems? But, that's another debate...
Instead of suddenly having large numbers of individuals flying around everywhere:
-- they have to fly 20 feet over the current road system (or whatever makes sense -- don't go into that tunnel, obviously)
-- stop at stoplights (I thought they could go right through stoplights, but then you have chaos again)
-- park in the same parking spaces (another problem that will only get worse with these big things)
-- reasonably similar speed limits (the main reason speed limits are where they are is primarily the average car's stopping speed which would be different with these things)
-- you can only go off-road with these things where any car could go off-road (except, of course, for the emergency examples given in the article like medics and police)
You know that if this became publicly available and licensed (don't think you won't need another license for this thing like a motorcycle), rules like the above ones would be the only way the public/government would accept it. Machines like in the article ARE going to come once they are practical and we'll just adapt them to our current infrastructure when they do.
The other answer to make these things unnecessary is to
Cars are the worst deathtrap ever. So many people are killed by cars. And it's not like a plane crash were you've never seen it. I'm sure everyone on here has seen fatal car accidents up close and personal. After you see a drivers brains smeared all over the highway - what kind of risk is worse than that?
When you're flying in the air what can you hit? Birds, other flying people, and that's it. When you're driving on the ground you can hit buildings, trees, other cars, pedestrians, anything. People may have a fear of heights that they're unable to overcome. Great. That will leave the sky more open to me and my friends.
Compared to skycars regular cars are 1) slower, 2) probably more dangerous (im kinda assuming any commercial engine for a skycar won't quit in mid flight), 3) way less COOL!
Believe me, there are millions of us out here asking where our rocket packs are!
Am I the only one who read that as "Frames Per Second" the first time around?
Me too thought of the same things when I read the article. I do hope though that the Trafic guys are in touch and will be getting their heads together to arrange for all that. Maybe we will now have rooftop car parking instead of basement parking for low rush areas. As for high rush areas we could consider things like multilayered parking which wouldn't need concrete building, rather something like "Suspended parking", one row neetly hovering over another.
There's always sufficient, but not always at the right place nor for the right folks.
Uh....and a car driver does? Are you sure the typical result of a driver in a car isn't something like....driver falls asleep, car skids across 3 lanes of traffic, kills 8 totally innocent people?
I think people in flying machines will be much less likely to kill others if their machine or their piloting fails. I think it's too dangerous to allow a 16 year old behind 2000 pounds of poorly maintained steel. But it happens, and so will this. Personal flight really shouldn't be limited to the ultra-wealthy.
RIGHT ON! What's this:
/. moderator's ass! (or)
(____|____)
Linux kernel hacker's ass!
There's a great deal of concern about having people who you wouldn't trust on a bicycle flying these things - perhaps it would be required to have these things fly themselves (you punch in the address and away you go)?
You might even make this kind of thing into a taxi service - ask for a pickup on your wireless PDA (or watch), the thing will come flying down to a sidewalk nearby, you strap yourself in & punch in the destination address, and away you go!
There could also be a central traffic management system to keep track of all the air-taxies, plus some default behavior in case of loss of communication.
As far as people learning to trust the things, I'd anticipate that once a decent number of people were flying around in these things with a very low percentage of accidents, then people would gradually start trusting them (just like they learned to accept cars going faster than 40mph...)
The CarterCopter is an actual, flying prototype of an experimental aircraft. It's technologies stand a much greater chance of really making it to some form of actual production than any of these vectored-thrust, powered-lift machines. I live two blocks down the street from where the CarterCopter prototype was constructed and have seen it personally from about ten feet away (as close as they'd let me get to it :) and it is quite an awesome looking machine. IMHO, I'd have to take some of its performance claims with a grain of salt, however. And bear in mind that it's only a flying testbed for certain technologies, not necessarily an intended-for-production complete aircraft.
I'm a private pilot, and within the general consensus of the aviation world, these vectored thrust - powered lift type of aircraft such as this Skycar and SoloTrek things are pretty much the laughing stock, especially the Skycar. No-one with any serious technical understanding of powered lift aircraft will take this machine seriously. If it ever will fly at all, it will be so extremely prone to stability problems that every flight would be playing russian roulette. Remember the "flying bedstead" that almost killed Neil Armstrong in the Apollo mission training days ? That's how a powered-lift machine flies when everything isn't working perfect, and no aircraft is ever "perfect". As for the SoloTrek, the most often heard comment about this contraption is that "it looks like a lonely way to die".
That's what this machine will be.... if it ever flies.
The SoloTrek stands on its own feet, not the operator's, which is a big improvement. On the other hand, the SoloTrek prototype doesn't appear to have much give in its landing gear. Controlling the rate of descent of this thing will be tough, because it's done with the throttle alone. The blades are fixed pitch. This implies a control lag that the pilot must compensate for. That's a tough piloting job.
On the stability and control front, this thing has no automated stability augmentation, which is suprising. Helicopter and VTOL craft are far tougher to fly than ordinary aircraft; they have less intrinsic stability and more control inputs. I would have expected more smarts in this thing, to make the piloting task manageable by mere mortals. Enough marginally stable VTOL craft were tried back in the 1950s that it's clear the pilot needs help. At least attitude stabilization seems indicated. A radar altimeter system to help control vertical speed at landing is probably needed, too.
The Moller Skycar supposedly has stability augmentation, but those guys have been hyping their vehicles since 1968 (yes, 1968) without producing anything flyable. I have their 1974 brochure, and it was Real Soon Now back then. Their web site has had the same Real Soon Now hype for a year now.
See the Popular Rotorcraft Association for ultralight gyrocopters and similar air vehicles you can buy and fly right now. Less hype, and those things fly just fine.
Personal flight will never be widespread.
"Heavier than air flying machines will never be feasible"
--Lord Kelvin, late 1800s
Ugh. You wish.
The FAA owns all the airspace and you start pumping people in in you are going to have problems. Big Airports (LAX, JFK) are class B airspace and if anyone busts it they get in trouble. These thing'll be unreguated at first and if they see some idiot crossing the field they're going to close it. How many incidents like that you think there'll be before these things get regulated? Once they're regulated it's all over; "The Common Man" (tm) will not be able to afford them. It's like the internet; it's a cool concept but you DON'T WANT the masses using it!
Oh yeah, that "It'll take decades for us to fill it" is a common theme of people making more roads. Guess what; it doesn't take decades
Never understimate the power of human stupidity -Lazarus Long
`ø,,ø`ø,,ø!
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Can women fix their makeup at 80mph at 200 feet?
I wonder if the deluxe model comes with a vanity mirror.
Man, getting a pilot's license is so expensive though. If they could get the cost down to maybe $50 with about 2 or 3 hours of training required I'd go for it. Otherwise that would suck. Just make them as easy to operate as a car and you're golden. These things aren't really planes. Hell, even planes don't need to be complicated anymore... the computer can practically fly it from takeoff to landing... some people just have some reason to believe a human needs to be there "controlling" it. Bah. I want to get in my personal aircraft, punch in my destination, and then sit back and browse the web while my aircraft's computer flies me there. VTOL gets rid of the nasty airport requirement like you said. Take off and land in a friggin parking lot. No problemo. And don't say that this WON'T ever happen because it will. 50 years ago the only people that could operate a computer were geeky brainy scientists in white lab coats in a sealed environment flipping switches on a huge room sized computer, now we have Macs that even the stupidest idiots can use. The only difference between flying and driving on a highway is the third dimension. Computers can compensate for that the same way they're starting to be able to drive a car on a highway without any driver intervention at all from start to finish.
But just imagine the reality TV shows that would spring up. "World's worst personal air vehicle disasters". They'd never run out of material!
Free Hans!
and praise this thing
(while flying it)
--------
Of course you are right, except that in this case it seems they just mean Ampere-hours, which is measure of the capacity for power output of a power source. Think of it... why would they convert to quantum units of all things?
NASA originally started out as NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) whos job it was to explore aerospace and aeronautics. NACA pioneered a lot of aviation knowledge; things such as wing shapes and ways to reduce drag and increase speed. NASA does much of the same thing; they recently sponsored a contest to create a small and efficent turbine (jet) engine. I suppose those who think it should be privatised to make it as streamlined as possible have a different focus, but I always thought that it was good to have a group who, if nothing else, found out what DIDN'T work. NASA should do both.
Never understimate the power of human stupidity -Lazarus Long
1) I have already seen a model of such a device that can be bought, and had, and used, relatively cheaply.
2) I believe that they meant approximately 1 hour.
Eh...
This is how the world works. "Good enough" usually wins out.
http://www.aircommand.com/commelite.html
Does anyone have any idea how traffic control would be handled with these things, if everyone were using them at some point in the future? :)
I mean, airports use very complex control systems that CERTAINLY wouldn't be practical, but with no clearly defined streets in the sky, you couldn't exactly do red lights and stuff like we do now
and yet, given how dangerous accidents would be with one of thse, there'd have to be something I think...
Actually, there is such a thing (or rather such a word) as "smorgasbord".
smorgasbord (smôr'gs-bôrd', -brd')
n.
A buffet meal featuring a varied number of dishes.
A varied collection: "a smorgasbord of fashionable paranormal beliefs" (Martin Gardner).
True, it is a word that is borrowed from Swedish and changed to fit into English, much like "tejp" is a Swedish word borrowed from English (tape) and changed to fit into Swedish.
Every few years someone brings this backpack up.
More Hype.
And I'll take a personal helicopter to work.
And a few terabytes on a wrist databank.
And MicroDroids will write good code.
And the CLI won't be used anymore.
At least until we get some pretty damm bug free auto-flight/landing/takeoff code, and you know how little bug free code is out there... (NASA comes pretty damm close on the shuttle code, but it is very expensave and slow code to have written, and doesn't to as much real-time machine vision and control system work as this would...)
That's a straw man argument. You set too high a standard. What about the autopilot code that runs commercial jet liners? Millions of lives depend on it daily. Seems to work fine.
So many posters on this bord are naysayers. While you're all out there running around yelling "it can't be done" at the top of your lungs, someone's out there doing it. Why not focus your energy on doing something productive?
Could make road rage a bit less prevelant though.
Yeah, all the causes of it would be dead already,
Forget "crashing into the 26th floor of an office building", and think about some dork crashing into your *bedroom*, in a flying SUV, drunk, or racing, or putting on makup, or talking on their cellphone.
I'd say that *no* *one* gets to buy one of these puppies without full, no deductable, insurance covering running into my house, my yard, my garage, or my family, from above. And I want at least $5M coverage, to make sure that they *can* cover repayment (if possible, though a human life ain't replacable).
mark "oh, and just think about genengenered
flying horses...and horseshit"
"A polyanna 'technolohy will take care of it' attitude has no place in aviation"...
F /...
And the paragraph before you demand he lose his arrogance. Hopefully you see the falicy in that.
Like it or not technology will change avation. It already has many times and it will contine to as time makes forward progress... just like it tends to change pretty much everything. Your disdain for the general public is your real showing of arrogance... and its the same attitude people have said about thousands of things over the course of our evolution. Be it, voting, using computers, having rights, driving cars or heaven forbid, one day, using air vehicles.
Deal.
---
Solaris/FreeBSD/Openstep/NeXTSTEP/Linux/ultrix/OS
--- I do not moderate.
Actually, the trick is stay CLOSE to the ground. This gives you the stability without the drag. An example of such personal "aircraft" is the Airboard personal hovercraft from Sydney Olympics Opening Ceremonies.
They go upto 30 mph, and cost around $7,000 AND ARE AVAILABLE TODAY!
The website also claims they are VERY safe. They are marketing them at first as a kind of go-cart without wheels for use at theme parks. I think that is their strategy until they can get them certified as street legal in various jurisdictions.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
No thanks, I'll stick to my bicycle.
Burn Hollywood Burn
Assuming they can get cars to fly, there exists the possibility (no matter how small it is) that Milla Jovovich will bada boom right through the ceiling. The only thing better than that would be meeting the blue opera lady, but hey, I'm a realist...
My bad... 10^-8 cm, which would be 10^-10 m
Like Moller's skycar. Why do we have to do the equivalent of reinventing the flying wheel?
-- Anne Marie
I disagree. I think they meant the 1 Anstrom... kind of like traveling in light years, or making the Kessel run in 12 parsecs.
Because you can't, you won't, and you don't stop...
>There's no doubt it will fly, if the engines are powerful enough. But one needs to ask what would a pilot do in the event of an engine failure
scream like hell and cross your fingers!
I think it would be better to have a system of the pipes from futurama. they would be usable by even the encredibly people on earth (unfortuantely that's the majority)
the only drawback i can think of, is...what if someone farts, a really loud and especially smelly one?
me
I am the BOOGER, Koo koo kachoo!!
I am the BOOGER, Koo Koo Kachoo!!!
1) When Airscooters Collide
2) When Airscooters Crash to Earth
3) Airscooter Chases Caught on Tape
"My mother works for Microsoft now. A whole other cult."
- It's Hindenburg - the real reason was more that Germany was focusing on a soon to begin war - and airships don't make good warplanes anymore (BTW, Germany started already prior to the war scheduled Lufthansa flights Berlin NYC with Ju90 airplanes)
- I assume you're talking about the Akron class airships, a cloned German design using even Maybach engines (well in fact even the first rigid US airship, the Shenandoah was already a clone - they took all measurements from the crashed German WW1 airship L49). Althou US engeneers tried not only to add new features (The Akron class ships where in fact flying aircraft carriers), but also to improve the 'heavy and unnecessarily reinforced' German design.
- The two desasters, that took place in 1933 (Akron - in a realy severe stormfront) and 1935 (Macon) are eventualy a result thereof. So the USS Los Angeles (build in Germany as LZ 127) was the only non-crashing US rigid airship.
- The Navy proved ? Well, 3 doomed US ships vs. hundreds of working German units is like the infamous 'the world needs only a total of five computers ever' quote
:)
- Zeppelins are coming back - well, not exactly, but there are two new design which are neither Blimps but also not complete frame Zeppelins.
Gruss H.- First there is the Zeppelin NT (Yes, buils by air ship nerds from the very same company Graf Zeppelin founded) a small size airship (75m, 230ft, like a 747
:) with interior frame and doubble hull and swivelling propellers to allow start and landing in an independant way (read: no large ground crew needed anymore). The prototype unit LZ N07 (first flight 18.Sep.1997) can carry 14 Persons, making it one of the largest ships in existance - future Versions may have up to 40 passengers. The test programm is in the final steps for a general flight certificate of the German federal aviation agency (Bundesluftfahrtamt), to be issued during the next few month - serial production has already started.
- Second there's the Cargolifter a huge (260m, 790ft) semi-rigid keel airship, ment as a flying special load truck, to propell things like power station equipent around the world. Able to lift 160 metric tons (size up to 50x8x8 m^3 / 150x25x25 ft^3). At the moment they have finished the 'workbench', a hall of 360x210x107m 120,000,000 ft^3, big enough for two ships (or 14 Boing 747 planes
:). The first ship is to be finished in 2003, then 4 ships a year. Chargolifter is a FSE noted $250m company.
you see, there's news to big airships - and big companies wouldn't invest their money if ist that useless.So what you're saying is that in 10 years we will have those hoverboards from Back to the Future? Sweeeeeeeeeet
Sometimes you by Force overwhelmed are.
Looks like the worlds greatest Airship scolar reads Slashdot.
The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him. --Robert Benchley
"At last, Moneypenny, a jet pack that doesn't set your ass on fire..."
</accent>
Democracy. Whiskey. Sexy. Pick any two.
Stephen Notley did a fun little cartoon on this subject a while back...
Up!
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
therefore, it doesn't build up speed as fast while falling. Plus the airbags have to be tight to keep you from whiplashing anything, which probably means you will not be able to breathe.
For fan-based aircraft, and autorotation system would probably be best (unless there is a blade problem)
- Sig
Seems fair enough. I once saw a web page that displayed "two and a half" (in symbols) on a windows PC but "two times pi" (again, in symbols) when viewed on a Mac running Netscape.
Similar thing here.
BadDoggie and Alioth both raise good points. The dream is an ordinary person strapping on a backpack and flying to a chosen destination without any worries. Reality is much uglier than that.
The means: a propellor-driven machine that will allow control in three dimensions. Helicopter and autogiro history tell us that this is not trivial, even under the best of conditions.
The medium: Air. Not nice, stable, dry, clean air found in laboratories and student problems, but that nasty stuff outside, full of water, dirt, bugs, and other pollutants. It varies constantly in density and velocity. Note that velocity includes direction and speed. In addition to the bearings to your destination, these other variables will affect your journey. They will probably be controlled by Murphy's Law. Have a nice day.
Other people: Some people drive as if they were sole owners of the road. Others attempt to follow the law, modified as necessary by changing conditions. Many people attempt to do other things while driving, with varying degrees of success. Add this to the items pointed out in The medium. This is real life. Hazards abound.
Past attempts: There have been limited successes in the past. The air car did fly, but only a few people had the money for a hand-built prototype and the time to master the skills necessary to pilot it. There were several reasons it did not succeed in the market, and blaming only politics, or science, or economy, or human nature, is short sighted. Back pack aircraft have flown. They had problems, too.
In spite of it all, I would buy a personal flying machine in a minute, if I could afford it. Take off and flight are fairly simple at low speed and altitude. It is the landing that worries me.
I'm not a pilot but that seems like nonsense to me. At least to the extent that experienced pilots are able to use their judgement to see and avoid thunderstorms and icing conditions today, technology should be able to help somewhat less experienced pilots do so in the future. I'd divide the task into two parts:
(a) Mapping bad spots in real time. Use a network of sensors -- cameras, air and ground temperature sensors, satellite photo, etcetera -- to determine what areas are definitely safe to fly in. Generate a big database. Note that all the other planes in the air can be part of the sensor grid. When pilots currently in the air press the "it looks dangerous ahead, please re-route" button, that becomes part of the knowledge base that affects the pilots behind him.
(b) fly-by-wire/autopilot assistance. Have the default autopilot setting automatically prevent people from flying into the identifiable bad spots, or prevent the plane from taking off at all if the weather is likely to be sufficiently bad along the expected flight path.
You're flying in clear skies on a path that was clear, when bad conditions appear ahead. The speakers announce: "WARNING! DANGER WILL ROBINSON! A thunderstorm is developing about 500 miles ahead. I suggest you (a) divert southward to route around it, (b) divert northward around it, (c) return to the airport you just left, or (d) pick an alternate destination." The options appear on your heads-up display. If you don't pick one of the presets or otherwise change course within 5 minutes, the warning system gets more insistent: "This is your last warning!" If you don't pick a safe alternate route within ten minutes, the computer announces it is picking one for you and does so. It also radios ahead to tell the airport you're coming in, and to notify your insurance company that you don't appear to be flying responsibly.
(You can always override the autopilot and continue on your dangerous path by pressing the big red "manual override" button, but that also notifies your bank or insurance company; it's like pulling onto the shoulder of a freeway when you have car troubles. You might have to fill out paperwork later or pay a fine.)
Sure, we can't do this now, but why isn't it forseeable?
Disclaimer: my sister died in a small-plane crash during a training exercise; my mom survived a mid-air collision in a DC-10. So perhaps I'm not the best person to ask for advice on how NOT to get in trouble in the air... :-(
I play Nerd-Folk!
Experiments to prove Free-Energy exists, and over 22 other free energy projects, experiments and diagrams, plus a complete list of patents and more!
And...
Run your car on Water, build a Hydrogen generator with simple step-by-step instructions and illustrations. Convert a gasoline-powered engine to run on hydrogen
not to mention...
Brilliant lightsaber beam is produced by the flick of a switch on the hand grip. Produces glowing, humming blade of light 26 inches long and virtually identical to those seen in the movies but this one is real!
I think the reviewer should have rated this posting (Score:2 Funny)
When we ship products over-seas we have three viable options. First, we can send it by boat. Second, we could send it by plane. Finally, we could send it by land. Why can't we send it by blimp, though? With the advantages in materials science, it would be simple to produce a lightweight transit blimp.
And why aren't there personal blimps? A 25000 cubic foot gas bag would be more than enough to provide lift to a blimp.
Also, why don't we use a combination of the two techs? We have lighter than air and heavier than air. Why not use just enough lift to bring the ship to neutral bouyancy and use a fan to provide the rest of the thrust?
Pax Digitalia
Are you going to have to strap yourself onto someone over 21 while you have your learners permit?
Trolls throughout history:
Jonathan Swift
There is not just the motor out there. This company has been working on this device(solotrek xvf) for some time now, there web site can give you the nitty gritty.
Roads are 1D. Ok
When there is an intersection, 2D comes into play, and most of the road signs, and a large part of the regulations are only here to deal with the mess this other dimension brings along.
Now, here comes this flying thing. We would probably go on really travel along 1D highways (just like planes do today), but intersections will be even more trouble. And how do you put a sign floating in the sky?
Just compare a 3D maze (quake) to a 2D maze (doom). The complexity is an order of magnitude greater.
____________________
Ni!
Those things will be screaming for accidents, flying into a flock of birds, telephone lines and other types. I wonder how long it will be till one of these will be available commercially and we'll see what happens with them.
Well it said that it had a range of 150 miles at 80mph, so i guess that would be about 1 hour 52 minutes, but take into account fuel usage for takeoff/landing, and so it might be an even two hours.
greetingsg Edge/millenniumjet990916.html
Picture and description
[Solo Trek]http://www.solotrek.com/
Another Article
[ABCNews Sept 15]http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/tech/Cuttin
enjoy
Never give the average consumer an airplane; he or she is bound to crash it. This thing, if actually manufactured en masse, would be an air traffic controller's nightmare, and might even spawn the concept of aerospace pollution.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Does this mean, We will have bigger and more bloody bugsplat's on our windscreen. Even the thought makes me shiver.
This Post was entirely made up of recycled electrons making up recycled signals to generate recycles ASCII to generate t
Well, firstly, the caption on the picture states that the user can travel up to 150 miles. As for other concerns related to people not being able to 'drive' in 3D, this stuff will be automated. You just need to develop a simple (ok, maybe not so simple) set of rules for navigation and landing.
Ok... now I'll state why this won't work for the mass consumer.:). You know, a motorcycle consumes far less fuel, takes up much less room on a highway than a car. I'm not saying that there wouldn't be traffic jams with motorcycles, but you have to wonder why people don't push it as an alternative to traffic problems. It's because we're vain, we like our cars, and the comfort and convenience it gives us. If we have to arrive at work with Helmet heads, goggle face, and strange looking jumpsuits, it would never catch on. Also, you need extra storage for groceries and shopping, plus, you need to weather proof it. Ride a motorcycle for a year, and then let's talk.
This is a great Idea but is the technology we currently have advanced ENOUGH to allow us to do this? The air scooter needs to be able to self navigate which should include all variables of transportation flights. The pilot should be able to use some form of mapquest and program the destination. At the same time the device should be networked to all other flight scooters and decide using GPS systems what route it should be allowed to take. (USE of internet and satellite technology at its best...) All-around airbags like the ones used for mars landings should be available in case of a emergency. Could you get stuck in flying doctors traffic? Any solution for that?
Maybe the A sign stands for 1/2, making it 1,5 hours? Probably someone who is great with the ASCII set but forgot that not everyone uses it :-)
Would be fun though... Not for everyday traffic I think, but just for fun... If it really works. I do think it will be very noisy with all those fans by your head.
I have been checking in with their website every so often....they are finally in the wind tunnel tests. There is another company out there that claims to sell a similar craft.
I just can't see how shifting one's weight would be enough to turn left or right. Especially if in high wind conditions. Do these things fly in the rain?
If any of you are interested in a cool gyrocopter project, I would recommend:
http://www.cartercopters.com
I think the solotrek has some amazing technology built in to it....but it will probably require a crew to maintain, expensive policy, permit, and strict zoning limitations...meaning limited civilian use. You can look at their site and tell that its not intended to revolutionize travel or freedom.
Its a dream though. In an age where there are fewer places to drive without traffic- the solotrek seems even more enticing.
Anyone know if a graviton is its own antiparticle?
-Sleen
I hope they have one hell of a legal department and VERY deep pockets to deal with the liability issues. This thing's deceptively simple-looking, but it's basically a twin-rotor helicopter. And though they emphasize that it's neutrally stable, got redundancy out the ying-yang, etc., the fact is, if the drive train or the blades buy it, so will you: Your flying Yuppie toy will either roll inverted and drop like a rock, start some godawful eyeball-bugging yaw rate like a washing machine on spin cycle, or shake itself to pieces in midair. Not good. And even if it works perfectly, the FAA better jump all over pilot certification. This puppy seems to have NO INSTRUMENTATION apparent in the illustrations; I suppose it's a drag having to constantly pay attention to mundane things like dials. How do you know your fuel state? If you're dumb enough to get caught out in the dark or in fog, what in the hell are you supposed to do -- shut up and die gallantly? Death by hubris: I see some wealthy Malcolm Forbes-wannabee CEO or twentysomething brilliant-but-stupid software developer deciding to go out on a lark, getting a little too unwound, and clean forgetting about airport approach patterns, telephone/power lines, trees, cell-phone antenna masts (nasty hard-to-see guy wires) or migratory birds (don't laugh -- a hitting 20-lb. Canadian goose at 30 kts can do one hell of a lot of damage). We've already seen NASCAR driver Davey Allison fly his brand-new Hughes 500 into a chain-link fence because he wasn't paying attention to the surface winds; the same thing can happen with this kind of aircraft. (Fixed-wing aircraft aren't much better: They don't call the vee-tailed Beech Bonanza the "fork-tailed doctor killer" for nothing.)
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
I need this fly-thing.. there's a few pigeons just waiting for me to take revenge.. that should teach'em not to shit on my head..
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
1Å = 10^-10m, (or 0.1 nm), an old unit most often used in measuring wavelengths of light.
Physicists, especially in relativity or particle physics, often use factors of c (speed of light) and sometimes G (gravitational constant) and h-bar (Plank's constant) to change the units of quantities. A common example is to say that the rest mass of an electron is 511,000 electron volts - measuring mass in units of energy. This appears to be such a case.
We can convert length (Å) to time by dividing by the speed of light. The speed of light in Å/hr is 1.07x10^22, hence 1Å hours is 9.3x10^-23 hours.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Tomorrows World (UK science program)done a program last year showing a backpack helicopter from Japan with 2 counter rotating blades to keep it stable. It had a few hours flight time, could do 100 mph and they were getting ready to start production.
I once worked in a place that was positively crawling with Boston Brahmins -- old, old money. It was an interesting experience having grown up in a poor, city neighborhood. They were very nice people, but clueless when it came to the other half and generally ignorant of the level of privilege they enjoyed. I walked into the cofee room and of them was talking about a plan to relieve congestion and noise in East Boston by using the decomissioned air force base in Concord, a very nice, wealthy and semi-rural suburb where many of these folks lived.
"How could they think of putting something like that in Concord of all places?" she asked.
"Since when do the folks in places like Concord think twice about putting any nasty crap they don't want to live with themselves in East Boston? And the people in Concord are doing lots more flying," I replied.
If this guy's vision of the future comes true, I can imagine what 8:00 AM will sound like in places like Buttercup Lane and Horsebridle Path.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
That sounds great, but my umbrella sheild might pop your pillows! Oh no! then we'de both have broken necks.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
an idiot flying one of these above you then spitting out their window...
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>There's no doubt it will fly, if the engines are powerful enough. But one needs to ask what would a pilot do in the event of an engine failure
It has a parachute that shoots out (to fully open in a speedy manner) when you are above 100'. It is going to be loaded with safety features, such as the idea that the engine is overpowered nad never gets taxed. Check out the web page:
http://www.solotrek.com/
Specifically #5 in the FAQ:
http://www.solotrek.com/mjet/faq.html#5
I like the idea of using this baby for Search and Rescue operations. It's small and can land in tight places, let has a good deal of flight time on common fuel. I hope they are as easy to fly as they say they will be!
Sign me up, I'm ready to fly!
--Fac Iustum Nec Time-- --Veritas Prevalibit--
This is just what we need. Dead people raining through our rooves.
-Moondog
You might get a little more distance if you tried to glide this thing when it runs out of fuel. Wait!
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Can you imagine flying through the airport that's between my house and my job? How about pushing each other out of the way to launch and land? What are the effects of cutting each other off. Air-Rage?. Do they have running lights so they don't crash into each other in rush hour? Bad weather? How do you police them? Drunk drivers? What about the prop wash from the inevitable 6-fan 6 passenger SUC (sport utility copter)?
Well, they will have to avoid the DCA as it might be possible for the force generated by the fans to trigger the mines if they are too close from the ground.
--
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Roadways are absurd creations...
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
So presumably maintaining a high speed uses a fair amount more petrol; perhaps it meant 1 1/2 hours or something, and whatever they used to write the article converted '1/2' into A-with-a-circle.
Auto-pilot on a comercial jet can be fairly fucked up as long as it will turn off when the trained pilot or copilot grabs control to save the plane. The comercial planes also only use the auto-pilot in the relitavly safe part of the trip, the non-take-off/landing part.
If you want to do the same on a single-person flight craft, then they have to have the same kind of training. If you want to skip that training then the auto-pilot has to be far better then current auto-pilots. It isn't complex, pick one.
Yeah, some people are. Others are lising off real problems, ones that might spark someone else's good idea, or at least make us realise that putting our life's savings into an air-car-start-up may not be such a hot idea.
I didn't even say "it can't be done". In fact I came right out and said NASA has pretty bug-free code in a place or too. It is expensave and slow to write. I fully intended people to gather that maybe an air-car auto-pilot could actually be pretty damm bug free, but it will take a while to write, and cost real money. That ain't never.
Point: it doesn't have to be perfect, but it has to be close. Point: the shuttle's code is close. Please connect the dots. Did you get hard but not impossable?
I did. I wrote some code to visualise dependencies from a make file, shot a roll of color film (if I'm lucky it'll have three good pictures), and most of my first roll of Tmax ASA3200 black n' white film (I'm looking for a lot of visable grain), no idea if any of those shots are good. Oh, and I got back my last few rolls of film, including some three and a half OK shots of my dog jumping a fence.
No flying though. Not today.
Did you get to do anything productave?
Anyone wishing to find more information should have a look at www.solotrek.com. They have a lot more piccies and the FAQ which will give you a vague idea of what will happen in the event of an engine failure, amongst other things :)
-- dmsmith
C:\ is the root of all evil.
Yes. I spelled productive correctly.
:-P
A measure of distance. Not time. Either way its really really really small (like atomic) so Its likely a typo...I hope.
I think the 1Å is a typo - according to the hard-copy newspaper, the actual time is 1½hours.
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Damm, knew I should have cut n' pasted....
There are plenty of people that like to embark on such risky endeavours as base-jumping. The "Xtreme" crowd might be willing to pay top dollar to tool around with one of these things in remote areas.
Having said that, I think you are probably right about day-to-day personal transportation. I doubt too many governments would allow the average human to cruise around downtown in one of these things.
I think perhaps you should look at this link:
http://www.moller.com/
Their idea is that the aircar flys/navigates itself and no pilot license would be required.
domebot...carpet-denim!
which can be found here, http://www.solotrek.com. it's looking good.
...that kids whizzing by on those Razor Rollerboard Scooters were annoying. Just wait till the Sharper Image gets a hold of these. :)
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I'll wait until Ron Popeil comes on TV to pitch these. I mean, getting these will be REALLY cool, but it'll be even cooler, if it comes with kitchen utensils, beef jerky maker and fishing rod.
Babes will be knocking down my door.
Although it might have military applications, for reconnaissance over difficult terrain, Austin rejected suggestions that the XFV might be useful for special forces. "I can't see the SAS being very keen on it because the enemy could see it coming," he said. "You'd be a sitting duck."
Me thinks someone hasn't been playing enough Tiberian Sun.
If you don't get that reference, then you don't watch enough Simpsons.
--
These aren't the droids you're looking for.
I'm guessing from the text in the illustration listing a range of 150 miles, that "1Å Hours" is supposed to be "1¾ Hours". That would jive fairly well with the spped and range given.
SMQ 90AE4B2BC4F6BEAF7340F0B40BA2DEF7340F6BC2D0392
Try DC. . .we have a hill full of them. . . .
http://abcnews .go .com/sections/science/DyeHard/dyehard000829.html
I also remmember reading about a personal "strap-on" helicopter you could buy and fly right now last year right here on Slashdot. It is available in Japan.
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
--I assume full responsibility for my actions, except the ones that are someone else's fault.
There once was a fellow from Ames
Tried to fly into work just like planes
But the testing commuter
Crashed his air-hopping scooter
Used his cell-phone, but never his brains!
It better not have any type of dependence on Windows, such as with an air traffic control system if it had one. If that were to be the case, it might crash in more way than one.
"I have not failed. I've simply found 10,000 ways that won't work." --Thomas Edison
What scares me is that office workers would be "driving" these to work. As if the traffic isn't bad enough here on the ground, eh?
...
Would we have lanes and such in the sky, or would it be a free-for all? I can hardly see people forming nice lines (a la Jetsons) in the air.
And of course we'll need MADA - Mothers Against Drunk AirScootering
In the case of a flying car, that problem SHOULD be fairly easy to avoid; modify FAA regs slightly to allow vertical take offs and landings from places other than airports and still require a pilot's license to operate a flying vehicle. Let the stringent requirements of getting and maintaining a pilot's license weed out the people who will be dangerous in the air.
Some people might complain that this attitude is elitist. I'd like to volunteer those people to fly in a 747 pilotted by a person with just a driver's license.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I think I'll just work from home from now on.
- A.P.
--
* CmdrTaco is an idiot.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
/. posts stories like this once every couple of months, and it's always one of the same five scam artists with a prototype that has flown--once--a couple hundred feet.
90-minute flying time on a tank of fuel? Somebody please wake me up when someone flies one of these for ten minutes straight.
Well, if you consider that it has a maximum range of 150 miles (see bottom left corner of image), and a top speed of 80mph, theoretically it should be able to go for 1.875 hours. Or maybe I'm wrong.
I guess your going to need a parachute too! Imagine a bunch of city bus like these! You have to think about all this. What if your engine runs out of gas? Or my granpa drunk a saturday night ...
The way to go is in magnetic field devices I think, this seems too much 60's for this milenium.
________
The highways have long been a butcher shop, and this hasn't resulted in fewer people using cars, highways, etc. Obviously you would have to have more stringent requirements for licensing, somewhere between the current requirements for a car license (do you have a pulse?) and a plane license (sort of difficult).
although these things sound dangerous, i'd probably be the first to buy one (if i had that kind of money). oh well, maybe someday.
I've read several comments in this posting and I see many skeptics...but please remember that NASA is NOT building it so it won't be as bad as you think. ;) Perhaps nasa might even take some engineering tips from the Solotrek crew on how NOT to crash stuff.
--Clay
The last thing I want to see is a bunch of yuppie professional dot-commers flinging themselves through the airspace. Can you say product liability? I'd much rather see some research into creating some sort of high speed air mass transit system. Maybe cities could buy and convert some old Chinooks. In any case, that seems much more efficient, and, um, safe than a personal airscooter. D
Hey, if I can't find a spot for a cold one and my shotgun, you city-folk can have these things... ;)
Slashdot: Liberal News for Nerds. Liberal Stuff that Matters.
Here is a picture of the thing assemled and working, made by Future Horizons in the Anti-grav section
Here is the info on it, here
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
Anything like that is not plausible in this day. Sophisticated navigation systems need to be implemented and will be way too expensive to for one preson vehicles. People who would seem to afford this toy, will just use their private heli with trained pilot. Afaik public minicar idea I think is more feasable and should solve in city congestion... as opposed to people falling out of the sky in city centers. =)
What the hell will happen when people start using cellphones, applying makeup, shaving, playing a flute, gettin' head, etc., whilst flying these nightmares, like people do in cars today?
Just a thought.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
0x1A = 26 The UK is obviously switching to base-16 as their official number system. It makes perfect sense, just like the metric system...
You ever had a single flying lesson? Screw MS Flight Sim (which is what gave me the flying bug to begin with), but an actual hour or so behind the yoke or stick of a real airplane. Probably a Cessna 152 or 172.
You generally don't get into the left seat until after you've had a bit of ground instruction, save for "discovery flights". One of the biggest things pilots learn is weather and a bit about how air works. Yes, air. A great big, honking, bloody ocean of fluid dynamics. The instant you are airborne, physics as you are used to it changes, and drastically.
The FAA and most other civil aviation authorities require a minimum of 40 flight hours to get a basic pilot's license, allowing you to fly certain basic types of low-power, single-engine aircraft in very nice weather. And unless you live in a few places in Florida, Texas and Nevada, you don't get a whole lot of continual "nice" weather.
Flying is easy, but it's hard. It's complex as hell, conditions can change instantaneously and if you screw up, you make the news, posthumously. The largest block of deaths in General Aviation are pilots with less than 150 hours of experience, and you have at least 45 of those behind you before you even get your ticket to go out on your own, unsupervised.
Nobody with a pilot's license believes any of these "everyone will be flying a personal craft in the next 10 years" stories. We never have and we never will, because we learned, the same way that Linux users learn not to do anything as root except locally, that experience is a mutha.
And don't even bother talking about the idea of automatic, computer-controlled flyways and such nonsense. You may love your OS, but you would not actually risk your life on it. It only takes a drop of about 20 to 30 feet to kill you.
Spare me, please.
BadDoggie, PP-ASEL/AMEL (Aircraft, Single-Engine Land, Multi-Engine Land)
Once you have flown, you will walk the Earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, there you long to return." -- DaVinci
I really wish these people would shut up if they cannot put up. I'd really like to see a flying prototype, and then I'd like to see someone fly a useful distance, lets say 10 Miles, or whatever the average commute distance is. Until then don't bother me - I read Popular Mechanics 40 years ago, and these things were just around the corner then too. That goes for Moller and his skycar too. By the way, can you imagine flying a Jet Belt in bad weather? How about midair collisions?
Its the year 2000
I was promised flying cars!
Where are the Flying cars?
Ok smart asses, how many of you are faa-registered private pilots? Not many i bet.
The graphic says range of 150 miles, and max speed is quoted at 80 mph. 150 into 80 is 1.875. So knowing that ASCII includes characters for 1/4, 1/2, and 3/4 that don't often get transmitted properly, my guess is it's supposed to be 1¾ or 1 and 3/4 or 1.75, which is close enough to 1.875. That's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
Hurry--better start to poo-poo this new technology before it's actually taken seriously! ;)
To say "I wouldn't trust other people" speaks volumes. Why not? You obviously trust YOURSELF enough to pilot one. Why should we trust you?
Fact is, anyone who has the fortitude to earn a license to fly one is probably skilled enough to look out for you too.
The chance of equipment failure is a valid concern, and that's why most people will stick with that tired old 2-dimensional mode of ground transportation. But give it a chance! Consider for a moment the elimination of intersections and stop signs--commuting heaven! Your other concerns are mere details (albeit valid ones) that could be eliminated one way or another.
Slashdot: Liberal News for Nerds. Liberal Stuff that Matters.
Cities are bad enough with cars all over the place. Smelly, dirty, noisy. Do we really want our sky filled with people flying around like gnats???
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
From their site:
No notes on airbags, Bewulf clusterability, onboard mp3 players or OnStar buttons (in case of problem press & scream - quickly!)I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
We're looking at 3D traffic here. We've got at least a couple kilometres of vertical space to deal with before the temperatures drop significantly. Added to this the now-unobstructed horizontal flight path, and you actually increase traffic capacity by a factor of over a thousand, allowing for safety room between the flying packs.
:P
It would take us decades to fill up that much space
I can see how lots people would really go for this mode of transportation, and would want it to succeed. Some people might go to huge lengths to see it succeed.
But what good is it really, if all you have is a bunch of those fanatics pushing you around? Doesn't seem very viable to me.
Oh, that kind of fan.
All right, so it's been a very long day, okay??
Accountability on the heads of the powerful.
Power in the hands of the accountable.
--
Mecworks BLOG
These things have one flaw that will be hard to overcome - nobody wants two powerful fans blasting toward their head. It would be seriously uncomfortable to have 90 mph winds directed at your face.
It seems to me that this would be the only possible recovery from this air-scooter; as you would often not be high enough for a parachute to work; and the typical helicopter autorotation would clearly not work.
But, deflated airbags don't weigh much or take up much space, and can be deployed instantly. If you could get the terminal velocity down to 80fps or so with big enough airbags (no problem) then there'd have to be about 5ft of airbag between your bod and the ground to have a pretty survivable crash-landing.
Without that; these will not be practical. Having no recourse for engine failure absolutely not an option -- piston engines are *way* too unreliable for this.
thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
parachutes are simple and *relatively lightweight enough to make things safe at a reasonable cost of fuel efficiency.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
My friend's daughter wants a scooter with wheels for christmas. I don't know if we will get it for her or not, due to her age and the dangers of riding in the street(where she will inevitably ride it). Don't tell me that this time next year we will be discussing the safety of her getting one of these scooters for christmas.....
It could be extrapolated from this that the average duration of use is around 1.4 hours. Unless, that is, it really HAS been too long since I took my last math course or I'm just plain wiggin' out :-)
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"Cogito Eggo Sum: I think, therefore, waffle."
For those of you out there, who want to see pictures here is the url to see the prototype pictures.
Personally, I think that within 20 years we could be ordering these from Thinkgeek. But for now, I am sure that the price will be a little too high.
Oh, and if anyone is waiting on their flying car, check this out. Again price here is the restricting factor $400,000 US for a car. The one stipulation is that you have to probably get some sort of pilot license.
"Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet." General James Mattis
It's a paraglider. On a good day with the sun heating up the ground nicely, you can ride thermal currents and cover hundreds of kilometers (if you're real good!). Or some guys strap an engine and a propellor to their back - paramotor!
If the solotrek device works out, I'll probably buy one for fun flying. With a set of ballistic parachutes for engine failures, it should have a reasonable safety margin. The routine maintenance will probably be killer though - a lot like a helicopter.
What about airbags for the falling personal transporter? Not dinky ones like in your car, but the big ones NASA used to pop the Pathfinder mission down on. Could be done, no? And it wouldn't matter if you broke a few ribs, as long as the odds of living we significantly improved.
Just and idea.
You quitting proves that the karma kap worked. The most annoying of the whores shut up. --CmdrTaco
Here.
You know all those cop shows that have those HORRIBLE crashes and long and fast chases? Methinks they are about to become a lot more exciting. :)
The anti-salmon
Don't fall for this gee-whiz, wouldn't it be neat, oh yeah we haven't even built or flown one yet, Pop Sci-type garbage.
It's all crap that people have been eating up for the last hundred years. I'd love to see something feasible as much as the next guy, but I'm sick of watching irresponsible journalists get everyones' hopes up.
While we're all waiting for someone to build the jet pack of tomorrow that actually works worth a damn, be very afraid of trusting your life to something that is unable to glide.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
We take a lot of simplicity for granted when on the ground. You get a whole lot of stability for free; no worrying about pitch and roll - and yaw is far more precise. You get very efficient braking and holding for free too. No, air vehicles will be too difficult to control and too expensive to operate for a _very_ long time.
seems like the wind force from the fans would be horrible on the pilot... at least on takeoff when the fans were pointed straight down.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
Didn't Disney make a movie about this a few years ago or something? It was called "The Rocketeer" or something like that..I think...I dunno, but if this project involves Timothy Dalton in any way, shape, or form, I don't want any part of it.
I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that you're an idiot!
3D is a lot of dimensions. The possiblity of a random collision is quite rare. This is why the FAA is looking into Free Flight (Or whatever it's called).
Of course, if it does happen, the odds of you seeing it coming are zilch.