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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.
http://viewaskew.com/tv/leno/flyingcar.html
And yes, there is this kind of regulation for the airlines today but they only have to regulate the few licensed carriers and a relatively small number of private pilots. Imagine 100 million "motorists" flying around in flying cars. lol. It'll never happen.
If it's your dream to fly forget about flying cars and get your pilot's license.
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... after I'm dead. I have enough trouble with morons on cell phones while they are driving. Dealing with them in 3D would make me join an Amish community.
Which gives me a weird thought... flying Amish buggies. Wow. If you think pigeon droppings can be annoying, imagine a constipated horse letting loose from 500 feet!
bugmenot was a huge waste of time. None of the logins worked.
helicopter.
ultralights(if you're into cheap).
kit-planes.
one-of-those-paragliders-with-an-engine.
balloons.
if you want to fly there's "affordable" solutions already, none of them solve the problem of how you could use a flying device (that makes a shitload of noise) usefully in a city though, without there being some serious magic in controlling it(computers, computers..).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
The author has also written about a ''Secret Teenage Sex Cult'', so I guess he is qualified to write about back seats, anyhow.
Sure, flying cars would be very cool. But it would make more sense if we focused on a nationwide mag-lev train system. It would be close to the speed of planes and no worries of it falling out of the sky into neighborhoods and schoolyards. You could rent cars that go to and from the stations to get you to your specific destination.
Besides if flying cars ever become a reality, they will just be toys of the wealthy. Just as private airplanes are now.
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everybody agrees that it is old enough to know better." - Unknown
Flying cars will only be there because somebody just wanted to "do it". They won't be pratical. What will they accomplish that the automobile won't? Sure, they look good to somebody that looks up to the open sky, but if everyone had one, you wouldn't be flying "as the crow" everywhere. Rules of the air will be created (They're already there for the larger planes, less restrictive to smaller ones). Jumbo jets must stay on little sky highways to the destinations, and if you've ever seen those maps where the position of every plane in the US is shown, you'll know what I am talking about. Thus the benefit of them over cars will be nullfied. Sure, they'd be pretty cool, but light planes already exist ;)
Also, what about terrorism? Not to be a fearmonger, a group could get maybe 20 of these if they are plentiful, and just crash one after another into the White House, something you can't exactly do with cars. Plus, people fall asleep in cars enough, I can't imagine trying to pilot a car/plane unconciously.
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.
When they used to do testing on the car prototype the noise was pretty loud. So, I don't know if people would stand dozens of these cars flying around.
You have to admire the tenacity though, spending 40 years on one idea.
The pilot of an aerial vehicle, be it a small single engine propeller plane, a four engine jet liner, or even a flying car must demonstrate that he is able to handle three dimensional spacial reasoning, emergency situations, and vast number of dials, meters, switches, and settings. Some of the proposed flying car concepts demonstrate helicopter like flight dynamics which mean that they would be even more difficult to fly. Most of the people driving vehicles on our roads right now are barely competent enough to handle forward, reverse, left, and right, so why should we hand them the keys to fa lying vehicle when they can barely handle the automobile that they already own? Piloting was and still is a skilled profession which should be hanlded by qualified licensed pilots. I do not forsee this changing any time soon.
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
You also need totally automatic handling, no manual control at all, the user should only need to type in the post/zipcode and voila the car will take the best route. Thats a rather large challenge when we can't even contemplate doing the same (in commerical terms) of self driving cars on the ground.
Safety, either the mechanics behind the vehicle need to be unerring, or some method to prevent the car from just splatting on the ground, wouldn't really help the marketing campaign.
The only way any of this will pan out is if we develop a tech similar to fifth element antigrav cars. Props (even protected) / jets are just unfeasible, too complicated for your average joe to keep running. The problem is when people think of flying cars we think of these cars metres from each other floating majestically, we dont imagine cars flying along at 300mph 2 miles no fly around them, unable to fly over populated areas and generating a hellova lot of noise and spewing forth pollution comparable to a few SUV's
Oh and it needs to be comparible cost to the current generation of cars...
I'll stick with my bike...
#1 and #3 tickle the fanciful mind, but only #2 is practical.
Even if we could build a flying car economically, how would we regulate it? Imagine everyone replacing their regular car with a flying car. How could we draw the "lanes" in air? Who has the right of way? What is the speed limit?
The flying car would likely be a hazard as all sorts of nuts zip zag across the atmosphere, crashing into each other and killing each other in head-on collisions.
I would like to see flying cars a la Blade Runner or 5th Element. But until we have anti-gravity, we're still going to have to deal with takeoff and landing. There lies the biggest unavoidable problem (I consider the in-air collision problem at least theoretically avoidable, by use of some advanced TCAS-style technology).
Let's say I live in Morgan Hill CA and want to commute to San Francisco (about 70 miles, all highway). I can drive my modular flying car in putt-putt mode to the local airport (Reed-Hillview), then attach the wing unit, fly to SF, and then what? Where do I land?
Let's assume for a moment that SF can build a floating airfield in the Bay (somehow surmounting legal challenges from NIMBY's and enviros, ferry owners and others whose oxen would be gored by this). Even if you can land next to the Ferry building, I don't think this commute experience adds up to being worth the hassles, either for the city or for private developers or for the individual driver.
The amount of time needed for the transition from rolling to flying, and the distance from door to airport, are the biggest problems.
The ducted fans (Moller, Yoeli) don't have these problems, but unless developers start building heliports on buildings in the city, it's still not viable end-to-end. The heliports would have to be complex, expensive systems similar to military helicopter-carrier ships (unless they are merely a big parking lot, unfeasible in congested cities).
Another issue is maintenance. Airplanes require a lot of expensive maintenance. Would air-cars somehow be cheaper to maintain? What would the annual total cost of operations be? Point of comparison: Here's a rundown of estimated costs to operate one of the cheapest airplanes in production: the Liberty XL2.
In Chitty Chitty Bang Bang? I don't recall how it's powered, but I do remember it had a swing wing similiar to an f-111 or f-14 tomcat. Any data out there on the flight characteristics of the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang flying car?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I don't think the personal flying car will ever be practical or affordable, but I think there are some applications for merging flight with city traffic. First, flying police cars as mentioned in the article. Second, how about flying transit? How much more popular would mass transit be if you could zip over the heads of car-driving motorists stuck in traffic at 450km/hr, making it to the depot at the grocery store or near your work in record time?
I'm really glad some people are exploring it. Hydrogen-powered flying transit, anyone?
What Future?
In a word: Parking. An airplane, you have to find space for at a local airport. It's expensive, and good luck finding sheltered hangar space in many areas. Plus, you get to worry about whether the general aviation airport will stay open. I have to move my airplane 50 miles now because the airport I've been using, 3FD1, is being sold by the owner - to be turned into strip malls. Yay, development.
I'd love to have an airplane that I could land and then drive home and keep in a real garage. Right now, I have to hope that my plane has weathered the hurricane here in Florida because there was no full hangar space available for shelter. I should really have flown it out of here, but I just got it back after 4 months and didn't feel safe flying in the dodgy weather.
Any VTOL capability would be nice so that I wouldn't have to go to the local airport in order to take off and land, but that wouldn't be as much of a win as simply being able to drive on standard roads and park in a standard garage.
Helicopters have a slightly different set of issues, but they're simply no good for long distance travel. If you want to fly a reasonable distance a helo is not an option.
There are some other issues, like most non-turbine airplanes requiring a more expensive, different grade of gasoline (avgas: "100LL") than cars do, but those are slowly changing - we're seeing more and more engines designed to take auto gas instead of 100LL.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
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ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Many peope are asking what's the point? You only have to think about the repercussions of flying cars to see the point.
First, imagine what now happens to our transportation infrastructure. After the initial investment into the network for flying cars, the costs for the transportaion infrastrcuture would come down incredibly. We would either have no cost in maintaining roads or a substantially reduced cost - depending on whether it is economical to have semi's hover over the roads. The cost wouldn't go to zero, of course, since we still have to have computers and people to manage those computers to monitor the skies and traffic.
Second, imagine your job opporunities now. I travel an hour each way for my job now. It's about 60 miles each way. With a flying car that does over 300 mph, my possible job radius increases by 5 times! That means the total area I can look for jobs increases by 25 times! Additionally, if flying can be automated, it might be possible to extend this. If I can sleep during most of the trip, I can expand my job to home radius even more.
Third, this would just about eliminate passenger air travel within most continents. Even though air planes can travel faster that the roughly 350 mph being quoted for the flying cars, the associated over-head (checking-in, having to work on the air-lines schedule, etc...) would mostly or completely negate that advantage.
Next, imagine the effects upon retail businesses. Since people can now go over 5x as far in the same amount of time as with convential cars (perhaps even farther since traffic may be much more manageable), retail businesses have to be much more comptetitve. Instead of just competing with places within, say your city , you're now competing with businesses that are 300 miles away. You may have to compete with businesses from several cities! If you travel at over 300 mph, now stores up to 75 miles away can be considered the "neighborhood corner store".
Now consider the effect upon real-estate prices. Except for small islands with a dense population, it would be very hard to drive up real-estate prices based solely on proximity to areas containing many jobs. People won't mind living 100 miles away from work when it only takes them about 20 minutes for the commute. Thus the demand for property next to areas containing many jobs would severely decrease.
Because of all these effects, we could eventually see the population spread out more evenly thoughout the contintents instead oh having much of the land empty with a few areas densely populated (we would still have still have densely populated areas -just not as many and much less dense). This would also likely have a significant impact upon the environment-whether good or bad I can't say.
Lastly, because the population would be more spread out, it would force the communications infrastructure to expand to meet the new demands.
If a flying car with decent range and speed is made available at an affordable price to most people-it won't be an evolutionary step of the autombile-it'll be a revolution for the world.
The parent poster basically makes one point: it will be hard to regulate, so let's just give up. OMG: there'll be licenses and regulations... just... like... a highway!.
You can't fly too low/high - have you ever seen a speed limit, or minimum-speed on roads today?
Airplanes today already are being shipped with BRS systems - ballistic recovery systems - rocket deployed parachutes for safe recovery after losing control / etc... see: Cirrus Aircraft.
To counter the well-intended, but wrong info in the parent poster: they only have to regulate a few licensed carriers and a relatively small number of private pilots. This is completely false... see the AOPA or Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association - of America. It has over 400,000 active, dues-paying members in the US alone, making up one of the largest active lobbies in the US. General Aviation serves america - making the first critical blood and organ transfer transports after 9/11 - see GA Serving America for more info.
As for good medical history / etc... The FAA just approved a new set of certifications called LSA / Light Sport Aircraft, allowing pilots (with certain limitations) to self-certify their health when flying particularly light (under about 1200lbs) aircraft. This is far higher than the current UltraLight limits - getting well into some of the modern composite aircraft built in Europe - that get better fuel efficiency than cars (per seat mile) and are faster than the US certified all metal birds such as Cessna 150s/152s.
All this said, the FAA (A slow, frustrating organization at times) is making the transition to GPS (w/WAAS/LASS) in the next decade as the primary means of instrument / navigation for air transportation.
One goal of this, already being implemented is mode-S transponders that with new FAA radio/radar systems being rolled out will do to ATC what GPS and SatComm did for the military - provide a complete 3D picture of all aircraft in the sky including position, velocity, trends, and modeled based on aircraft capability - the future potential positions of an aircraft. Not to mention the ability to transfer a flight plan / guidance revision to an aircraft over digital radio.
This is part of the FAA's free-flight initiative - a very slow, future-envisioning research project including providing for fully automated 3D navigation for air-taxi services including collision avoidance with non-automated aircraft.
Finally - a pet peeve of pilots, there is no such thing as a pilot's license... just a pilot certificate - certificated not unlike an aircraft... in that the certificate is only valid given certain conditions (recent flight, bi-annual flight reviews, etc...)