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The End of Solotrek
bobetov writes "For those of us fed up with gravity and gridlock, the Solotrek XFV personal VTOL aircraft has been the real IT. A Segway is a nice scooter and all, but this thing can fly. But it all comes down to dollars in the end, and, with a recent test-flight accident and a missed milestone, Trek Aerospace is calling it quits."
The skycar is coming along nicely.
The Solotrek was at best, an ill-conceived concept with many drawbacks and a long list of flaws that doomed it from the start.
Firstly, it offered few real benefits over earlier options such as the Hiller flying platform.
Most of us will have seen archive footage of these platforms that were so stable that a regular foot-soldier (or man in the street) could learn to fly one in just a few short minutes.
Hiller poured a lot of money into these devices in the 1950s but ultimately they were deemed to be impractical for numerous reasons -- most of which are shared by the SoloTrek.
Actually, the Hiller might even have been superior in a number of areas -- such as being far simpler in design and construction. Remember -- when you double the complexity of something you reduce its reliabilty by more than an equivalent amount. When my life is dependent on a piece of technology, I want that technology to be as simple and reliable as possible!
I plan to build my own flying platform when time/funds allow but have no illusions that it will be anything other than a curiosity. There are certainly no plans to turn it into the personal transporter of the 21st century.
Moller's Sky Car falls into the same category as the SoloTrek -- it's an overly complicated, hideously expensive and completely impractical device.
That the SoloTrek and Moller Skycar managed to get any external funding amazes me.
And, if you're interested in personal VTOL transport then check out this ambitious amateur jet-pack project which may be very ambitious, but is also astonishingly impressive in its engineering.