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NYT On Flying Cars
This week's NYT magazine has a lengthy piece on the holy grail of modern technology, the flying car. It's a very interesting history of the numerous inventors that have spent a lot of time working on their dreams - Moller, who's been mentioned on Slashdot several times, as well as several early pioneers who achieved Darwin awards. The time frame before you'll be able to buy a flying car is, as always, five years.
bugmenot was a huge waste of time. None of the logins worked.
Flying cars, while a dream for many are not as great as everyone believes they are. Imagine everything that can go wrong in a car today, then imagine it going wrong 300 feet in the air.
Blade Runner is an excelent example of how I would build the future, flying car wise, that is: Only the Cops, and Emergency Services have flying cars. Compare this to a movie like The Fifth Element, where we see gridlock... in three dimensions.
Rather then flying cars, I would look twords increasing the land speed, and effectiveness of current automobiles. One company (don't remember the name sorry) has designed/built a concept car that would use a form of wireless networking, to link up with others of the same make, forming essentially road traines traveling to destinations near eachother.
Another good example would be from another movie (sorry for all the movie refrences, but I hope they explain my point) would be the cars from Minority report, and AI. Both movies by the same director, in which cars can travel at much faster velocities then they do now, and can controll themselves in one form or another, flying vehicles are left to emergency services.
To summarize what I said: Flying cars/vehicles should be for EMS and other Emergency Services, while we should look to upgrade our current cars, roads, and driving techniques.
In nature, there are neither rewards or punishments, there are only consequences.
the holy grail of modern technology, the flying car.
Funny, I thought the holy grail was efficient nuclear fusion, or an unhackable OS, or superstrong and light nano-materials or something. Where have I been all these years?
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
Everyone talks about the reliabiltiy issues, and the control/level of skill issues.
Seems to me that the 'ideal' flying car would have no controls at all.
The reason we don't have autopilots in all of our cars is because we can't retrofit every car on the road. We can't design an 'autopilot' system that interacts with human drivers.
I'm DAMN sure we can design an 'autopilot' that functions autonmously as part of a road control system.
Every other car would have to be part of the system, too.
With flying cars, this infrastructure can be designed from day 1.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell