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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."
I saw this on 60 Minutes last night, it was pretty interesting.
...does it fold up into a briefcase when I get to work?
Forgret about licence, if it hits mass market this thing will be run by ipod-like interface, where you will choose destination from hiererchical tree or bookmarks. Then you will be guided by central computer. Even 5yo kids will be allowed to use this. The only problem is: engine reliability. If your engine(s) breaks, you can kill people on the ground. With millions of flying cars upthere, it seems impossible to avoid that (at least current airplane makers didn't find way yet to avoid engine faults and they use heavy amount of service before each flight). Living in big city would be like living in 1942 London. I think that even neighbours of this single inventor are not safe at all.
839*929
If you go to Astor Place in NYC, you can see at least two other Starbucks from one, for a grand total of three.
The other weird part is that two of them are very large. Your Typical Starbuck in NYC is not gigantic, but two of them, less than 1000 feet apart, are huge.
And yes, always very, very busy. Stupid corporate America.