Slashdot Mirror
Flying Cars Ready To Take Off
Ant writes "CBS News has an article, images, and a free streaming video clip of Elwood (Woody) Norris' invention of a working flying machine, AirScooter. He asked one of his test pilots to demonstrate it for 60 Minutes on a hilltop outside San Diego, California. It can fly for 2 hours at 55 mph, and go up to 10,000 feet above sea level. This week, he will receive America's top prize for invention. It's called the Lemelson-MIT award -- a half-million dollar cash prize to honor his life's work, which includes a brand new personal flying machine.
Woody Norris' and others' inventions are for NASA's 'The Highway in the Sky.' It is a computer system designed to let millions of people fly whenever they please, and take off and land from wherever they please, in their very own vehicles."
Should say:-
Flying cars to be made available in fifteen years time
This is just a sickening attempt to get our hopes up.
Homeland Security will have a fit!
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
I'm still waiting for my hoverboard...
Fooget Flyin Cars!
wonder if it looks like that hover car on the Simpsons last night... hmm...
If this thing is "real", we're going to need 15 years to get things straightened out so people aren't flying drunk, teenagers aren't racing their air scooters in public air corridors, and Starbucks has a chance to start opening outlets at 10,000 feet.
Yeah? Well I think you're overrated too.
Buy one now before the air commute becomes congested as well.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
Yeah, I know. If the guy was really so smart he should have invented a decent web server!
....can it fold up into a briefcase after you land at work?
Hey, timothy, get your act together! April 1st was two weeks ago!
Sheesh... Flying cars... As if...
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
The CBS news article has images and a video clip of Paul Moller's skycar NOT the airscooter, and this seems more to be a small aeroplane not a flying car in any sense of the term. I want my flying cars to look like cars (preferably a delorean) which take off akin to that in Back to the future II (vertically) like a harrier jumpjet, propellars are for planes!!
:)
I like the idea that flying cars might soon be a reality because software has been written to keep track of everyones self made vehicles. I have just finished writting a system to keep track of timetravellers. Name, address, year travelled back or forward to and what event they hope to see. I can only see CBS news declaring that time travel is now taking off too!
Hover technology has been around for over a decade. The basic principle was used for the hoverboards in Back To the Future, but unforunately the hoverboards were not made avaialable because of safety concerns.
But still - The technology is there. It shouldn't require a lot of extra work to have these hovering much higher. I'm surprised there isn't more inniovation in this area. I suspect that the rubber manufacturers have been suppressing the technology, because they know it will put an end to their business.
From TFA
"...But if we sold say a couple thousand, $50,000 a piece, that's a billion dollars."
If that's how this guy does math, I think I'll wait for some other manufacturer to create these things before I buy...
Schrodinger's cat is either dead or really pissed off...
I know of a place where you can sit in one Starbucks and look out the window across the street at guess what... Another Starbucks!
Just curious, this Starbucks doesn't contain remarkably similar looking people to the one you are currently in?
I'm just looking for a webserver that can withstand 50 minutes of Slashdotting!
Buy a piece of land. And wait.
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
As though idiots on cell phones weren't bad enough on the ground...
All of them talking on their cell phones at the same time
hack a day
Having looked at the thing I recommend the following:
"AirScooter, the Segway of the air!"
Deleted
The release of excriment from the pilots rear end should be enough to balance the vehicle if uncommanded roll begins whilst at altitude.
liqbase
Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads.
--Residential Interior Design
Tobacco companies will jump at the chance to partner with companies building these cars, and the ad line will read:
"Why drink and drive when you can smoke and fly?"
Indeed, that bumping might result in an "unanticipated landing event" along with "corporeal dispersion".
Unfortunately these bumping events will be unavoidable as millions of slashdotters will have wrapped their flying cars in tinfoil to avoid government tracking.
How much gas is wasted on all those turns and curves...
Have you watched a car/truck commercial lately? Those are advertised as features.
That and being able to drive on top of a mountain, deep inside a jungle, doing dusty donuts in the middle of a flat desert, and so on.
No, this is how GW plans to fix social security... a free flying car beta for everyone over 60 :-)
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
DIY surface to air missile systems
http://xs4.xs.to/pics/04481/p556222.gif
I can't wait to see the elderly drive flying cars. Mayhem, disaster, flames! I'm so excited. S>
Although not necessarily efficient to produce, you could run the vehicle, with probably few modifications, on alcohol. ... And if you crash, you could pop open the tank for a swig to help kill the pain ...
O=='=++
> Moller has acres and acres of pecan trees, which he eats as a staple of his diet
He should try just eating the nuts, then he wouldn't need so much space for all those trees.
Oh. Right.
Yeah, you probably meant all this, but as a PP-ASEL-IA with 270 hours, I can't let the terminology be that sloppy. {grin}
You must be the life of parties.
Actually, it's Almonds
Either way, the guy is obviously quite nuts.
"For all you folks headed into downtown, the pigeon index is 72, and be on the look out for a flock of low flying geese."
Just proves the old adage...you are what you eat.