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A Flying Leap for Cars?
pillageplunder writes "Businessweek has a story about flying cars and how they could be an actual viable thing in less than 10 years. First flying taxis, then, like the Jetsons, personal flying cars. Several are already on the board, with Honda and Toyota already having prototypes of small flying devices. Even General Electric is getting in on the deal, developing a small jet engine for Honda. So...would you buy one?"
will it fold up into a breifcase?
Do these protoypes "fly" in front of a green screen too?
Damn, I'll never get that date!
Hmmm.
The last thing we need is flying SUVs.
What ever became of this guy? After all the years of research will he not be first to market?
What I want to see is a story about the flying cars they promised us!
I am one of many. My idea is not unique, nor do I expect my voice alone to sway you. I speak in a chorus of opinion.
Given how many people never bother to check water, oil etc until they break down at the side of the road, I really hope these cars will run full diagnostic checks before they let you start them...
Never mind Spamassassin. When's Spammerassassin coming out?
I live in Boston. Drivers here have more than enough trouble coping with travel in two dimensions. Adding a third is a recipe for disaster.
I'd buy, if it qualifies under the new sport aircraft rules and the lower standard for a liscense. And if the price was no more than a regular car (which in 10 years my be $100,000)
most human beings are dangerous enough driving in a 2d environment. imagine how dangerous they'll be in a 3d environment!
Gyrate Dot Org - "Where high-tech meets low-life"
Not to be a pessimist, but just imagine what some terrorists with flying cars could do?
I can't even imagine how to control personal flying machines. Have carports where people leave their cars, and must go through some sort of bomb / weapon detection before allowed in the air? Limit licenses to upstanding wholesome citizens?
Don't think this idea will ever 'fly' (pun intended) until the world is a nicer, happier, less terrorized place.
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Oh great. Right now, you can stay away from drunk drivers by staying off the roads. Once we have flying cars, some Jim Beam behind the wheel can clobber you in your 2nd floor bedroom.
Yeah, in a heartbeat. As long as the licensing process for driving these suckers was long, expensive, and difficult. And that the minimum driving age was over 21. And that nobody over the age of 65 was allowed to drive these without rigorous yearly examinations. Last thing we need is old folks dive bombing farmers markets too.
sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
Sure!
Will we be allowed to? Not bloody likely.
Will we have to use use "roads" in the air, or can we go as the crow flies? (going around military installqtions and so forth.
Yeah. And I suppose we'll have the infrastructure to handle the complexity of traffic of these things? The average person can barely drive competantly and pay attention with only four directions to go (forward, back, left, right). Much less adding infinite directions, once you've gone "up".
All the effort, fuel and pollution required just to get a hunk of metal off the ground and keep it there with the current technology is wasteful and unsustenable.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
It doesn't have to time travel but I'd like the jets on the back.
I boycott signatures
First flying taxis, then, like the Jetsons, personal flying cars.
Rubbing my crystall bol...
The future would look more like the Flintstones instead of the the Jetsons. I wonder if they ever counted the always raising price of oil products.
Now instead of getting all our cars to drive environmentally friendlier and less expensive (keywords: electrical, hybrid, bio-fuel), we drop the effort and start producing a new kind of vehicle that flies.
And ofcourse it uses kerosine for that (ever seen an electrical plane, man-sized ?).
This gives us a whole new excuse to soup up more oil and pollute even more..
What's next ? Real personal rockets ?
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...at least according to The Book of Ratings..
Avery Brooks must be pleased with this development.
"Why can't everyone just be straight with me?"
"Because we live in a bendy world, dear."
At least looking down women's shirts would become a lot easier....
I dont suppose any of these plan on running on anything other then gasoline or jet fuel?
p eak_oil.html
There has been a lot of talk of hitting peak oil very soon. I dont know how viable flying cars will be under peak oil.
Love the concept, but we need to focus on alternate fuel sources really, really soon.
Paranoid? maybe. But you should probably read this
http://www.americanassembler.com/issues/peak_oil/
sure that's all we need now, make it easier for terrorist to crash stuff into buildings. not to mention people cant drive on the road as it is let alone in the air with the possibility of taking out houses including my own.
That's all I need is some 16 year old parking his AeroFart 9000 Air Car into my roof because he was showing off to his girl friend..
It's a bad idea and is not ready for any kind of "public" use for a good number of years.
The thought scares the $h!t out of me. Granny barreling into my house while I sleep. I won't even be safe in my second story bedroom.
I will need to plant oaks around the perimeter of my house now for extra protection.
I really think it's safer to have 4 tires on the ground (or two). The idea of flying cars is a cool concept, but think of how many more fatal crashes we'd have. Gives a whole new meaning to "fender bender". You put that many people (or cars) in the air.. it's going ot happen. What about casualties on the ground when these things collide in the air???
-Guns kill people like spoons made Rosie O'Donnell fat-
What would Dante do for a Flying Car? Click Here to find out. /Kevin Smith fan
Normal humans can't even drive good and safe in 2D, how the hell will it work in 3D. Utopian thinking where the assumption is that everyone is equiped with a brain that grasps every aspect of know-how.
Flying cars sound good but what happens when we get the first mid air crash! Think about it...
I can see the headlines now: "200 people killed when drunk driver collides with office building". If we have problems with people staying on the road in a car, what will it be like if they can fly?
Man is the lowest-cost, 150-pound, nonlinear, all-purpose computer system which can be mass-produced by unskilled labor.
10 years from now out of college, got a new job and i need a new ride a flying car might be the thing. Right now no cash and desperately in need of new cpu, i couldn't pay for the gas for it.
> The last thing we need is flying SUVs.
Imagine: you're sitting with your family eating a nice dinner when all of a sudden, through your fifth floor window comes crashing in, a drunk/stoned teenager who borrowed daddy's hyperSUV, and forgot to hit the autopilot button when he started rolling another joint. Dead: you. Dead: your spouse. Dead: your children. All because of some inspired auto designer who just *had* to have the 1950's dream of flying cars.
Next chapter: Airlines become extinct, no more waiting in line and subjecting your family to body cavity searches just to fly. No more terrorists hijackings. No more borders. Chaos ensues! (FUD!!)
Seriously though, it's going to be fun and scary at the same time! Wheeeee!!!
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
I see complaints that people are too irresponsible to drive in two dimensions, let alone three, and so forth. I don't think that this will be a problem. Considering how much space each individual car will be able to have if we extend to three dimensions, allowing them to get tens of metres into the air, there'll be even more room than usual and so less likelihood of collision. Yes, terrorists could crash the flying cars, but that can be done anyway. Besides, they could always use light aircraft instead.
How many miles per gallon will a flying car get?
yeah, i'll get one right after i buy my Segway
unfortunately i'll not be able to eat for the next 13 years while i pay off my toys
We have been fantisizing about flying cars for generations, but in reality, are they ever going to be practical? Sure, you can go faster without all the resistance from the tires, but it takes a hell of a lot of energy to keep such a heavy object in the air. In the Jetsons, we had this notion that somehow we'd be able to overcome gravity and the cars would just float, but to date there's no evidence for such technology. For now, we have to blow a bunch of air down and the corresponding reaction is that the car stays up. Not very efficient for travelling.
I hate to be the skeptic, because I would love to be able to fly to work, but I don't see it being practical in our lifetimes.
-Arthur
Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules
If you ask me, it seems that some rich people have been watching too much cheap 80's scifi.
Really the type of travel depicted in I,Robot, is much more appealing to me. Better Highways and the option to drive in manual or automatic mode.
the option to have flying cars seems to introduce so many new problems that will make our current traffic jams look like burned toast.
Great, flying cars, we were promised this decades ago. before someone goes out there and spends a ton of money on this, I want to see the new traffic systems that will be developed to ensure safety.
Think about how easy it would be for a terrorist to get into these. We would have all sorts of new problems.
Not to mention all the "bubba"s out there on a weekend bender.... What a great mix Bud lite and Flying machines... It is bad enough that it happens on the ground.
This?
People, hold on. These air taxis are still planes and not personal cars as the article might have you believe. Therefore, use of them will still be regulated - no different than private planes and helicopters. I work in the aircraft business, and I can tell you, considering all of the flight testing and approval through the FAA that would have to happen, flying personal cars are still FAR FAR off.
We call them airplanes.
You should try driving in Brighton, the one way system makes it feel like your driving on a Mobius Strip.
so, how does one stop a flying car?
i can only imagine the amount energy that will have to be used to stop something that is flying, and the only resistance is air... in comparison to the simple conversion of kenetic energy to heat energy through the friction of brake pads, and tires to the road..
hold on honey, I missed the turn, i gotta engage the E-brake.
?SYNTAX ERROR IN LINE 42
I don't know about everyone else, but I drive a 12 year old beater that likes to stall every once in a while. That would be a real bummer if it flew!
Seriously though, people would really have to keep up on maintenance, so personal flying cars would have to be for a select few who have the time to keep up on everything. I have a hard enough time keeping my girlfriend up to date on oil changes!
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does anyone honestly think that the government is going to allow flying cars in metropolitan areas?
I don't think this is a Democrat or Republican issue, I think it's a safety issue. Can you imagine a truck-sized flying car loaded with fuel flying into or even exploding next to a skyscraper? Legislators on both sides of the aisle are going to take a dim view of flying cars.
They definitely won't be allowed in DC until there is a way to bring them down with minimal damage to government structures.
The technology may be less than ten years away, but the legalization of them is probably 25 or 50 years away.
Not to burst anyone's bubbles, but just looking at the fuel efficiencies of current cars, after 100 years.. is this even feasible with the oil crisis as it is?
I'm not the devil.. just his advocate.
... to develop a gliding horse cart, which, to no great surprise, failed.
loc. cit.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
As long as the licensing process for driving these suckers was long, expensive, and difficult. And that the minimum driving age was over 21. And that nobody over the age of 65 was allowed to drive these without rigorous yearly examinations.
You just essentially described general aviation fixed/rotary wing aircraft. Pick one up today!
Now they just need to start working on Mr. Fusion....
There's never enough when you have too little
.. have manuals? Now there's some incentive not to stall.
Instead of a few thousand planes to keep track of they'll now need to keep track of a million cars in the air.
-EB
Do you ever walk alone like a drifter in the dark?
The thing that caught my eye in "I, Robot" was will smith's Audi. Instead of having regular wheels it had spheres for wheels. this allowed him to basically travel in any direction in any heading. Pretty dang slick.
You would be doing away with conventional steering hardware, probably for a bunch of electronics to "run" the wheel in any direction you like in conjunction with the other wheels. My question is, how would you do it? Would it be just like an AC motor wrapped in rubber, with the rest of the motor surrounding the sphere wheels?
That would make parallel parking a cinch.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Some poeple can't even drive well in 2 dimensions. Now add a third and all hell will really break loose.
These should be outlawed until technology exists that will help prevent crashes in the air, otherwise these things are recipe for disaster. Imagine you're walking along the street, and two cars that crashed a couple hundred feet above you suddenly crush you to death when they tumble earthbound.
lie:
printf("This product will be availiable in 5-10 years.")
Sleep(10 years);
goto lie;
You can have all the idiots, drunks and junkheaps flying over your house then. I've seen enough idiots hit things/drive junkers that I wouldn't trust anyone to fly around town. And what happens when winter comes? I dont want someone putting their car through my house because they couldn't see
Flying cars.
That'll do wonders for
A) Overstretched air traffic controllers
B) Greenhouse gas emissions
C) Homeland security
among other things.
Is it economically viable? Not until the fossil fuels used to run the jet engines becomes cheap enough to waste on unnecessarily launching heavy objects into the air.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
collision detection was added. In other words, no flying car could get within x feet (decided by speed) or the onboard controller would slow it down.
There would have to be special ground infrastructure to allow 'landing' lanes that the grounders could not get to.
If someone tried to deliberately hit a building the flauto (FLying AUTOmobile) would slow and land when the speed got too low. To avoid the flauto-hackers, unique IDs would have to be broadcast or the flauto-cops would come (or anti-flauto weapons shoot them down).
So not only will I have to worry about idiots on the roads, I'll have to worry about the idiots over my house. OTOH, rates of darwinian attrition will skyrocket. Ohhh, so thats their plan.
"Here's how the device, which Falk says "is like a flying motorcycle," works: A person is strapped to what looks like a sturdy metal tower with a rotor on top.""
Can anyone say M.A.S.K. ? It's a motorcycle and a helicopter !
Further development should include: before-takeoff checks, yearly medical exams, log of all flight time, graduated license by hours flown, etc.
It's really not that convenient, given all that's involved, considering that planes are available now.
I think I will stay on the ground, after all.
People have a tough enough time driving in 2-D. How we can expect somebody to execute an Immelman while talkking on their cell and changing the radio station?
Also, how will people signal for a barrel roll vs. a Cuban eight? What about a split-S?
Someday a Slashdot ID of 177180 will mean something.
To date there are basically two classes of "flying cars" - light aircraft that look like cars and fold up to drive (similar to the Aquacar and other novelity cars), and scams like anything Moller puts out under his Skycar company.
Moller is actually "making" real commuter flight vehicles, 400 mph, mpg roughly equal to a car, park in a garage, take off from the driveway (or helipad if the FAA never allows driveway flight). The only problem is, his test flights have been happening for decades, commercial models for sale have always been a "year or two away", and all test flights (until a couple recent ones) have all been tethered and a dozen feet above the ground.
Unlike fusion, which is always a decade away because there needs to be a breakthough, Moller says he has it working and ready. But he's been saying that for a long, long time.
The "planes that convert to cars" (and their cousins, one of which is mentioned in the article, "helicopters that convert to cars") have been around commercially since the 1950s, and they generally work fairly well. They aren't very efficient, but they fly, drive and a new model comes out from somebody every five years or so (until the chilling effect from lawsuits slowed small aircraft production recently).
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
I mean, if they can get trains to use it, why not cars? Ok, you'd need an electromagnet the size of a small country to lift a car up to 'Jetson'-level heights, but I think if you levitated a train you'd be fine - if you only knew how to control it. If 'they' (whose they anyway?) develop adequate controls (maybe through space-shuttle technology jets) to keep a magnetically levitated car stationary in mid air, and then create a system to use polarity to direct the vehicle, it would be great!
Don't worry: your brain will eventually work inspite of you.
On the other hand, I hop right into my mercedez and take off for work. If something does't feel right or sound right or if I am really low on gas, I figure "hey I'd better do something about that sometime soon", and drive off. I can always pull to the side of the road. I can't do that in my plane. If something goes wrong and I need to "pull to the side of the road" I'm in a bit of a pinch. I have a ballistic parachute installed but I'd really hate to have to use it.
I can't ever imagine what flying would be like if everyone just hopped into their flying cars and took off (after cocktails, in a hurry, low on gas, in a poorly maintained vehicle, without a license, in bad weather, etc). What a nightmare!
Don't get me wrong, I think flying is wonderfull and that everyone should be able to do it, after rigorous training and certification, in a well maintained vehicle, clearly understanding when conditions are right to fly!
"terrorism" and "pedophilia" are the root passwords to the Constitution
So now I'll have to watch out for idiots coming from above as well.
The roads are filled with morons who can't drive safely. Please don't fill the sky with them as well.
Cress, cress, lovely lovely cress
What kind of damage could Halle Berry and Billy Joel do with 'em?
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
To be completely honest, as long as it can do what a normal car can do, and as long as the normal car remains cheaper, I'm seeing no market for such a thing. Look at the Segway. Cool, yes, but too expensive to be practical.
Yes, I'd love to see one, but I don't think I'd buy.
Haec merda tauri est. Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
to the term "car crash". Airplane, anyone?
10 Years? That's just in time for Back to The Future to be correct. GREAT SCOTT!!
There are several factors that will need to be addressed before flying cars arrive:
Flight takes more energy than ground travel, so given the current and future high energy costs the economics aren't here yet.
Air traffic control is another big issue. There will have to be an intelligent air traffic control network capable of directing such a large number of aircraft safely.
Maintenance. Current aircraft require a huge amount of time being maintained compared to cars. People do a poor job of keeping up with car maintenance as it is.. which is not such a large problem. If the engine quits you pull off the side of the road.
No, until we figure out how to make cars fly on a maintenance free cusion of blue light that uses something other than fossil fuels for power we'll all still be stuck driving around in our Porsches and GMC's.
"Let's see, you want to introduce a new technology to hundreds of thousands of people who have no expertise or training in flight. This technology will be almost certain to kill or maim its users, and possibly many passersby, each and every time there is a mechanical or user error. Well, I for one see no problems with this scenario!"
Now they can finally start stacking customers and turning real profits!
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
I realize software is a huge part of the equation as it relates to civilian use, but short of a breakthrough in anti-gravity, air travel will continue be far too dangerous for the masses...not to mention prohibitively expensive.
^^vv<><>BA
thousands of people die every year from automobile accidents, but as soon as one person dies from using one of these, the american public will assume they are deathtraps. And the media will probably ride that train for all the ratings it's worth. Bastards.
free online diet tracking.
As long as the licensing process for driving these suckers was long, expensive, and difficult. And that the minimum driving age was over 21. And that nobody over the age of 65 was allowed to drive these without rigorous yearly examinations.
I strongly disagree with these age-generalizations. I think that making the licensing process long and difficult is a good thing. This way, anyone who has a license will be competent. Having rigorous yearly examinations is also a good thing. But enacting these things based on age is superfluous. If a 20 year old passes the licensing criteria with flying colors, why should they be precluded from using such machines? Why should people under 65 not have to take yearly rigorous examinations? If anyone is flying around in my city, I want to know that they are capable of not killing me, and I really couldn't care less how old they are.
Three dimensions, how cute. On the moon we have 5... thousand. Your puny little minds can't comprehend that.
No, the last thing we need are flying taxis.
Taxi drivers violate enough traffic laws already. Can you imagine what they will do given the ability to fly?
(S(SKK)(SKK))(S(SKK)(SKK))
And have been for several decades.
I remember reading a decades-old Popular Mechanics or similar magazine that also said that flying cars were "just around the corner".
He said the problem wasn't with the technology as such. It was with filing a flight plan in order to take off.
I am recalling the interview from memory, so maybe someone can shed more light. But I recall him talking about some kind of automated flight plan system that was being worked on.
However I think that 9/11 probably did away with any chance of a flying car coming anytime soon.
"To appeal to the mass market, flying devices have to be super-reliable [and] nearly impossible to collide"
Oh yeah, just like cars.
Where were going we don't need.. roads.
Wasn't it originally planned for year 2000?
One of my chief concerns is the effect that flying cars will have on the membership in the mile high club. This is currently a fairly exclusive group - joining takes money, connections, courage and a very cooperative partner!
Judging by the activity currently conducted in ground cars - we can expect membership in the mile high club to become jsut another 'been there, done that' experience.
sigh.
KK4SFV
Everyone automatically pictures cars flying WAAAAY up in the air, but how feasible is that? Traffic control would just be a nightmare to deal with. Getting stuck in bumper to bumper traffic in mid air can only lead to problems. Say you run out of fuel, do you just drop out of the sky?
I say we make the flying cars just like the Landspeeders. It's still flying, and in the worst case scenario we only fall 2 feet!
Live forever, or die trying.
Generally, traffic jams are caused my everyone trying to get to and from work at the same time. If more companies allowed employees to work from home then the traffic situation would improve. For those of us who can't work effectively at home because our family won't leave us alone, a whole new industry could be created. A company could rent out small offices/cubicles in dispursed locations. Just provide good internet access, a phone, a desk, electricity, and a bathroom and you have a business. That way, nobody has to go more than a couple of miles and traffic stays scattered.
Angleyne: You can't bend that girder - it's unbendable! Bender: Well I don't know anything about lifting, so that ju
I don't know... I usually buy cars that cost around $500. I don't think I'd want a $500 flying car. Especially since I can't go over 45mph in my current vehicle, that speed limitation would have a much more dramatic effect when dropping out of the air.
---
Those who can, do
Those who can't, teach
Those who don't know how, supervise
Yea, flying cars in 10 years. Here are some other things to look for in 10 years:
Nuclear Fusion
Duke Nukem Forever
Damn! One article mentions people adding a third axis to daily transportation and all we see is fear packaged in jaded cynicism. That's /. for you.
"The air is so high!! What about crashes?!"
"What about bad drivers?!"
"Whaddabout drunk drivers?!"
And, of course now we also have the, "Omigod, think of the terrorism!!" chorus.
We're supposed to be the ones who dig big changes, especially technological. Stop whining and control your fear.
Otherwise, do us a favor and just move to some shack in the woods and start writing your "manifesto".
No the last thing we need is flying personal vehicles of any sort. SUV or not the dangers are the same. It's just a stupid idea given how stupid people can be with their ground vehicles.
Sure, the flying car is a long way off. But chances are, cars will eventually fly. Pigs won't.
But maybe pig neurons might. If they're already using live neurons to control a "toy plane", then why not flying pig brains? --M
Here's something I have yet seen mentioned: What about law enforcement? Unless the cops have these, I don't see how they'll let the general population drive them. It'll be pretty difficult for a cop in a standard cruiser to pull you over if you can just lift off and escape him. Even with radios and helicopters, by the time they can dispatch a chopper, you could be outta there.
Everyone seems to talk about successful personal air transport as a 100% replacement, and consequently see it as unfeasible or unlikely. TV doesn't kill radio, Internet doesn't kill TV, and flying cars don't need to kill conventional ground transport to be a success. They will become a new, useful and probably small part of the transportation ecology. But it won't stop walking, biking, trains and conventional driving.
Promote civility: mod down any post starting with 'ummm'.
So would this mean that every parking will have a security guard directing you through a metal detector and x-raying your luggage? And more importantly, will I be allowed to bring nailclippers in my car?
Failing to learn from history dooms you to repeat it.
And before you know it, there will be flying mini bikes everywhere...
But I guess that will eliminate the problem of the rider's head being at the level of a car's bumper... Now they'll just plunge X feet to their deaths...
I don't see flying cars becoming a reality. General aviation has been in a decline for years because of liability and NIMBY opposition to GA airports. It can cost anywhere from $50-$100/hour to operate a small single engine airplane. That doesn't even include insrance. An air-taxi, as proposed in the article, would have to cost significantly less than that to be effective. Right now the biggest barrier to operating an "air-taxi" service is FAA regulation. The ability to fly an airplane for hire requires a commercial pilots' license which requires 100+ hours of training and there are strict inspection and maintenance requirements for commercially operated aircraft.
Unless there is a major breakthrough in noise reduction technology and the creation of a foolproof air traffic control system, flying cars for urban travel will remain a pipe dream. Until then, support general aviation.
Not only are there going to be fuel efficiency problems as mentioned by previous posters, but people in northern climates may have some difficulty with ice in the winters. Although it would be nice to avoid sliding everywhere you go during a blizzard, de-icing such a vehicle would be rather difficult to properly enforce. Think of a driver that doesn't know how to wax their car trying to de-ice it in a hurry for the daily commute.
That's what we need: gas guzzling flying cars right when our oil production drops forever from its global peak production. Trains? That's so 19th Century. And 22nd Century.
--
make install -not war
- telecommute to work
- walk to the local starbucks
- fly to bahamas.
solves a lot of problems, including the oil crisis.
Scaramanga's flying AMC from the Man with the Golden Gun.
Thats what a flying car should look like.
"goatse? What's that? Anyone have a link?" - AC
The one thing I could never find feasible about this idea is the logistics of coordinating traffic. The amount of commercial and private aircraft in the air right now requires complex traffic monitoring. I can't imagine how bad things would get if there was a small aircraft for every car in the world.
-------
"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
-- George Orwell
I knew a guy who had one. He liked to use the turn signals in the pattern and honk the horn at seagulls.
o car/info/info.htm
http://www.fiddlersgreen.net/aircraft/private/aer
The energy economy of a personal flying vehicle whould make a suburban look like a prius.
Airplanes do alright, but they don't have the ability to hover which would be a necesity for any urban personal air transit. Until an energy efficient way of maintiaing a position in 3 dimensions is developed I really don't think personal flying vehicle will be adopted on an appriciable scale...
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
I'm amazed at how much Fear and panic there are in these comments.
It's attitudes like this that stifle progress.
Yes, there's a danger but that's the nature of progress. The danger will be curbed by technology and beaurocracy(sadly)...
I say, bring it on.
00101010
Are we sure this article wasn't some sort of belated April Fool's joke? Come on, this is BUSINESS WEEK. It looks more like a paid advert from Honda to sell a few hundred thousand shares of stock to bandwagoners. I'll consider the idea once I see it in a vetted professional journal.
90% Professional Slacker
This is really going to take the wind out of the sails of the people trying to come up with the first driving airplane.
Where I live the last thing we need is those small zippy cars flying. At least an SUV would be visible, take some time to change velocity or vector (simple newtonian physics stuff) whereas the small cars (with less mass) would be more likely to cream participate in an 'accident' same as they are on the road -- give some amature the chance to think he's Mario Andretti and he'll prove he's more Dale Earnhardt (and I mean that from the way he drove, not the way he died.)
Maybe your point is more along these lines, though:
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Where is this mythical oil crisis?
The only crisis we face is that of having too many special interest groups whose livelihood relies on someone believing their is a crisis!
I would prefer to see alternative fuels and systesm created before I want to see a flying car. Until a new engine type is created I figure flying cars would make hummers palatble to environmentalist!
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Quite late in the thread, so this probably wont get read, but this was the flying car argument I had the other night.
The "flying car " (moller, honda et al) should not be seen as a replacement for a car. The driving/ piloting restrictions will (and should) be very stringent. Not as hard to get as a commercial flying license, but harder than a driving test.
This creates a new niche market for corporates to have a fleet of cars & pilots where it will be cheaper than flying its execs all over the country, where we can get flying taxis, or the well to do will have a chauffer who can both drive their limo, or fly their moller.
Car companies will not be the ones effected, but instead the short haul flights business will see a dramatic drop in sales; if anything these companies should invest in flying taxis, the planes will become flying coaches instead
Mr Moller had major problems with testing - nobody would insure him for an untethered flight!
Then there's the matter of airspace and where you can fly. Air Traffic Control would have to make sure nobody flew into populated areas, military airspace, each other etc. This means a massive overhaul and spending on ATC to handle the millions of vehicles in the air simultaneously.
Moller said in the article I read that the amount of airspace around our planet is so large, it was unlikely that you would come across another SkyCar on your journey, even if every family in the world had one.
I doubt if people will be allowed to land in the middle of populated areas, we're more likely to have skyscraper car parks.
I should think Moller has the patent on SkyCars and that he'll make a bundle from car manufacturers (if he's still alive by the time they're mass produced!). I'd say we're looking at 50 years minimum until they become commonplace. Then instead of paying road tax we'll be paying air tax :-(
As a private pilot, I don't think this pig will fly. Yes, planes could be made that would allow nearly anyone to fly, but then there are all kinds of additional complications. You have to teach people about controlled airspace, emergency procedures, and where exactly does the TSA inspect the baggage?
Someone above stated that flying vehicles wouldn't be any more of a problem then ground traffic. I'd have to disagree. Light aircraft have a small radar signiture, and can slip by relatively easily. You might recall the German kid who flew a small plane right into Red Square in Moscow, or how the private pilot crashed his plane into the front of the White House. Yes, transponders are supposed to help, but if the pilot turns it off, he's unlikely to be seen. And, even when it's on, I've been told by ATC that they couldn't see me because I was at 1800 ft. ASL...too low for them. Now pack that thing with 500lbs of C4, and tell me that it's not a risk!
Now, try multiplying the number of planes in the sky by an order of magnitude, and tell me how we're not going to have a bunch of mid-air collisions too?
Just another day in Paradise
We have enough car accidents where only forward motion is involved. Let me put it this way. Would you want one of these things flying over your neighborhood, piloted (yes, piloted, not driven) by someone who could be a total moron, yakking on his cell phone, or maybe just drank a six pack?
Yeah, I'd sure like one of those things falling through the roof of my house, I can tell you right now. Not.
Roads aren't just to make wheels work. They also provide boundaries of where you can't go.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
I believe there will be a reversal of urbanization if & when fast, efficient long distance trasportation comes to market. Many people- myself included- prefer lots of space, but live in the city or suburban areas because they like being close to things like grocery stores, friends, church, etc. The faster you can get to these places, the further away you can live from them.
May not seem that profound, until you consider things like the last election map. An exodus from the city would no doubt have interesting social consequences.
These things should be approved solely for their entertainment value.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
I wouldn't mind licensed pilots being able to do this, but adding another axis to most licensed drivers' spatial coordination is a recipe for disaster. Confer cellphones, fast food and road rage.
Snickersnee3: Build your own 3-watt Luxeon Star headlamp from scratch
I'm scared enough when I get in some crazy cabbie's car and go for a pants wetting ride where I'm sure I'll be dead in moments.
There's NO WAY IN HELL I'm going to get in a cab that has an added dimension of travel.
"False hope is why we'll never run out of natural resources!" - Lewis Black
Flying cars would probably be treated as aircraft and would be regulated by the FAA. I'm sure they are not really interested in having air craft become as common as automobiles any time soon, and for some very good reasons. Also, it's a bit harder to get a pilots license than it is to get a drivers license and they are not likely to want to lower the bar. Then there is the small matter of driver's licenses being handled by the states. I could be wrong, but aren't Pilots licenses handled on the federal level? States probably would not like that either
Hell yes.
I've been telling my wife that we need to start saving for a small personal helicopter (which I think could be achievable within like 20 years, even though we're not rich by any means). The rest of my family and many friends live 2+ hours away, which I imagine will rapidly increase as this area populated. Same goes for many areas/spots of interest. I would thouroughly enjoy being able to avoid the idiot drivers, the traffic jams and accidents, arriving in a predictable/consistent 60 minutes.
I see government overregulation as one problem (has made general aviation too expensive).
Another problem is that technology has not advanced into this area quickly enough (possibly a function of the previous problem). Single-rotor helis are still the norm, instead of meshed counter-rotating rotors. Real low-end (i.e. not turbine) helis from places like http://www.robinsonheli.com/ are only finally starting to switch to fuel-injection from carborators.
If they made flying cars that were safe, you'd solve my desire for a heli above, as well as providing ground transportation at my destinatios (instead of having to scatter $1000 automobiles or borrow cars at common destination points).
Atlanta's finest escorts
myself, I've become convinced that many pilots are incompetent much of the time and all pilots are incompetent occasionally. And this is after a rigorous training program. Real aircraft are much more difficult to fly in real time than MS Flight Simulator (or *any* simulator).
The idea of "an airplane in every garage" has been around at least since the 1940s judging by my recollections of Popular Mechanics articles alone. But it never got closer than the 1950s. I can remember airports with hundreds of private aircraft (Stinsons, Luscombes, Cessnas, Pipers, Beechcrafts, etc) tied down in lines. Those lines of airplanes are conspicuously absent at the few airports left which cater to private flyers. A testimony to the expense of building, maintaining and operating even the simplest flying machines.
The ubiquitous "air-car" could only work if there were strict control over both the air-car and the pathways it travels combined with fail-safe recovery techniques in the event of mechanical failure. In other words, give the "pilot" control only over what time he leaves and his destination. Everything else - altitude, speed, course - is controlled by a common system that can keep theat vehicle - and every other vehicle - on the path it's been assigned to.
The air-car would also have to be able to stop and maintain altitude and position in mid-air in order to reduce the chances of collisions.
This combination of control and mechanical reliability would be *very* expensive not even including the cost of fuel. It would take a society that was dedicated to the premise that some very rich people could free themselves of ground transportation while the rest of us paid for the infrastructure.
Which is basically what we do with helicopters and personal jets now.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
He has been at it for a while www.moller.com...
photoplankton
anyone out there with the specs handy for how much helium/hydrogen(if you like to live dangerously) it would take to lift one 250 lb. person? i think it would be much cooler to have traffic floating around instead of the blast of a jet engine every morning when the neighbor takes off for work.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
The problem with flying cars isn't technology (we've had the tech for almost 100 years) nor is it controlling traffic (FAA already puts diferent kinds of traffic at fixed altitudes, often on the same path).
The problem is that people are bad enough drivers in 2 dimensions. It'll be raining death if we let joe blow drive in 3 dimensions. Drunk Dirvers. Running out of gas. And if you think that having some super-safe autopilot will solve these problems, remember that many people already modchip their car computers. Remember the DARPA grand challenge (yes, we already have autonomous aircraft, but 300,000 aren't trying to take the same way to work at the same time).
People have to work hard to obtain and keep their pilots licenses because it's a skill with a lot to know and keep track of and the stakes are really high. Flying cars sound great until an unlicensed, uninsured drunk driver crashes into your childs school from an altitude of 2,000 feet.
Now if cities would build helipads near traditional mass transit and could get the FAA to carve out the airpace for it, we could have helibusses flown by licensed pilots. But that's not flying cars for joe sixpack-while-driving. That's an airline.
Some group calling itself Stop The Noise is already filing lawsuits against private pilots for the noise planes make when flying over their houses despite the FAA saying the pilots are doing nothing wrong. Another group, the General Aviation Legal Defense Fund is trying to collect donations to fight these lawsuits. Imagine the explosion of lawsuits that would result over the noise caused by these cars flying over peoples homes...
I can't believe the ignorance and ludditism I'm seeing here on slashdot. You would think this website was frequented by a congregation of the Amish, rather than self-proclaimed technophiles.
... if the automatics crap out for whatever reason one should be competent enough to pilot the device safely to the ground without hand-holding.
Your post is a breath of fresh air, being at least thoughtful (if perhaps not fully informed). Your point that pilot's licenses are far more difficult and rigorous than drivers licenses is a good one.
It's still a lot harder to get a license for and rental of a small aircraft than a car.
To get a driver's license in the United States, the chief requirement seems to be a pulse. To rent a car, you need a credit card in addition to the pulse.
Pilot's licenses--for good reason--are more difficult to get.
However, while "they" may call these new aircraft "flying cars," and these aircraft may even become easier to fly than current cars are to drive, I suspect one will be required to have a pilot's license to fly these aircraft just as one must have to fly any other aircraft. And well one should
As a pilot I would love to have a flying car. Being able to get from driveway to driveway in one vehicle, rather than taking a car to the airport, flying the plane to my destination, and then renting/borrowing a car at the far end (many FBOs have courtesy cars, but many do not, and getting one is always a crapshoot), would be a tremendous boon.
Let those who want to pilot flying cars jump through the necessary hoops to become competent pilots (ideally with an instrument rating), while those who get regular drivers licenses remain restricted to the planet's surface.
All the benefits of flying vehicles, all the air safety of the current licensing system, and additional flexibility for those who do like to travel and are willing to acquire the skills to fly.
As for the post wondering what to do if one has a midair in one county and plumets to the earth in another, that one is easy. The NTSB investigates the crash irrespective of where it lands (in the US). WRT international borders, the current norms for investigative aeronautical crashes would apply.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
There is an art, it says, or rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. Pick a nice day, [The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy] suggests, and try it.
The first part is easy. All it requires is simply the ability to throw yourself forward with all your weight, and the willingness not to mind that it's going to hurt.
That is, it's going to hurt if you fail to miss the ground. Most people fail to miss the ground, and if they are really trying properly, the likelihood is that they will fail to miss it fairly hard.
Clearly, it is the second part, the missing, which presents the difficulties.
Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Moller Skycar has been in the works for years. Popular Science has done several issues on them. Now suddenly Honda and the like are planning on making flying cars? Is everyone just waiting for his patents to expire or something?
They're called 'airplanes'.
For all intents and purposes, the laws are the same--a flying car is just an airplane you can drive on a road. I can't imagine the FAA's going to say, "Oh, it's a flying car! You don't need a pilot's license, then--the ten-minute driving test you took when you were sixteen obviously qualifies you to operate an aircraft!"
Go to your local airport and find an FBO. Spend a few bucks and get a sectional chart--there's plenty of Prohibited and Restricted areas on there already that airplanes can't go into (especially around D.C.).
I just don't see this catching on--Joe Blow doesn't have the inclination (and likely not the skills) to put in his hours to get a pilot's license, won't want to preflight the thing for fifteen minutes every time he takes it out, or pay a few grand to replace the beacon light that just burned out (did I mention hardware certification is expensive?).
People who want the flexibility of a flying car can drive to the nearest small airport (they're all over the place), and get in their Cessna. Creating some kind of automated infrastructure (handling where vehicles can takeoff/land is only one problem) would be quite a task in itself, even if the common person was capable of piloting such a vehicle.
--Ribald
Oh, great, just what we need. People can barely drive the land vehicles they're licensed to drive....
I wondered how much longer it would be...
Time for the governements to start working on a whole new concept of traffic infrastructure. Air highway systems, signals, etc. I assume it will be low altitude not to interfere with airways, but it's finally time I guess we seriously started planning all this since it's inevitable.
This will be interesting to see how it plays out. I mean you know people that own land will be like... "you're not allowing those things to fly right over MY land!" because they probably won't fly right over the normal highway systems for safety reasons.
Exactly. The last thing we need is taxi drivers violating the laws of gravity.
I'm sorry, the number you have dialed is an imaginary number. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and dial again.
If a car crashes and you have safety devices euipped properly (seatbelt) you can survive. Two flying cars collide and not only can you have deaths of those flying, you also run increased risk these could fall on a house, or a busy highway.
Not only that until you can get around using standard jet fuel they're resource intensive.
Robert E. Fulton, a man who as a teenager was the first to ride around the globe on a motorcycle, already invented the flying car in 1945. He called it the Airphibian. In 1950 he flew it to Washington D.C. where he landed and then drove it to the Civil Aeronautics Association where it was certified for use. It traveled 110 mph in the air and 55 mph on the ground, and changed between car and plane in five minutes due to its simple system for removing the wings and propeller. Charles Lindhberg flew it and declared it "an improvement." It never did well commercially and sold only under 600 total. There is only one remaining today. It is in the Smithsonian. More Info: http://www.nasm.si.edu/research/aero/aircraft/fult on.htm
History: http://travel.howstuffworks.com/flying-car1.htm
You will not get mass consumer flying cars any time soon.
We worry about how much fossil fuel cars use. Flying cars would be far worse.
We complain about the noise of cars. Flying cars will be far worse.
But most of all, cars kill people at an appalling rate, through mechanical failure and driver error. Flying cars would be far worse. Do you really want carloads of drunken students in mechanically unsound vehicles to be hundreds of feet above our cities and houses?
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
Isn't the taxi experience scary enough in 2 dimensions? Why add a third?
One fallacy that many people in this argument seem to be making is that once flying cars become feasible, everyone in the country will instantly replace their ground cars with them. In reality (if I may even use that word here), adoption is going to be slower and more gradual. I wouldn't be surprised if the first customers are emergency services; wouldn't they snap up a vehicle that can be stored in a garage and driven on the ground by personnel without special training, and also bypass traffic jams and instantly reach the roof (or even any window of) a skyscraper? They already use helicopters anyway.
...governments will be ALL over them. I'm not saying they'll ban them (at least I hope not) but the one thing democracies truly hate are voters dying. When voters die, living voters think the politicians aren't doing enough to keep them alive.
So there will be heavy restrictions for a while until someone figures out methods for making flying cars safe.
Then the engineers kick in (prodded by managers who want to try to make things safe to continue to sell product and make money).
Sufficit to say, flying cars will not become viable until we have a cleaner and more abundant source of power.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Yes, he's been at it for a long time. And it's always RealSoonNow(tm).
Anybody ever seen one of his things actually fly? Unmanned tethered hover doesn't count.
There will never be flying cars simply because there is a much greater social revulsion to fatal airplane crashes than to car crashes. To keep planes from routinely falling out of the sky, aviation is massively regulated. Compare the regulation of general aviation to automobiles. It is 100x more difficult to get and maintain a pilots licence, than an auto licence. They are actually selective! It is very difficult to be innovative in general aviation because all airplane components are so difficult to qualify through the FAA. Ever wonder why a nice single engine plane like a Cirrus, the material equivalent of say a Lexus, costs 10x as much? It is ruinously difficult to put new innovative equipment on an airplane. The same rules apply to the Buck Rogers silliness the original posting prattles on about.
an ill wind that blows no good
Is anyone else slightly concerned about the idea of flying taxi drivers whose prior experience consists of making people jump out of the way in Calcutta?
As it stands now, I just close my eyes and hand them the cash.
Anyone know where I can find more information on this?
-IOVAR Web Dev Platform
What would these vehicles do for your insurance premium?
I've had my videophone (iSight) for about six months now, and we were supposed to have both by 2000.
Yikes!
I agree completely.
Currently, the only methods for making things fly involve high velocities (rotors, props, turbines) and the associated noise from those moving things.
People already move next to the airport, then sue the airport management for excessive noise. Nobody is going to tolerate a jet-powered car next door.
Finally, it's just not practical to use that much energy to commute downtown. And if you find a destination for which this makes sense, it would probably be better served by an airplane anyhow.
I can see certain applications for the technology (search and rescue, surveillance, etc); but even those are served well by current technology.
As the parent implied, until we find an anti-gravity technology, flying cars will always be a lark.
Hot Damn! It's the Soggy Bottom Boys!
Ignignot - You and your third dimension.
Frylock - What about it?
Ignignot - Oh, nothing, it's cute. We have five.
Ur - Thousand!
Ignignot - Yes, five thousand.
Ur - Don't question it!
Frylock - Oh, yeah? Well, I only see two.
Ignignot - Well, that sounds like a personal problem.
In a car, you have to use a lot of energy to accelerate the large car mass. If the flying device is light enough, I would think you could keep it hovering with relatively little power.
Also, I presume that air routes would be planned so there'd be very few actual intersections. So the aircar would not waste a bunch of energy braking and re-accelerating like commuting cars do.
You can't stop a flying car, you can only slow it down or land it. If the controls go haywire, you're riding a missle. Maybe in the future, 9/11 type events will be common, but it won't be Abdul in the cockpit, it will be Mom.
Yes. Yes! YES! I would buy one, but not until the car could fly itself and I could take off from my driveway. Flying cars will require some organizational changes in the air corridors but unlike land based cars, there is no expense to allowing them to travel in different directions at different heights. Setting up rules to manage heavy congestion with vehicles that can't stop will be quite a challenge. I'm looking forward to what the solution will be.
set softtabstop=4 shiftwidth=4 expandtab nocp worlddomination
They would most likely deploy it from a ground based unit, it seems ill-advised to chase anything in the air if you can avoid it. Perhaps a few dozen on the top of every police station and sporadically placed in more rural areas.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Does anyone recall those IBM e-solutions ads that ran a few years ago? Many of them featured a forceful and decisive Avery Brooks http://imdb.com/name/nm0000984/preaching on what-really-matters in IT.
One such ad spot opened with him angrily demanding: "Where are my flying cars?!?". Avery Brooks was clearly upset that this great promise of the future had not yet been delivered. His fury gradually subsides as he comes to the revelation that we have something better: the internet. True advancement, says Avery Brooks and IBM, is not in the flash and frill of flying cars, but rather in substantive internet technologies: the ability to move, replicate and share data instantly.
So the question posed: If you could live in a world with flying cars or (exclusive) the internet, which would you choose? Why?
Wasn't the "10 year" thing what they said in the 60s when the Flymobile came out?
A Call For A New Slashdot Moderation Level!
The only good cat is a null-cat.
What a coincidence...I just told a car salesman to take a flying leap just the other day.
Trolls lurk everywhere. Mod them down.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
..."when pigs can fly."
--
the main reason travel is so time consuming now is the roads are so crowded. bad drivers only make it worse (and being over careful is being a bad driver too.. and yes i mean YOU.. the guy who has to waith until there is absolutely NO vehicle in SIGHT before you merge with traffic... (sorry guys, long day))..
.. and i'll probably get to where i'm going afore ye.. if you ever get there at all
but the point is when all those morons take to the skies, it will make the roads less congested, and i can drive my car, along the ground, and not worry about anything except some bad driver causing a massive mid air accident that involves 7 vehicles falling on to me.. i can stop by the side of the road and take a piss if i want..
so you take the high road and i'll take the low road
suchetha
learn from yesterday, plan for tomorrow, party tonight
or one out of three ain't bad
...so why bother?
I mean, it's fine for Iowa, but nobody with opposable thumbs lives in Iowa.
Has anyone thought of the security implications of this? What happens when people start packing explosives into their flying cars and driving their cars into buildings? How are they going to defend against that?
fly by pooping
I can't wait!
Alternate headline:
Cars take a flying leap!
Okay, bad joke.
My username does not make me Apathetic. It's irony, get it?
Over the next 50 years, unless renewable, portable fuel (e.g. fuel cells together with solar or nuclear electrolysis plants) become insanely cheap, the name of the transportation game will be "efficiency". $40/barrel oil may seem expensive now, but in another few decades it'll seem insanely cheap.
Another means to lift and support mass other than aerodynamics MUST be developed.
Whether you use jet engines, piston engines, rotary engines, wings, enclosed fans or helicopter blades. You are still lifting mass by moving large quantities of air around. There is just too much that has to be just right to fly in this way, just one thing goes wrong and BOOM you just made a nice crater in the ground.
There has been some research in this area but many people and companies distance themselves from it the moment you use the term Anti-Gravity so call it whatever you want, Mass Reduction, Electro-kinetic lift or even Magnetic field lift. (In Star Wars they called it Repulser- Lift). The Point is there has to be another way to get in the air, its just waiting for someone to discover it.
I thought Fifth Element had the best depiction of a urban flying car-scape. This has been done in many other movies like Blade Runner, Minority Report, several of the Star Wars, perticularly the most recent, the Jetsons and so on.
::The Simpson's Pork roast gets thrown through the sky::
::They laugh and the roast flies in front of the plant's window:: ...So, should, I go write that check?
Homer: It's only a little airborne! It's still good!
Mr. Burns: You know, I think I'll give a million dollars to an orphanage.
Mr. Smithers: Really? When?
Mr. Burns: When pigs fly!
Mr. Smithers:
Mr. Burns: No, I'd still rather not.
Screw that. I've upped the expectation level recently thanks to the recent arrival of transparent aluminum I'm holding out for a transporter. Why go through all the trouble of flying there in your "flying car" when you could just beam there in an instant?
I want to leave the house at 8:00 every morning, skip the hour commute I normally face, and arrive at work at 8:00 every morning.
Now is that too much to ask?
- And I know that the transparent aluminum story from a couple of days ago wasn't really about transparent aluminum. Just go with it ok.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
Here's another possibility:
When the flying cars first come out, they will probably be limited to law enforcement (and important government officials and their connected friends/donors, of course). After all, if only the police should have guns, why should anyone else be trusted with potential flying bombs?
After a while, a whole generation will grow up in a world where flying cars are exclusively limited to the government, and the "right" to own one will never trickle down to us peons.
Besides, how many civilian flying cars did you see in Blade Runner ? "You know the score; if you're not a cop, you're little people."
What's with all these sissies complaining about traffic moving into the 3rd dimension? That's no problem! I'm so psyched for this shit I'm not gonna calm down until I can move my car in FOUR dimensions!
--
Two gmail invites left. First come, first served. kevinomara - gmail - com
Great, not only am I already paranoid about some drunken idiot hitting me head on, but I can soon look forward to having an out of control car-plane crush me from above? Great. I will never again leave the house, not even to get more prozac.
"Patience is not a virtue, it's a waste of time."
I think a lot of these problems you've all been talking about will just go away if we just travel in *4D* instead. Imagine disappearing from your home at 10:00 and showing up at work at 08:00 on the same day. Of course, it might be confusing if you try to call home to check the messages before 10, but even that might have some uses...
You: "Hello, Dave speaking."
You: "Hi, it's you. Ummm, don't eat that two-week old yogurt in the fridge, or you'll regret it later. Oh god, I've gotta go..."
Hmmm, what a strange post, and I haven't even been drinking.
Randall and Dante discuss flying cars in a short that first appeared on Leno.
Stop learning! Only you can prevent esoterrorism.
She doesnt have three breasts, but you will get your pizza delivered by an Imperial shuttle.
"Heavens, it appears that my weewee has been stricken with rigor mortis!" -- Stewie Griffin
As someone else on here stated, I always felt like Captain Sisko was mad at me that I hadn't invented his flying car yet.
Ah, TV nostalgia.
"Adventure? Excitement? A Jedi craves not these things."
Subconscious much?
About half the posts modded 4/5 are talking about people "driving" these things.
We already have the technology to fully automate this mode of transport - you use the car as normal on the ground, but to fly you change to computer-controlled mode before the car leaves the ground. Navigation, maneuvring and landing are all accomplished by the computer. The manual overide will call home and involve a HUGE fine if you use without good reason (storm coming up, unknown obstruction in path etc.).
European auto manufacturers have auto car control systems running dozens of vehicles around tracks and across intersections without human drivers - if this technology was mandated in, say, 2008 we would suddenly have shorter journey times, fewer crashes, better fuel economy etc. But you would never steer your own car again except in emergency.
The technology to do this is HERE, it's just not commoditised yet - as soon as there is enough financial impetus behind it, you can bet your bottom dollar someone will do it.
I've been following moller for a while and the solution they are pushing to eliminate drivers having to learn how to essentially fly a plane is to not let them at all...
What a lot of the companies like moller have been trying to come up with is a virtual highway system, much like you see in the Jetsons. Instead of everyone just flying around in the sky where ever the hell they want, they are forced onto virtual computer controlled freeways that traffic is limited to. The idea is with the help of GPS and navigation systems, you would simply type in your destination (much like mapquest) and it would autopilot you to your location. Now since they have dedicated towers and people tracking this for commercial planes, I doubt this could ever work out when you have millions of objects to track.
Now what computer would be driving this, and how far away this technology is... well your guess is as good as mine. I know that I sure as hell wouldn't be running windows on my flying car. It would bring a scarey new meaning to the "blue screen of death".
Read this for more info flying-car
Hey look no pointless curley braces or semicolons... just like Python
i ll have to learn how to parallel park in mid air!
The last thing we need is a 400 mph vehicle to enable people to live even farther from where they work, waste more resources, and further alienate the rich from the poor.
My appologies to those who have seen Spaceballs.
"Spaceballs, the flame thrower. The kids love that one."
Post anonymously - For when your opinion embarrasses even you!
As someone living in one of the largest cities in the world (São Paulo, Brazil), in an eight-floor apartment and with recently bought sound insulating windows, my only concern is: How much noise do these creatures produce ? I don't want anyone flying under my window at 3am in the morning and waking me up.
Now, small blimps with eletric motors, that would be OK.
Quem a paca cara compra, paca cara pagará.
That'll teach me to use preview next time:
And it's far easier to break into and hotwire than a car.
What I'm trying to say is that it's child's play to steal a light aircraft. Many of these old Cessnas are 40 years old--yeah, the doors lock, and there's an ignition key, but either one is easier to defeat than those on my truck (which I've had to break into a few times, with nothing more than a flat strip of aluminum, notched at the end).
People are sparse at some of these fields, and many airplanes are not in hangars, but just tied up in the grass, or an incomplete strip hangar that provides only a roof. Access is easy, getting in the airplane is easy, and unless someone working at the FBO (Fixed Base Operator--they sell fuel and stuff) sees you breaking in or notices that someone different is flying that plane today, you can just fly away with no one the wiser.
Reference that kid who stole an airplane from the St. Pete/Clearwater Airport about 2.5 years ago. Hell, they knew he wasn't supposed to be flying the airplane, and the Coast Guard (also based there) managed to get a helicopter after him while he was rolling down the runway, but he still managed to fly to downtown Tampa (over MacDill AFB, home of US SOCOM and CENTCOM) and crash into the Bank of America Building. Luckily for them, a Cessna 172 is pretty light, and he managed to take out a window and knock down a cubicle (plane didn't even make it all the way inside).
--Ribald
In the air these things are much, much easier. Advances in radar technology will allow the car to more or less completely map the space around it. Study of how manatees navigate with terrible eyesight has suggested way to use filaments on the outside of an aircraft to understand the turbulence around it.
Automated ground cars are a long way away. Fully automated light commercial aircraft aren't.
This next point is critical for naysayers...
Even if the automated systems occasionally fail, it really doesn't matter. Completely automated flying cars will never have the *millions* of accidents that ground cars have each year. People have a weird aversion to the idea of dying in air crashes. They're afraid, and that's fine, but it's unreasonable.
An automated system may fuck up, but it won't be drunk. Someone fill in the Futurama reference for me. I'm tired.
Back in the late 1940's or early 1950's, a magazine, either "Popular Mechanics" or "Popular Science" had an article about flying cars. The car was powered by a central jet engine, and one concept was to have the main "car" part be a separate assembly that could be detached from the aircraft wings and fuselage. The other concept envisioned folding wings that either became part of the car body or were concealed somehow. Now, some 60 years later, we have still not solved the problems of transportation using autos as the basis for a flying vehicle or using the airplane as a basis for a car. (No, I'm not that old, but an older brother did subscribe to them for years.)
Not to worry it will be open an source project.
I also will live in a concrete bunker as I know I won't be the only lunatic.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I went to an airshow last year and saw a flying car there that was built in the 40's. It was called the Fulton Airphibian. One of the coolest retro-future inventions I'd ever seen. The wings folded up into a trailor that you could pull behind you once you reached the city of your destination. The coolest thing is, Fulton didn't have any training at all when he designed it. He just found information in a pilot's handbook. And it worked great. There were only 11 built, but it is still certified as the first flying car. Perhaps it would have been successful if he thought of a better name? more info.
"We shall party like the Greeks of old! You know the ones I mean." - HedonismBot
People have enough trouble driving today. Flying will only cause more to die.
Alex
"The Brady Bunch is back...working homicide"
Well.. we need to put all of our living areas inside of protective bubbles first... then it will be safe for "flying cars". This is obvious to everyone I hope.
When the flying cars first come out, they will probably be limited to law enforcement
While I don't envision this being limited for any great length of time to the police they probably will be a test bed. Another early use will probably be rescue/emergency medical units. It's not like it's going to be switch where everyone will be able to buy a flying care on January 1st 2014.
Another thing I think we're neglecting is a serious outlook to the traffic patterns in the next 10-20 years. Will we have as many commuters in 10 years or will these great advances in telecommunications bring about an era of largely home office based employment? Perhaps with not only less autos on the road but also more efficient traffic patterns we won't have the overwhelming need to this type of transportation.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Popular Science also said "JET POWERED FLYING AUTOMOBILES BY 1963!!!!" or some crap like that. I don't want flying cars. People are big enough morons in 2 dimensons. Yes, people could make bodies for their cars so it looks like a giant Superman or Megazord or penis (or uterus) is flying around, but come on...
C) It's not funny out of context. It probably wasn't funny in context, either.
What the fuck is "ATHF"? I'm willing to bet that nobody's even heard of "ATHF" who doesn't sit maturbating in front of the TV in his mother's basement all day (that'd be you, asshole, not me).
So shut the fuck up, you drooling moron.
wouldn't these be better?
(_!_)
(_ô_)
Would you give up your foot for it?
Defecation occurs.
With as little as fuel mileage has changed over the years...and as much as fuel prices have risen...why would I want a vehicle that gets even lower mileage on what is probably more expensive fuel?
for travelling in areas where roads are washed out/destroyed/non existant. I think this may have more use by the military than the general public. Think of cruising across the desert, or over the jungle or whatever. I'm sure something like this could have practical uses in certain applications... i just don't see it happening for the average joe
If it doesn't drive on a highway, why are we calling it a flying "car"?
It isn't a car. Its an aircraft.
Calling it a "car" isn't going to make it any more likely to sell, nor will it change the licensing requirements to operate it.
No one has a right to their *own* opinion. They have a right to the TRUTH.
This will make it much easier for me to ditch my drugs when the cops pull me over...until the cops install butterfly nets to the front bumper of their flying cars.
If carrots got you drunk, rabbits would be fucked up. - Comedian Mitch Hedberg R.I.P. 03/30/68-2/24/05
"Even General Electric is getting in on the deal, developing a small jet engine for Honda." Well acording to the article it's the other way around, Honda are making the engine for GE, and good! Japanese engineering is the most reliable in the world. These cars have paracutes instead of airbags i wonder?
I've had an auto engine die on me before.
God forbid I was at 2,000 ft.
This is slashdot, the appropriate question is, "Would I build one?".
Most people can't drive worth a hoot in TWO dimensions; what can we expect when they have a third to deal with?
--- Asking inconvenient questions for over 30 years...
Oh, really? What states have stopped honoring Californian driver's licenses to make such a thing safe? Californians can't drive in two dimensions, they don't need a third, particularly near me.
Help us build a better map!
Could be useful for mass transit.
Though I doubt this is just 10 years in the future. The media is always spouting off about some technology that is "just around the corner".
W.E.P.the need flying police cars
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The parent's claim to be an environmentalist is obviously untrue, because he's advocating massive technoenvirorape airline pollution.
Good suggestion.
/.
The go-go dancer next door has been looking for a bit of after work entertainment and I've pegs on the bike as well.
We've still the, alluded to, problem of the cats spraying the front door and climbing on tha car so maybe a bit of local trolling will do the trick here.
It's a shame the trap's not performing. Trolling eats into the time budget leaving less for
The earth is round....
1 5&tid=126&tid=1
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/flatearth.html
We'll never fly....
http://www.manwillneverfly.com/
We never went to the moon....
http://www.cen.uiuc.edu/~akapadia/moon.html
Gee.... This sounds awefully familiar.... Oh wait here...
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/26/13192
reassign null to be the tape device - it's so much more economical on my time as I don't have to change tapes_BOFH
I can't see mid-air crashes having much less than a 100% fatality rate.
Pray tell, what will they be powered with? Gasoline? Good luck finding any gasoline by the time this technology is mature.
Humans have enough trouble piloting a car along the X axis. Can you imagine what it would be like for your average clueless SUV-driving female if she had the Y-axis to deal with, too?
Here again is one example of where technology is far outstripping humans ability to use it intelligently.
General aviation is dead because of liability suits and settlements. A gyro fails in a 45yr old airplane and the pilot's widow sues and gets $20 million. Airplane manufacturer can either hike up the price of the planes to cover the liability insurance costs, or go out of business. Thanks a lot you greedy old b*tch. Now all I can afford is a rotting old 1967 C172.
Flying cars will be the same. You think insurance is high on your '98 Civic? Ha! Call GIECO and ask for a insurance quote on your new flying Honda. Insurance will be more than your car payment! And the car will cost more than we expect because the manufacturer will have to insure its self against greedy widows.
-=-=-=-=- osjedi uses Debian GNU/Linux. -=-=-=-=-
AreoCar.
Me... I'm waiting for the hover option for my car. (see slashdot id).
"You may all go to hell and I will go to Texas"
Sen. Davy Crocket to US Congress, Nov. 1, 1835
I was under the impression that flying cars have existed since the mid 90's, but that the FAA wouldn't approve them for use. With the new piloting standards, though, it is now quite a bit easier for the average person to get a license. I wonder if that has anything to do with the timing on this.
I'm also curious as to how much fuel these new cars are going to guzzle. If suv's get horrid mileage now, what happens when somebody makes them capable of flight?
Everyone has an agenda. Except me. --Michael Crichton
It's not that you can't build a small jet engine. It's that the price doesn't decline much with size. Engines sized for small aircraft aren't much cheaper than those built for business jets.
There was an effort at NASA to fix this problem, but it failed and was cancelled in 2002.
These things would be good for a select group of professionals: police, fire, and ambulance. Think of the good that can happen if these vehicles are immune to ground based traffic jams.
For the public end of things, how about buses?
That way, when everyone is flying around in their "air cars," I'll be on the empty freeway in my normal car, with no traffic, and getting much better milage.
In any case, flying cars have been "10 years away" for 50 years now. I'm not holding my breath.
from the moller site:
We plan to begin untethered flights when we have at least one additional M400 nearing completion. All flights will occur over a specially constructed lake. This lake is part of the Milk Farm development (see www.milkfarm.net), a commercial 60-acre development underway near the city of Dixon in California on Interstate 80. The lake will have an area of 5 to 6 acres and will be approximately 10 feet deep with a silt, rock free bottom. Most flights will occur at less than 50 feet altitude and will incorporate flotation gear attached to the Skycar.
: While not mentioned on the site the scuttlebutt is that the untethered lake flight will be this summer. If you live near the Sacramento/Davis area keep an eye on his site. If possible I plan to be there for the first flight since I am only 50 miles from the test site.
Yeah but if they do the electronic self adjusting bolts http://smt.pennnet.com/Articles/Article_Display.cf m?Section=Articles&Subsection=Display&ARTICLE_ID=2 07838 will detect a non-OEM device and unscrew the engine from the frame.
Of course some uber-3733t hax0r will reprogram the BIOS and wind up crashing into other flying cars and then it will be raining Honda parts on those poor people who have to drive regular cars on those no longer maintained pavement highways. It's gonna be ugly.
/. flames SUV drivers, and now want flying cars! How far does a plane get on a gallon of gas? Not as far as an exotic sports car does. Until someone comes up with a new method to defy gravity, (see taxi in Fifth Element) flying will be a wasteful mode of personal transport.
Just let me plug my playstation controller into the dashboard of the aircar. Problem solved.
"Im such a nonconformist I'm going to not conform to the rest of you!"
"Dude I think we just got goth-served"
Can I get a flying car that folds up into briefcase?
Please post some real stories. This is just stupid.
Reminds of back in the 50s when they were talking about how we'd all be flying helicopters by the 70s and it's just a realistic to say we'll have flying cars in 10 years.
If you can't figure out the reasons for yourself, let me give you a few:
1> People are bad drivers as it is. Do you want them flying around? Forget homeland security. You'd have drunks flying cars all over the place. Pedestrians would be dying left and right from falling cars.
2> Simple economics: You think it's expensive to refuel your SUV? That's nothing compared to what it'll cost to fuel up your flying car. Flying uses a lot more energy than rolling. That energy has to be created from fuel. The more energy the fuel produces, the more expensive the fuel. Nobody but the rich would be able to afford to fly daily. Not much different than today.
3> The cost of flying vehicles will continue to be prohibitively expensive for several reasons. Not least of which is what it would cost to make it safe for your average redneck with an IQ of 45 to fly the thing.
Nice pipe dream, but can Slashdot get on to "stuff that matters?"
HallmarkOrnaments.Com
Sure, the idea of flying cars is cool. But it's just terribly impractical. First off, you've got to spend a huge amount of energy keeping yourself off the ground. And once you've done that you immediately lose a whole set of really fundamental benefits -- like turning and stopping by using friction against the ground.
:)
And if that wasn't enough, you've also got to deal with people (who can barely manage 2D interactions) driving in three dimensions. It's exponentially harder. Not to mention how speed changes things. I remember being up with a pilot friend of mine and having a small jet go from an invisible speck to slightly too close for comfort before we were sure what it was.
Anyways, maybe they'll find solutions to all this. But I'm not holding my breath. I just appreicate that we've got such practical wheel based transportation at all. It's still pretty cool
Cheers.
Every few years some hopeless nobody puts out a press release that we are only "10 years away" from flying cars. Been going on since the end of WWII and probably before. True maybe the ability to make a vehicle fly is very close (in fact believe the Moller Corp. has already achieved this) but the logistical, legal and environmental issues are no where near the "10 year" marker. Please, leave the flying car fanatacism to reruns of the Jetsons. We've got real, more pressing issues to deal with.
The Boeing Museum in Renton has a (standard fixed wing with folding mechanism) flying car circa 1965. Moellers work (ducted fan) hasn't "flown" only because of FAA lawyers. All of these questions (stopping terrorists, wacky taxi driver habits) are social in nature. These storied pop up at least one every quarter but there just isn't much geeky to it.
I think going into the future we should be optimizing our ground traffic rather than pioneering the z-axis. No matter how efficiently we accomplish flight, there is no erasing the amount of newton's force it takes to defy gravity. I like the notion of flying cars, and it intuitively feels like the next step but I think it's something a wasteful decadent civilization would do before optimizing its mass transit and ground traffic systems. Admittedly it would seem America is just the place for a pilot program(no pun intended) for this, but I think it's the wrong direction for us to be going down. A traffic system as depicted in "Minority Report" seems much more viable, crowded interstates of meticulously computer guided vehicles carefully structured to avoid rush hour traffic jams.
We must revamp VoiDire the process of jury selection. The courts cull out the smart folks and lawyers spew all sorts of mumbo jumbo. So when the widow weeps the jury feels her pain and punishes the evil corporation. -First 12 through the door is your jury.-
We can't seem to handle driving in 2D much less in 3D. To even get to 3D driving, drivers will have to give up a lot of their control and freedom over their vehicles. Vehicles would most likely be under some form of control by the Department of Motor Vehicles (for those in the States), which would allow them to track individuals' movements (of course, strong wording would indicate that it wouldn't be tracked AND if it was, it would be totally confidential).
Vehicles may fly in the near future, but it'll take much longer for the infrastructures to be put into place and even longer for the people's trust.
/ds
There already exists a flying car that's just about ready: the Muller SkyCar.
It's been beaten around the flying bush for a long while.
One aspect that's been brought forward in the Skycar trials is the one they haven't figured out yet: the noise. Imagine those few hundred (or more) flying cars thrusting downward on take-off/landing. Be it turbo fans, jets or propeller, they will generate a LOT of noise, and a heck of a lot of dust.
Impractical for any kind of city travel.
"Never happen"? "I can't ever imagine what flying would be like..."? I don't mean to offend, but you really need to either exercise your imagination more, or use the proper words. Do you really mean NEVER? What about in 100years when you can fit a perfectly safe fusion reactor in the trunk and thus never have to worry about power? What about in 300years when anti-grav is perfected and cars will just float?
Don't you imagine that there were people just like you back when cars came out, who said that they moved way too fast, what about carriages or pedestrians, who would buy one if it could break down all the time?
I have no trouble imagining a world NEAR-TERM where automation and diagnostics will work automatically when you try to turn the car/plane on, and ground you if things are unsafe. Or an "auto-pilot" that takes over in the case of machine failure and gets you to the ground safely.
"Never" should be considered a dirty word. We can do ANYTHING if we just set our minds to it long enough.
Doug
not to mention noise pollution, right along with air pollution! Its bad enough having a jet liner flying over your house ever hour or so, what about 50 taxis flying by every freaken minute!?
They're not ultralights, but aircraft under a certain weight and performance limits, with reduced requirements for pilot certification and medical requirements. For example, you don't need a third class medical, just a valid drivers license. Airplanes have to be under 1320 lbs. gross weight. See http://www.sportpilot.org/ -- this actually has the potential for a revolution in aviation, even if cars don't fly.
Ask me about my vow of silence!
As there's a pretty good chance that the industrialized world will have passed peak oil production in the next twenty years, I doubt there'll be any cars flying through the neighbourhoods of anyone reading this site. We'll be doing well to afford a flight on an "ordinary" passenger jet given how much aviation fuel will soon cost.
The idea that people will someday have flying cars sounds wonderful; a lot of movies even make it look like it could work. Apart from the many humorous (and accurate) statements made about this topic already, there are plenty of other real reasons why this will NEVER happen.
...and the list goes on and on
...and on and on
I have a commercial pilot's license with single and multi-engine and instrument endorsements, along with Advanced and Instrument Ground Instructor ratings...I never quite finished my Flight Instructor certification. To obtain these licenses and ratings took over $30,000 and several years of instruction to obtain (BTW - I'm not rich, I pumped gas at a SoCal airport for years to pay for this). To get the most basic of pilot's licenses (private pilot) still costs at least $5,000.
After investing all this money, a private pilot's license only gives you the ability to fly in VFR (Visual Flight Rules, or clear) conditions. Most of us want to get around, even when it's cloudy or raining...but you can't fly in these conditions without an Instrument rating, which costs a bundle more. Believe me, obtaining an instrument rating is NOT an easy thing to do for most people, and doesn't give you the ability to fly in ALL weather conditions. Mother nature will humble you (or kill you) if you think you can.
A monkey can be taught the mechanics of flying an aircraft. However, it takes more than just stick and rudder skills to fly an aircraft SAFELY and EFFECTIVELY. The individual areas of knowledge required to fly are fairly straightforward:
> Simple mechanical knowledge of flying
> Meteorology
> Airspace knowledge (what flight operations are allowed in each category of airspace)
> FARs (Federal Aviation Regulations)
> Communications
> Flight planning and navigation
> Instrument flight rules
>
Anyone can learn each of these constituent pieces of knowledge. However, NOT everyone can put all this knowledge together to operate an aircraft safely and effectively. A good analogy in the technology world in terms of a complex task/career might be a web developer or web programmer. The creation of a complex web site like Amazon.com (or Slashdot) takes a lot of different skills to pull off effectively. At the same time, almost anyone can pick up the basic pieces behind it:
> HTML and scripting
> Database creation/tuning
> Programming
> Graphic design and UI
> Professional writing/communication skills
> Sales and marketing
>
As most of you know, putting this all together into an effective "package" is not easy. This is why programmers all groan when friends and business people we work with tell us they're "web developers" too. After all, they have the latest version of Front Page and created their very own web site! The notion that any Joe Schmo will be able to safely pilot their own flying car sounds as silly to professional pilots as non-programmers re-creating Slashdot all by themselves does to professional web developers and programmers.
Whoever says everything can be "engineered" into some foolproof flying car technology does not know what goes into building and operating a machine that flies. Even if such a machine COULD be built, it would be far too expensive to purchase or operate for anyone but the super-wealthy. Even then, it would not provide a compelling cost/benefit ratio. The most basic of new four-seat aircraft, a Cessna 172, costs around $150,000 to purchase (close to $200,000 with a full avionics suite). Even a clapped-out 1969 model STILL costs between $30,000 and $50,000, depending on how it's equipped. The mission a 172 is ideally designed for is flights of 50 to 400 miles, at a cost per HOUR of around $100 to operate. If the most basic of existing aircraft costs this much for such a mission, imagine what it would cost to create a "foolproof" flying car that anyone
"The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has limits" - Albert Einstein
I thought I knew you, man.
I mod down pyramid schemes in sigs.
That sort of action would cut into our fares bigtime. Fuck that noise.
ALL HAIL THE BEAST THAT ASCENDETH FROM THE PIT WITH HIS CUTE WIDDLE NOSE =^o.o^=
Jet cars without wings will plummet to the earth the second an interruption in power occurs. Heck, helicopters can autorotate safely to the surface if they lose power, but a jet car without wings?
Car-width jet cars with a lifting body and no wings would have to go so insanely fast to keep from stalling that you'd need long runways/highways with no trees on each end to have a hope of surviving takeoff or landing. And roll-stability would SUCK.
Jet cars that can be piloted where the driver wishes are called jet airplanes. They require training of some sort to operate, and therefore licensing is required. If you decide to pilot your vehicle into the clouds and into the side of a B747, you're going to find out in a real hurry what's at the end of the blue tunnel. And so will 300 others.
Jet cars that can not be piloted where the driver wishes are called coffins. Dude, we don't even let Predator land by itself, and while CatIII autopilots do exist, I can tell you that a commercial autopilot system to autoland you at the 7-11 parking lot without whacking you into nearby structures, automobiles and children on bicycles just ain't in the province of present tech.
And lastly, and I'm no authority on people, but it ain't just soccer-moms and Nascar-dads who're gonna fly these things. It's also THOSE people who're gonna drive them. You know... thooooooose people. Uh huh.
Today, we have these things called curbs that keep cars that are driven on the ground from ending up in the grass, or worse, into the side of a building.
How do we make a curb that can deal a flying car? I see a future that has 9/11 all over the place. (for the slow folks: cars crashing in to buildings)
Whose game for teenagers piloting a flying car while they are shitface beyond recognition? Does the name flying "Billy Joel" ring a bell?
Hmm. To quote Mr. Spock, "He is intelligent, but not experienced. Analysis indicates two dimensional thinking."
Or something to that effect.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
And someone mentioned that an aircar could run on Alcohol, which makes me wonder why cars today don't run on it. Either car companies are being stupid and forcing us to pay for the gas, which wouldn't surprise me so much, or the person is full of it. We should be focusing on alternate power sources, more so to protect the environment and our wallets, than cars we don't have the technology, or the maturity for, at the moment.
Yes, and two years ago Businessweek awarded the Segway a Gold Design Award to the Segway in the field of Transportation.
Would I buy one?
Oh hell yeah!!! Who growing up as a kid didn't dream of it.
Will they really be built and sold to consumers?
Hell no!!! Not in our life time.
Can you imagine the insurance premium? Let alone getting pulled over for flying under the influence.
Click and help me get an iPod?
Yup, the parachute just pops out automatically and always opens correctly (no matter what altitude) and you float nicely and calmly down to a soft open patch of foam.
Assclown.
Newsflash - we could REALLY help the environment by limiting everybody to a 8x5x4 foot box. Except people don't want to live like that, they DO want to live in a large house, with a large yard and preferably some nature around them. That's why all those urban planning solutions which depend on stuffing people in 400 square feet apartments (but with vibrant street life around them, natch) fail miserably.
is for a roof-mounted radar-controlled .50 cal machine gun to shoot down drunks and *ssholes on their cellphones before they crash into my roof or bedroom from above.
Oh, and $20M insurance for me and/or my heirs, with a COLA clause....
Now, think you can afford one of those babies?
mark "not even going to bring up the steel
umbrellas we'd need if there *were*
flying horses, cows, dragons...."
This will sure make Terrorism much easier.
It's only good if it is efficient. There will still be traffic jams with flying cars, due to the passage ways.
Densly populated areas like NYC are not suitable for flying 'cars'. For one thing skyscrapers tend to mess with the thermals, making flying around them interesting.
I think a better solution would to have a comprehensive underground single car 'light rail' system. You get in, insert your rail card, punch in your address (station on every block), and it runs you to your destination on the most efficient route as decided by a computer. Keep the larger lines for massive crowds (and make it cheaper than the small car). Have a car-port out on the edge or a little further for storage of people's cars.
I don't read AC A human right
OMG, I hope this never comes to pass. I can see the asshats who drive now trying to manouvre their flying cars in an airborne rush hour. The thought is terrifying. If the average, moronic motorist can barely manage to handle a car in two dimensions, imagine the pandemonium that will result when they have to deal with 3.
The cabbies in Vancouver are horrendous. I say taxi's should NEVER have this opportunity. We will wind up with flaming wrecks screaming out of the sky because the cabbie couldn't handle a car, let alone an aircraft.
Alas, the pipe dreamers who have been championing this insane idea for more than 50 years now will never let up. Though, I suppose the world is safer that they decided to push flying cars, rather than, say, design buildings.
And I'm not even getting to drunk-driving and the works, I'm just refering to plain 3D space travel. Unless we simply try to reproduce our 2D model in diferent "planes" on the 3D space (a la Back to the Future 2), I think that flying cars will need a lot of "getting used to".
If we manage to do so much wreck with just excessive speed in a 2D plane, what would we do with an aditional dimention (and the gravity pull)?
I don't think that we are ready for it, not for the masses, at least. Afterall, we can fly planes and stuff, but I would rather not think about having something move on 3D, at high speed, in the hands of a drunk person.
Eventually we will get flying "cars", but I think that not this soon, and not as widespread as "normal" cars...
"A sysadmin is a cross between a detective, a police officer, a gardener, a doctor and a fireman"
"A sysadmin is a cross between a detective, a police officer, a gardener, a doctor and a fireman"
Cue 500 fearful comments from the horse & buggy era. Technology enthusiasts and nerds, ready to try each tiny step of digital technology in deep fear from flying hard objects are now celebrating their backwardness. "uhhh flying cars! Think of the children!" or "Think of the terrorists!" (How many terrorist incidents involving the US mainland and airplanes have happened since the beginning of commercial flight?)
Why are you so scared? People drive around in cars every day and we don't cringe in terror from the thought they could crash in our houses.
Stop being so scared and imagine some benefits, come on - the world is NOT full of terrorists and Joe Sixpacks trying to ruin your life...
What about the environmental affect of sending mass es of flying cars into the air? Each one will churn and disturb the balance of local eco-systems. Just as contrails create cloud patterns, combined and multiplied forces on the atmosphere by hundreds of thousands of turbines could really create a situation that nobody forsees.
"A butterfly in South America flaps its wings, causing it to rain in China."
However, if levitation via gravi[ty/ton/metric] waves could be produced, I believe the environmental impact would be seriously reduced comparitively. Then, and only then, should we consider putting a majority of transit air-borne.
Thank you for reading One Man's Opinion. No participation necessary. Offer void where deemed by law or PATRIOT Act.
Namaste
Does this remind anybody else of a Segway?
"Straddling the sword of technology..."
that's a fucking brilliant thought. Good thing you're around to point that out for us or we'd be up shit creek!
You should take into account that flying vehicles can get from point A to point B "as the crow flies" instead of being slaves to the roads. They won't have to travel as many miles as ground cars do.
To make personal air cars a reality it comes down to improving the air traffic control system. We need to implement a computerized system that sets aside air corridors for personal and commercial traffic. These sky highways are possible if we implement technologies like Voxel based HUD's for Air traffic controllers. You can see a three dimensional image of an air craft. Anyone see a little movie called Star Wars... remember the holographic projection of the Death Star? They are testing a system that uses a laser and a spinning helix to land air craft down in San Diego so mix in a super computer or 12 and these holographic displays to give an x, y and z axis to crowded airways and mix in a really good air bag and you have yourself a super highway in the sky. Oh now you need a good skycar check out http://www.moller.com/.
John Anthony Hartman
Soon the cars will be trying to squish me (bicycle person) in three dimensional space instead of the current two.
Oh joy: Progress!
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
How about "not likely in my lifetime"?
"terrorism" and "pedophilia" are the root passwords to the Constitution
This is just plain stupid.
Conservation of energy resources is a big issue these days (or it certainly should be). A flying car/vehicle will demand a lot more enegery just to remain in the air as it needs expend energy fighting gravity as well as friction from lateral movement.
meh
I think we're more likely to see smart, computer driven, ultra-fuel efficient land cars before we consider (or have a need for) migrating to flying cars on a large scale.
1. Develop a Clean Energy Car
2. Develop Flying Cars
Which of these two options would more beneficial for society as a whole?
Changing The Climate
We already have medivacs. If you can lower the cost of transit with a flying vehicle, that market might make sense -- ambulances, police, rescue, fire. So, you can have a larger production vehicle with a restricted user base that would still be of benefit for the population.
I recall several occasions when an ambulance was stuck in traffic -- cases where their ability to run red lights didn't help them any. If they could fly, it could save lives.
It would also be cheaper and easier than helicopters. If there is no traffic or no emergency, save fuel and drive. But if you need the boost, save time and fly.
Flying cars? Yeah, when we get flat-screen TV's you can hang on the wall... oh wait
Yes. I know people who own shotguns.
"Hey, it's the drunken college students flying along again. Have anything to say?"
"Hell yeah. PULL!"
Now, I know what you're thinking. That might hurt people on the ground. That's why I say we should move RIGHT NOW and get the federal goverment to mandate that all flying cars be made of bright orange clay. Remember, only you can prevent drunk driving.
I'm not shy, I'm stalking my prey
Flying transportation will only become a reality if it can be made completely autonomous.
Consider getting up in the morning at 7:30, walking outside to a skycar that you requested to arrive at 8:10 getting in and going to sleep for a half hour while it navigates to a destination. Once it arrives it drops you off and goes in search of its next customer. There is no reason that it is impossible to create a distribued system of flying cars that know how to go from point a to point b without running into anything (including another flying cars). Thats the basic idea, add in saftey and redunancy and you have a workable system?
It is just a software problem (and a hardware problem in the sense that a more reliable devices for VTOL than a helicopter needs to be invented)...
It's not just air traffic control.
Who flies them? People can't flock properly.
How do you ensure that most common failures are graceful?
If a flamingo makes a mistake a few get bruised. If a driver of a 500kg flying vehicle makes a mistake (or intentionally crashes it), it's not just bruises.
And how do you make sure enough people maintain them to a decent standard?
Flying buses/taxis operated and maintained by a few licensed companies is one thing. Flying cars haphazardly maintained by a hundred thousand different individuals is a totally different ball game.
Personal air cars? Looking at the general incompetence and diversity of people, I doubt it's a good idea.
Heck, all we need is "Flubber" Flying Rubber
to power the car. Some of you may remember
Fred MacMurray as "The Absent Minded Professor" from 1961. Cool film and I've dreamed about it for years! The 1997 remake with Robin Williams was NOT as good.
Flying cars sound great until an unlicensed, uninsured drunk driver crashes into your childs school from an altitude of 2,000 feet.
But what is to stop people doing that *now* anyway? Any unlicensed drunk can go buy/steal an aircraft now, they'll probably kill themselves about 2 seconds after leaving the ground (pull back you go up, just keep pulling back to go back down
It would be no easier if flying-cars were common place, aircraft are already common place, and infact, most now aircraft are pretty insecure, it wouldn't take a genious criminal to nick one. Cars by comparison are typically far more secure (car alarms for a start).
I'm not saying the flying cars are a brilliant idea for anything other than recreation, just that it's not valid to say things like "It'll be raining death if we let joe blow drive in 3 dimensions."
NZ Electronics Enthusiasts: Check out my Trade Me Listings
2 AM the bar closes You want drunks dropping in (literaly) ?
Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock. Will Rogers
1) People will not fly it, the onboard computer will.
2) No aircar will be able to fly outside of the defined 3D airlanes (think multi-level tunnels through the air), designated and computer-controlled by the FAA (or possibly NASA).
3) Regular vehicle maintenance will be required and enforced by the onboard computers.
4) Catastrophic engine failure is mitigated with parachute airfoils.
5) System hacking attempts will be prevented by hardwired security measures. (Multiple interlocking security features will be needed to prevent capable "hobbyists" from circumventing these for personal and/or illegal reasons.)
6) People who willfully violate the flight rules and/or hack the systems will be quickly removed from the airspace either by remote pilot override or air-to-air missile in extreme cases, i.e., criminals or terrorists.
The car people are bringing out all the wrong analogies of bad drivers, DMV licensure, etc.
The aviation people are bring out all the wrong analogies of pilot training and requirements.
Flying cars will NOT have the autonomy of regular cars and they will NOT require the rigorous pilot training needed for true aircraft. These vehicles will need to be rigorously computer-controlled for them to be allowed into use. Any other mode of operation leads to chaos (car-centric autonomy) or overly-strict training requirements (as in current light plane aviation). Now, this does not preclude the ability to have a real pilots licensure capability that would allow for "off-roading" as it were by licensed pilots. This could have the additional benefit of either lowering light plane cost-of-entry or replacing that class of aircraft entirely.
--- Void where prohibited. Your mileage may vary. ---
Ha.
Think of a parachute sized for a car, but designed to operate as quickly (or more) as a base jumper's chute.
Only problem I see is avoiding the big accident floating down from a higher altitude. Of course, having an accident transponder that triggers an alarm in your car would help.
I don't read AC A human right
A flying car:
a: won't have a significant payload capacity compared to a panel truck or even a conventional car. If they stuff it full of explosives, it won't take off.
b: Doesn't carry that much more fuel than a conventional car.
c: There was in incident of a mentally disturbed person running a small plane into the second floor of a bank down in florida. Besides the pilot, no casualties, and the damage wasn't any more than a car could have done to the ground floor.
I don't read AC A human right
Clean hydrogen or alcohol turbines will make the pollution/mileage issue moot.
Do you know some way of isolating/finding hydrogen that I don't? Most of the breakdown methods I've heard of to produce semi-clean hydrogen in the kind of quantities necessary for this sort of thing are pretty inefficient - and it seems to get worse when you need to carry the hydrogen around (Which usually requires liquification/compression - Which means even MORE energy thrown at the process)
Now, of course, you could always carry the hydrogen uncompressed and use it to solve some of your lift problems, but that's a horse of a different color entirely.
Why was parent modded offtopic? It is helpful and sound technical advice...
systems qualify as "fail-safe" not just for the (good) reasons you cite but because having a 5,000 lb airplane descend onto my house (or car or RV or whatever) at 25mph is not my idea of "fail-safe".
:)
Yet another reason why "personal air-cars" are not likely in our future. Popular Mechanics notwithstanding.
Plus they would probably take all of the fun out of flying.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!