Slashdot Mirror
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.
Why does it always seem like it's the most worthwhile projects that are forced to come to an end by lack of funding? Who decides that these endeavors aren't important enough? Humanity in general is held back by large corporations that edge out the smaller and perhaps more innovative smaller companies (after all, you have to start somewhere, so new ideas are destined to start small). Sure would have been nice to have one of those...
As far as being a member of the living population
In December of 2000, Trek Aerospace was awarded $5,100,000 in development funding from DARPA over a thirty-six month period.
WHAT? 5 million dollars??? People wonder why the budget of the US is in such disorray, and we're throwin 5 million dollars at a personal flight vehicle?
The Second:
What benefit would a personal flying machine have? Aren't something like 90% of the recorded aircraft fatalities a direct result of personally owned aircraft? Are we trying to increase the death rate?
The Third:
Look at the design, how the hell could you use this for defense? It looks to me like the hands would have to be constantly working on keeping the damned thing in the air, how the hell could you fire a weapon etc. with no hands?
Basically I see this as yet another clusterfuck of American tax dollars of entirely too well funded bureaucratic departments pissing money away. When is it exactly we're going to start acting like adults and not war happy mongers?
I commend DARPA for eliminating funding to this project, now what other bullshit programs can they cut?
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
screw fuel, imagine driving home from a bar at 2:30am in 3 dimensions...
Department of Homeland Security: Removing the rights real patriots fought and died for since 2001
A loud sad sound was heard coming from the Darwin Awards website.
Look at the design, how the hell could you use this for defense?
Not a big fan of jump jets on your mecha? (kidding, kidding.. *grin* )
It is pure research. Never a bad thing. Had this been a 'show me a profit this quarter' deal, I'm sure it never would have left the ground. DARPA is one of the few places left to foot the bill for things that may be nothing more than a stepping stone for the next big thing.
I suspect it is a lot like flying a helecopter... it takes a long time before the machine goes where you think. A bit of PIC time and improved stability, there would be time to aim. Not sure what you would fire, but anyhow...
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
Yeah, solotrek was pretty crappy.
However the flying cars are coming along nicely, thanks. You should be able to buy one in about 4 years. That is if you aren't connected to the military or something so you don't have to worry about FAA paperwork - in that case possibly only a few months.
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Can I see your invention?
Oh I'm sorry you dont have one?, I mistook your ranting for 'Don't give your money to things that might work but we wont know unless they're given money'.
Besides, how would you feel if you cut a project that was technologically advanced but your short-sightedness thought that it could never work and gave it to another country who then had a technological advantage? America is reknowned for doing such things.
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
how the hell could you use this for defense?
Good for scouting or recon, or extremely rapid platoon movement. The Air Cavalry concept has proven effective, and this would give each soldier his or her own "horse".
Not saying it would work out, but I can see why DARPA would be interested.
>What benefit would a personal flying machine have?
Umm, ariel urban combat perhaps?
>Are we trying to increase the death rate?
Only of the enemy.
>how the hell could you fire a weapon etc. with no hands?
HUD with a weapons system control on one of the sticks. This is like asking how a pilot can use the stick and fire a weapon at the same time.
Nitpicking aside, I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with the strap-on helicopter concept, but just because SoloTrek can't do it doesn't mean its necessarily a bad idea.
Unfortunately, it was just at first glance.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Apparently you've never flown a twin-prop puddle-jumper. Sure there's a window between you and the propeller ... but should one of those things unleash ... 10mm of plastic isn't going to do much for you.
... I agree that this thing would be deadly if it had ever gone into mass production.
On the other hand
I'll just get a loan against my .com stock and...
These things wouldn't even work if they were all controlled by some kind of ubercomputer to keep them in line, nevermind if they were just go-n-fly's completely at the whim of the operator.
A list, if you will, of things I never wan't to see coming my way, especially from above, and a few other things I don't want to see, either.
1. Idiot hot rodders whamming around over your head and between the trees.
2. Slashdotters who had cracked the codes on the ubercomputer, going seriously against the grain.
3. Low maintainence goobers who won't keep their rig in proper flying order.
4. Bank robbers (or worse), fleeing the scene of the crime, guns blazing.
5. People who drop things.
6. Horny losers, staring at some girl's butt, from just below treetop level.
7. Idiots on the ground with guns pointed at the sky and a psychotic grin on their face.
8. The bad eyesight brigade, especially when near overhead powerlines.
9. People who forget to check the gas gauge before driving down to the store.
10. Folks altered chemically, including the chemical alcohol.
11. Heart attack victims.
12. People who all of a sudden regurgitate dinner, or perhaps didn't wear their depends.
13. Suicidal types (including the overly religious ones).
Thirteen's enough, yes?
Is it fascism yet?
They're just trying to cover up the fact that they've been bought out by COBRA, a ruthless international terrorist organization determined to rule the world!
Want proof? Here it is! They've got blueprints and everything.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
If they could use them in some of the current roles of expensive to operate police or search helicopters, 5 million would be chump change.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Congratulations Mr. Marthouse, You've Invented The Train.
OK, time to share a personal experience. This happened my last year at UVa. Every engineering student was required to do a 4th year thesis, something that was held out as a matter of pride in the rigor of the engineering program. Mine was some software that tracked the edge of the roadway using splines. The justficication for it was that one day we'd have real-time MI that could drive cars, and that the technique might be a useful component of that.
Another student was designing a "volkscopter" personal flight vehicle.
Well, we all had to give presentations (including a Q & A) during the development phase, and I made the Trent Lott-like blunder of bringing up the fact that such things were routinely advertised in Popular Mechanics when I posed a question.
We were all so busy, I never got around to settling this issue with people. I just got some hardball questions during my Q & A from students sympathetic to the other guy, which I was able to dodge. The thesis project taught me as much about politics as it did about engineering!
To the student who was designing the volkscopter, I apologize. There was no need to drag you into what I was discovering.
First, I realized that asking an entire class of engineering students to do an "original" research project is just ridiculous. Truly original ideas are like winning lotto tickets.
Second, the whole idea of self-driving cars is just ridiculous. Why not just put us all back on trains? Well, we subsidize roads way too much. We're plunking $1 billion into the Springfield Interchange near where I live, and although I must say it has added some aesthetic flair to Springfield, it won't solve gridlock. Contrast this with how much money Amtrack needs to stay afloat. I don't think Amtrack was even asking for $1 billion, wasn't it $900 million? Regardless, the point is that if we subsidized rail at the same rate per passenger and freight mile that we do highways, things would, in my opinion, be a lot better.
So, at some point it dawned on me that my thesis was really just inventing the train. I thought to myself, Congratulations Mr. Marthouse, you've invented the train. Of course I never disclosed this to my profs. I wanted to graduate. My only form of protest was to refuse to change the title of my thesis to "An application of rational uniform bezier splines for edge detection in an automated navigation system" from "Snakes: an improved method for highway line following". I swear I'm not making this up. The prof was really disappointed I wouldn't give it an important sounding title.
What does this have to do with personal flight? Well, it's only safe if you build a train-like system where the vehicle "locks on" to a program and the user doesn't actually have to pilot the vehicle.
People will not accept this in a personal flight system until they accept it in a ground transportation system. If you try to do it in a ground system, they will ask themselves the same question I asked: why not just use trains.
The answer, like many things, has more to do with politics than engineering.
--Steven Marthouse, UVa ENGR '93.
p.s., the story of my "greening" after graduation has some interesting turns, but you'll have to buy my book. :)
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I am a student pilot and I know the time and commitment that it takes to learn how to fly.
The "powered lift" products like this and the mollar sky car use computer control to vastly simplify flying. Controls dont really need to be much more complex than "go up, go down, turn left, turn right" if the computer controls the power as well as control surfaces.
Today small aircrafts are just now starting to adopt "FADEC" to reduce three knobs on the dashboard just to control power, to only one. Big deal. FADEC systems are similar to the engine computer that your 10 year old car has.
Due to the threat of product liability lawsuits, it is very hard to get investment dollars for any type of new aircraft or flight critical system, let alone something as radical as this.
In Aviation, change happens slowly, oh so slowly. Personal VTOL will happen, but maybe not during my lifetime.
The development of the tank was plagued with setbacks and the original inventors were brushed off by the american war office, only to be adopted by the brits.
Even then, the program really didn't get started until after a lot of patriotic young men were were killed on the fields of the first world war.
If we believe the website (especially the third link in the slashdot article) then the solotrek flew, there are two prototypes capable of controlled hover (one of which is slightly damaged in a test flight accident due to a problem with the test rig and not the vehicle) and all of it is available for cash.
If there is a real need for a single occupant exosuit flyer (for instance, making insertions into urban areas and avoiding the whole black hawk down kinda scenario) then somebody will fund it.
Whether its the EU, some asian power who has engineers who work for nothing or Somebody Else.
If the next developer waits until after the solotrek team scatters, then the resulting machine will not be a solotrek. But then again a Panzer is not the tank envisiged by the engineers at the Holt Company USA either.
Under the Purchase Skycar link, they say this:
As a result of the recent successful hovering flights of the M400 Skycar, Moller International is once again accepting $5,000 deposits to secure delivery positions for our M400 Skycar. Your deposit is entirely refundable and will bear interest at an annual interest rate of 5%
Woa, 5%! That is better than you can get sticking your money in a Money Market account at the bank. Plus, the deposit is fully refundable! I gotta do this.
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.
"Aren't something like 90% of the recorded aircraft fatalities a direct result of personally owned aircraft? " No.
"What benefit would a personal flying machine have?" I would have been far more difficult to get a liscence for this then a car. People would actually have to understand it, and prove they can opperate it in all contingencies before allowed to pilot one.
First off 5,000,000 isn't really that much for an R&D effort, espcially one that could of had this kind of payoff.
Second, this has a huge possible military benefit.
No not in combat, I mean logistic wise.
third, spin off from this could, in and of itself, had have a ice return(R&D wise).
Forth, it would have cost DARPA more to check out this possibility themselves, so it SAVED them money
Fifth, the govenment penny watchers are for more criticle about money, and understand the money side of risk analysis better then you ever will.
Sixth, The civillian use of this in a time of disaster would save many lives.
" Basically I see this as yet another clusterfuck of American tax dollars of entirely too well funded bureaucratic departments pissing money away."
I am sure many people would have said the same thing about the internet when it was being funded by the government.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I choose to belive that the plastic, and thin metal frame will protect me from any danger, including a renegade prop, thank you very much.
In case of rebuttal, I will now put my hands over my ears and loudly say "LA LA LA LA..."
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on