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."

Comments

Vapor

[Lord Kano]

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

Re:Vapor

[in7ane]

Take a look here , it has a few videos (which do look quite real before somebody brings that up).

Re:And for the non-americans in here

[ahillen]

Or like we say over here:

11.7607292 liters / (100 kilometer) :)

(or 1.17607292 × 10-07 m2? Whatever... ;) )

video link

[mm0mm]

details of M400 here.

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.

65 decibels?

[LeBlanc_Joey]

If that is 65 decibels it is NOT loud, from howstuffworks.com :

• Near total silence - 0 dB
• A whisper - 15 dB
• Normal conversation - 60 dB
• A lawnmower - 90 dB
• A car horn - 110 dB
• A rock concert or a jet engine - 120 dB
• A gunshot or firecracker - 140 dB

Re:MPG not important

[SEWilco]

Follow the links and you'll see what a Skycar is made of. The speed does not require much stronger materials than a car requires. If you've ever crashed you know a car doesn't withstand anything over a few MPH.

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.

MOD PARENT DOWN

[localroger]

The author of the parent comment knows just enough about gyrocopters to tell a lot of shit-stirring lies.

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.

Re:MOD PARENT DOWN

[The Evil Couch]

yes and no. they're safer in some respects and more dangerous in others.

here, text from the wikipedia

Flight characteristics

Autogyros are often regarded by fixed-wing aircraft pilots as "dangerously unstable", which is certainly true if one tries to fly a autogyro using fixed-wing principles. Piloted properly, a autogyro is slightly safer than a fixed-wing aircraft because it cannot stall. A "stall" does not mean an engine-out event, it means a fixed wing aircraft is travelling too slowly for the wings to produce lift. Since the rotor of a autogyro is always spinning, it cannot stall. If forward airspeed becomes zero, the autogyro will slowly drift to the ground, rotor still spinning. A vertical landing in this manner will not critically damage most autogyros.

One weakness in the autogyro is pitch instability (pitch is the tilting up or down of the craft as viewed from the front or the back). Pitch instability is a problem because autogyros cannot handle negative-gee forces (positive-gee forces push people into their seats; negative-gee forces make people float out of them, such as driving down a steep hill at high speed in an automobile). Negative-gee forces "unload the rotor". A flying autogyro hangs from the rotor much like an object hung from a string. As long as the plane is hanging from the rotor, stability is maintained. The instant zero or negative-gees are introduced, rotor speed begins to decay and the gyroscopic forces stabilizing the plane are lost.

Negative-gees are usually caused by Pilot-Induced Oscillation, or PIO. PIO happens when a pilot adjusts his pitch too much too quickly, then makes a countering control input to bring the pitch back. The countering input often overcompensates, and the autogyro begins to buck like a bronco. This is most likely at high engine throttle settings. If the pilot continues to fight the plane, the rotor (which is flexible) usually flops down and strikes the spinning propeller, which destroys both and sends the autogyro into an uncontrolled fall. The way to avoid this during an incipient PIO is to apply gentle backpressure on the stick (to raise pitch) and cut engine power. Note that this is the exact opposite of what fixed-wing pilots are trained to do when in trouble, which has lead to some unfortunate accidents and the autogyro's undeserved reputation for being "dangerous".

Another danger is "bunting over" or a Power Push-Over (PPO). A autogyro's vertical airspeed (climb or sink rate) is directly coupled to airspeed. Increase forward airspeed, increase rate of climb. In order to maintain level flight at high engine throttle settings, the pilot must tilt the rotor forward to translate some of his lift into forward motion. Too much tilt, and the autogyro's overall pitch will aim down towards the ground. When this happens, negative-gees occur, rotor speed drops too low to provide lift, and the autogyro tumbles end-over-end in a sommersault. It is impossible to regain control after a PPO.

Two factors lead to pitch instability: no or too small horizontal stabilizers (h-stabs) and high thrustline engine placement. A large h-stab, ideally in the prop wash (where the propeller blows on it) will reduce the tendency of a autogyro to over-pitch as a result of improper control input.

If the engine thrustline in a pusher-type autogyro is high -- meaning the axis of propeller power is above the center of gravity for the aircraft -- the autogyro tends to pitch forward under sudden power application (see PPOs above, as for why this is Bad). (Unfortunately, Benson-type autogyros have a notably high thrustline.) If the thrustline is low, the autogyro tends to pitch up under sudden power application, which is harmless. It's difficult to have a low thrustline without a really tall autogyro (such as a "Dominator" style) however, so most autogyro designs simply try to get the thrustline as low as possible though still being slightly abo

Re:Skycar will never happen.

[Catbeller]

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.

Re:WTF?

[Reverberant]

It's 65dBa at 500 feet. Since loudness decreases/increases quadratically

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:

• Locomotive idling @ 50 ft: 80 dBA
• Bus idling @ 50 ft: 75 dBA
• Automobile @ 50 ft, 50 mph: 70 dBA
• Diesel locomotive @ 50 ft, 50 mph: 92 dBA
• Transit train (electric) @ 50 ft, 50 mph: 86 dBA
• Train horn @ 50 ft: 105 dBA

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.

Moller has had some trouble with the SEC

[Gorgonzola]

Read all about it here

Re:That may be so...

[GooberToo]

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!

Re:That may be so...

[GooberToo]

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.