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."
Im fairly sure these device wont be valid road going vehicals for a while atleast. .
I am wonder (fairly sure they will)if they will need to introduce a new license scheme for them and a whole new set of transit laws
The potential problems that machines like this could cause is immense if this is not as tightly regulated as standerd aircraft not to mention the cross with auto mobiles
However if these things are avaliable for 50k from people like Mr Morris then I will definantly be rather tempted to get when if i ever have money like that laying around(Lets hope some unknown rich relative dies).
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
Damn...and I thought people were finally getting the idea that we have to conserve energy. Imagine how much oil/jet fuel that flying car would go through? It has four sets of rotary engines! I'd much rather see people driving an electric vehicle like this Reva NXG that can go 200km after a 6 hour charge.
can you imagine the waste of fossil fuels
Except, if Moller's specs are even close to right, traveling with two or three people to some harder-to-get-to places will involve using much, much less fuel than you'd use in a road vehicle, and we'd spend way less money, fuel, equipment, etc., maintaining roads into certain areas. And at 200 or 300 mph, you're getting someplace much more quickly than in a car, but with car-like gas mileage. With that time savings, you're going to see a lot of otherwise unecessary (and way, way less fuel-economic) traditional commuter flights end.
It's not like this is the sort of thing that people would be taking to the grocery store.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
unlike a drivers license it actually requires an IQ and SKILL to get and hold onto one
Funny, I thought the two most important requirements to get a private pilot's license is MONEY and TIME.
I'm quite skeptical.
Never mind Homeland Security. What about the people whose houses these things are going to fall on when people without the skills required for a current private pilots license decide that "whenever they please" means during thunderstorms or when the clouds are generating ice or when the wind is gusting to 90 knots?
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This is kind of like saying "I need to continue to grow my per day spending. I need to find new and more plentiful ways to make money. Having lots of money has change my life, where I live, etc... I'm not sure I can afford a yacht any time soon, but If could, wouldn't that be cool?"
It's true; spending energy is fun and has many positive benefits, but at the moment our primary energy source is oil, and it isn't renewable. One day, maybe we'll have some new, safe, and more plentiful energy "income" sources, but right now we don't. When you're out of work, spending all your cash reserves is a dumb thing to do, and that's what we're doing with oil, right now. There's no "energy Visa company" we can borrow from while we're out of oil and waiting for fusion or high-altitude wind generation, either.
It is, in fact, even worse than the cash analogy; development of new energy technologies requires energy. If we let our energy reserves drop low enough, eventually we won't have the resources required to invest in new energy technology. It's like driving down the highway, and being close to empty. It's nice that there's a gas station 40 miles up the road, but if you keep the pedal to the metal, and burn up all your gas in 20 miles, you're still fscked.
"we will run out oil eventually... this running out will happen relatively abruptly, leading to something of a crisis in our society on account of our dependance on private transportation."
This is very much NOT true. We will not suddenly wake up one day and find all the oil gone. What will happen is that price of oil will slowly continue to rise for decades. This will facilitate a smooth transition from oil to alternative energy sources.
What most people don't understand about oil is that we dig up very little of the blackstuff. When we drop a well down and start sucking up reservoirs of this oil, we are really only dragging up the easiest to reach oil that is just sitting there. Most oil is left untouched due to the fact that it would be very expensive to remove it.
Three things are going to happen to make the cost of oil slowly rise as it is depleted.
1) Speculators will make sure that it rises slowly. Speculators watch the supply of oil and basically bet on how much it is going to cost in the future. While they do drive the price of the oil up by buying out supply, they also ensure a more even distribution over time of its distribution. For instance, if suddenly the oil companies were to announce that HOLY SHIT we are out of oil in a year, speculators would quickly buy up the supply and start parceling it away. The price absolutely would go up, but we wouldn't go from oil gushing out of our ears to being bone dry.
2) As the cost of oil is driven up, oil companies will naturally start digging up more expensive to extract oil. At $30 a barrel it makes no sense to go to an old oil well and start extracting all that stuff that takes $50 a barrel to extract. However, once the price of oil hits $100 per barrel, that $50 per barrel oil will make a tidy profit. So, as the cost for oil goes up, more and more expensive oil will be introduced to the market. The oil will not suddenly run out. Instead, more expensive oil will be introduced to the market that will slowly drive the price up.
3) As the cost of oil goes up, the demand for oil will go down. This is economics 101 supply and demand. Oil is the energy source of choice simply because it is relatively clean (compared to some thing), a very dense energy source, and extremely cheap. Today oil is cheap for the amount of energy you can make from it. The stuff is plentiful enough to fuel the world, and cheap enough for almost everyone to be able to buy it. This will not always be true. As the price goes up, more people will start to spend a few extra dollars to avoid having to shell out so much at the pump. Alternative energy sources will be comparatively cheaper then oil. People will move naturally away from oil. You can see a perfect of this by looking at Europe and the US. The US, where this is almost no taxation on oil, people own big ugly fuel hungry cars. In Europe, where the taxes on oil account for a full ¾ of the costs, people use significantly more fuel efficient cars and in general burn much less oil. Up the price of oil by 500% and even Americans will find it in their hearts (or more likely wallets) to be more fuel efficient.
The net result is that as the price of oil goes up, the consumption of the stuff goes down. As consumption goes down, the price slows its upward slope. The result is that you have a gradual increase in oil prices and a gradual move away from using it.