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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."
Moller Skycar Info.
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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!
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 it fold up into a briefcase after you land at work?
15 years? Try 1500... We've had cars for over 100 years now and we still haven't found a way to keep people from driving drunk and teanagers from racing in public. We probably never will. Now, Starbucks at 10,000 feet... well... there's something that wouldn't surprise me. They've already run out of space on the ground. 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!
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?
Buy a piece of land. And wait.
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
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.
Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads.
--Residential Interior Design
If you can't be troubled to RTFA, at least read the summary.
It's mostly about Norris' "AirScooter", NOT Moller's Skycar, and Norris DID demo the AirScooter, with a 60 minute flight in front of press.
It may not be in a dealership near you yet, but it really does fly, it's not vapor.
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.
How are they going to prevent people from flying over private property?
They're not. At 500 feet above the highest obstacle, (1000 feet over a built up area), the skies are open (subject to air traffic regs). If you don't want people flying over your property, you'll have to apply to the FAA to declare your property restricted airspace. Good luck.
(Below the above altitudes, you can report such aircraft to the FAA, unless they're on approach to or departure from an airport.)
(Oh, and if you feel like just putting up a 500 foot tower to raise the "floor", better make sure you've got approval, lest the FAA declare it a hazard to navigation and make you take it down.)
-- Alastair
Some are sloppier than others - depends on which one. No one will argue what a dozen means, most people ar clueless about a peck... couple, & few depend on who you are talking to. Not to mention some words have always had two meanings... one being ambiguous
1/10 = gry1 = single
2 = couple
3 = few
4 = gang
5 = punch
6 = half dozen
7 = several
8 = peck / basket
9 = bunch
10 = carton / minyan
11 = short dozen
12 = dozen
13 = long dozen / baker's dozen
14 = fort
16 = kenning / half bushel
20 = score
24 = case
32 = bushel
144 = gross
1728 = great gross
See the Pictures of the Flood of '08