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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
... 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!
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.
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