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Flying Car More Economical Than SUV
fusion812 writes "The M400 needs 35 clear feet to take off but thanks to its 770 hp engine can whiz to 365 mph - cruise control kicks in at 326 mph - and climb at 6,400 feet per minute. You may hear it before you see it: it emits a rather noisy 65 dba at 500 feet. Interestingly, with a fuel consumption of 20 miles to the gallon on the road, it's rather more economical than a Sports Utility Vehicle (SUV) and looks positively eco-friendly compared to a Hummer."
Moller and his Merlin series of personal aircraft have been on the drawing board since before most /.ers have been on the internet. I have yet to see one of them in flight.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Or like we say over here:
:)
;) )
11.7607292 liters / (100 kilometer)
(or 1.17607292 × 10-07 m2? Whatever...
the site has video/media page as well, in which you can see noisy hover test.
I don't mean to be cynic, but I couldn't help wondering what practical use this vehicle may have. with two passengers maximum, this looks to me like fancy miata of aircraft. maybe this can become California governor's commuter vehicle, but I don't want to see dozens of these flying around above my neighborhood.
He's about 50 years too late!
s play.html?ID=3
http://www.museumofflight.org/collections/craftdi
I do(or rather, I would if a shortage of money was an issue), because due to local taxes created by enviromental nuts in the goverment, I pay over twice as much as people in the US for my fuel. :D
,however, that my next car should be one that can run on unleaded fuel and have a catalysator. Maybe even have a few safty features such as airbags etc.
But if the prices were on the same level, I wouldn't give a xxxx.
But then again, I might. Because then I would buy a much larger and less economic car than I would need which would use twice the amount of fuel and I would be in the same situation again.
btw, the same enviromental nuts had put a 200% tax on cars so I bought a car from 1987 for 2500$.
I do plan
But I'd be dammed if I want to spend 30000$ just to buy a 90hp compact(3 door hatchback type).
So where am I going with all this? Well raising price on a item, gas, heating, electricity will make people try to save it, but at a certain level it just backfires. High prices on heating are another example. Small suburbs has shown to have the same low quality of air as the smog plaqued big city, due to the homeowners installing a wood furnace to save money on heating. The problem is that what they are buring in them and the way they are doing it are causing a lot of bad particles to be released.
Anyone got a spare $100,000 for the deposit?
Everything in moderation, even moderation.
No, especially moderation.
You'll also see that the Skycar has two parachutes. The first models will require a pilot's license, but by the time consumers are buying them the high speed flight will only be done under computer control. Manual flight will be slow, and taking a car out of manual mode will make it shed the speed before you get close to anything...because "manual mode" still involves asking the computers to move the thing.
First and foremost, gyrocopters can't stall. At all. That's why they were invented. Juan de la Cierva was obsessed with the dangers of stalling in fixed-wing aircraft, which is why he devoted his life to promoting the autogyro. (Ironically enough, he actually died when the fixed-wing aircraft he was riding in stalled and crashed.)
Autogyros aren't used commercially because helicopters are better at VTOL, slow-speed and hover flight, and fixed-wing aircraft are more fuel efficient and faster for distance and heavy lifting.
You can get a personal Experimental class autogyro for under $20,000 (about the same as the less expensive fixed-wing EA class kits) and they're much safer than either fixed-wing craft or (especially) helicopters for novice flyers.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
I have this suspicion that most people posting don't understand that the Skycar can glide. It's a plane. With wings. Control surfaces. It has eight wankel engines producing vented thrust coordinated by redundant controllers. Most of the flying chores are automagically smoothed out by the flight computers.
It can fly like any normal plane with only two of the eight engines operational. It doesn't have to VTOL; it can take off or land in the normal fashion. Since the engines are not mechanically linked in the normal sense, it would take a catastrophic failure to lose more than a few engines. You might lose the near-VTOL capability, but a pilot could land a troubled Moeller with less trouble than your average Cessna, theoretically. The power and control systems are far more redundant in a Moeller.
It's not a flying saucer. You might be confusing the Skycar with the "flying saucer" hovering testbed he made +-30 years ago?
If I'm not mistaken, the craft also has a 'chute that fires in an emergency. Or would, if someone would fund the poor man enough to build the full-scale prototype.
Anyone flying the Moeller would have to be a licensed pilot; this would cut down the "oops" factor.
Moeller has spent a lifetime thinking the engineering matters through. I wish he and Burt Rutan would have lunch sometime.
I have been hearing about this particular car since late eighties, at least. I have an Arngren Electronics catalogue from 1990 that mentions the M400, and I have been hearing the exact same things about where they are in the process, etc. for the last ten years... Considering that it probably won't be available for sale in a long time yet, most people would be able to save up the cash to buy it when it's finally there. :)
Noise limit criteria on motorcycles are usually around 80 dB(A) (Depending on country) at 8 meters distance. This thing is rather quiet in comparison.
As a thumb rule noise decreases with 6 dB with a doubling of distance so noise should not be a big problem.
Um, nope. Better mileag (theoretically) in cruising flight than an SUV on the ground, per mile.
To be fair, that's not factoring the fuel necessary to get to cruising mode if you take off in VTOL mode. That'll eat up some crude.
The FAA only requires that aircraft fly 500 feet apart from one another, unless they are in formation. Add to that, the fact that there is sooooo much sky out there and you have a lot of room. The only real congestion in the air right now is above major airport hubs and even that is very manageable. However, you are correct that improvements need to be made. It is difficult to orient yourself over 3 axis, so NASA and several other groups have been working on a new navigation system which would create virtual highways in the sky. In fact that is one of the technologies that Moller is counting on. This technology is also aimed to take airtraffic away from the major hubs and get more aircraft out to the regional and smaller airports. The US has 10s of thousands of airstrips that could easily handle a huge increase in aircraft traffic. Your last point about bad drivers is moot IMO though. Car drivers receive little or no training before getting their licenses. Fixed and rotory wing pilot must undergo a MINIMUM of 40 hours of flight training before getting lisenced. Classes can cost over 3000 bucks. That greatly minimizes the amount of bad pilots out there.
There is nothing inherently safe about liberty. That's why so many people died protecting it.
Warrax_666 makes a good point. (and to answer your question, sound usually decays at a rate of 10*log10(D/Dref) for line-sources and 20*log10(D/Dref) for point sources, although ground absorption and atmospheric absorption can cause more rapid attenuation in certain circumstances).
65 dBA at 500 feet translates to 85 dBA at 50 ft (assuming point source propagation, which is probably reasonable).
For comparison:
So in short, it's louder than cars traveling at 50 mph, but not as bad as a train horn. Also keep in mind that if the flying car is, well, flying, there won't be anything to shield the noise from the vehicle, and that may make it louder than normal cars in practice.
Read all about it here
-- Spelling and grammar errors tend to be a sign of erroneous thinking.
I wish mods would bother to read the thread before they moderate. There is some very bad information being present here. Gyrocopters are not safe. Period. Anyone that says otherwise is an idiot. Someone was kind enough to even offer a link in this thread supporting the dangers of these things. Everything I stated about gyrocopters is 100% factual. Please, mod correctly. Mods are pushing down correct and accurate information in exchange for a clueless troll that doesn't have the foggiest idea what he's talking about. The statistics speak for themselves! Gyrocopters are one of the most dangerous aviation vehicles available. Period! They are not safe and DO STALL! Furthermore, they require a fair amount of forward momentum to safely autorotate. Speed is easy to bleed of in these things. Which means, a safe autorotation, even in the best of situations, is not always possible. Furthermore, rotor stalls are a problem that even helicopters have to deal with.
Simple fact is, gyrocopters are f-n death traps and anyone that says otherwise is either an idiot or a fool. Everything I stated is 100% fact and supported by both physics and their associated accident statistics!
Because they are friggen death traps and the moderators are buying into his misinformation! Everything he stated is false.
Gyrocopters are dangerous. Very dangerous! And yes, they nto only stall, but FALL OUT OF THE FRIGGEN AIR! Autorotation is not always an option in a gyrocopter. This is exactly why some have looked into using things like depleated uranium in the rotor tips so that they can maintain enough energy in the rotors to widen the window where they can safely autorotate.
Simple fact is, gyrocopters are very dangerous and the dumb mods which are listening to this fool is doing a GREAT diservice to the readers and potential users of these crafts. They was wicked dangerous!
Except that helicopters can fly well, both against and with the wind. Gyrocopters can not. If a gyrocopter flies into too much wind, it can cause a rotor stall; but requires fairly high winds which would still be flyable by planes and helicopters. If you fly with a tail wind, you can EASILY lose lift AND forward momentum and fall from the air with a rotor stall.
Cross winds are also very dangerous for these things. Flipping or inverting a gryocopter is hardly unhead of. These things are dangerous and the statistics support this. As do the basic physics involved.
With a real link this time.
42 dBA Whisper at 3 feet
63 to 65 dBA Normal speech at 3 feet
70 dBA City street
70 dBA Vacuum cleaner at 10 feet
80-90 dBA Dog barking at 10 feet
60-92 dBA Helicopter at 500 feet
88-98 dBA Train at 50 feet
90 dBA Interstate traffic
120 dBA Propeller plane on take off
125 dBA Threshold of pain
130 dBA Jet plane at 100 feet
When an aircraft is airborne -- whether fixed-wing or rotary -- it knows nothing about the wind. Just like a ship moving on the ocean knows nothing about any ocean currents it may be in. The only thing an aircraft can sense is a change in wind velocity. A steady wind is just an inertial frame as good as any other.
Or do you think that if you're in the back seat of a bus that's moving faster than you can throw a ball, you can't hit that clown in the front seat?
Unlimited growth == Cancer.
You may want to learn what you are actually talking about before you post.
There is a difference between IAS, TAS and ground speed. Learn the difference. Once you know that, then, learn what keep the friggen thing in the air. DOh! What a concept!
You really should take your own advice, you who obviously has no knowledge of basic aerodynamics. An aircraft in an air mass moving relative to the ground (i.e. wind) behaves exactly the same (with respect to the air mass) as an aircraft in a non-moving air mass. (Yes, that is a restatement of a previous post.)
BTW, I am an aerospace engineer, I DO know the difference, and I leared long ago what keeps things in the air.
If you have a plane moving foward at 20kts and a headwind at 20kts, the airflow creates lift with an effective 40kts of airflow.
... 40kts of airspeed, not zero. Your headwind will now be a tailwind , and you will have 60kts of groundspeed.
If you have a tailwind of 20kts, the effective air flow is 0kts. That creates zero lift.
Yes, if the plane and the airmass are moving as you first described, the airspeed will be 40kts. If you have an airplane moving along at the same speed as the airmass it is in (as you also described), the airspeed will be zero.
The problem is that getting your airspeed to zero is not a function of the wind whatsoever. You can fly an aircraft to an excessively low airspeed with or without wind.
If your hypothetical aircraft is flying along as you first described and you execute a normal 180 turn, you will then be flying along with
Landing downwind requires a higher IAS to prevent prematurely stalling. I'm sorry, but that's fact.
Actually, that statement is completely untrue. If you land with a tailwind, you will have the same airspeed as you would with a headwind or no wind. You will, however, have a higher groundspeed. This is undesireable because it will increase your stopping distance, wear excessively on the brakes, etc. The stall speed of an aircraft is determined by the weight of the aircraft and the angle of attack that results in the maximum lift. Stalling has nothing at all to do with groundspeed. Autorotation of a rotorcraft is a bit more complicated than just talking about forward airspeed, but it also has nothing to do with the wind or groundspeed.
As far as the physics of flight are concerned, the takeoff and landing phases are are the only phases of flight where speed relative to the ground is important, and windspeed then becomes important as well. The problem here is that you have attempted to relate all phases of flight as motion with respect to the ground.
What you need to understand is that a failure to maintain forward airspeed in flight has nothing at all to do with a tailwind or a headwind. Failure to maintain sufficient energy in the rotor of a rotary wing aircraft also has nothing at all to do with a tailwind or a headwind.
If you would like to provide actual evidence of crashes to support your arguments, please cite the appropriate NTSB report (www.ntsb.gov). I guarantee that you will not find one where the probable cause is listed as "flew into a tailwind and fell out of the sky".
Nothing in my post is intended to address windshear or microbursts, which fall outside the scope of flying in a steady air mass.