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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?"
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 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.
The US Department of Homeland Security will never allow flying cars. Imagine trying to stop terrorists with cars full of diesel/fertilizer mix able to attack from all angles. Tinfoil hattish, sure, but that's how those brownshirts think.
Trolling is a art,
How many miles per gallon will a flying car get?
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
So what is the essential difference between that and, oh, I don't know, say, a plane?
Anyone who wants to take a small light aircraft up (and has one/rents one and has a licence) can pretty much go for it.
Flying cars aren't going to raise your danger from terrorists (which is incredibly small anyway). Crap drivers crashing into your house - now that's a different matter.
There will never be anything but autopilot in the civilian models. Also because of that there will be no licensing in the sense we have today. If you are rich enough your children will be able to use it for pre-programmed routes to school, the cinema, and the like.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
You'll need a license to pilot a flying car. Flying cars will be expensive. If you fly a small enough plane you can already get a license for it pretty trivially. Hence, this is already an issue, or should I say, a non-issue.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I have always been a cocky driver, until i started commuting 50 miles every day.
I learned that no matter how good a driver YOU are, and how few mistakes you make, that still makes it so you cant avoid getting hit by someone else.
I feel safer when I fly now, because I know there are hundreds of people keeping track of where planes are, and hundreds responsible for the re-fueling, tracking, air avoidance etc...
When you bring that responsibility down to a single individual, who has no stricutres on maintanence, gas, impaired level of thinking, i get shivers.
People that currently fly alone, they have to go through a pretty rigorous flight training program, and the quality can be high because their are so few.
Imagine trying to process 300 people a day to get licensure for a flying car?
I know when I went to get my drivers licence for the first time, they just had me drive around the block once and gave me a licence.
Imagine doing that for a flying car?
I think we should probably focus on HIGH SPEED mass transit. the time would be comparable, and less risk of individual user error causing a disaster.
We cannot even handle automated cars, i think it is a long way off to automated car planes.
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
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'.
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...
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
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; }
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!
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!
Yes, lets ban trucks too cause they can be packed with C4 and blow up bridges.
The rest of the world has lived with terrorism for years, you dont suddenly stop because some wankers give you a bloody nose.
Mid air collisions and drunk drivers are problems, but saying someone can change their plane into a missile is ludicrous. They can do that now perfectly well anyway.