Slashdot Mirror
Neiman Marcus Offers First Moller Skycar For Sale
It doesn't come easy writes "Neiman Marcus has just unveiled its 2005 Christmas Catalog of Fantasy Gifts last Tuesday, and one of the items up for purchase is the prototype M400 Skycar from Moller International (for only $3.5 million US). If you've ever dreamed of owning a Skycar, this may be your only chance." From the Skycar site: "Can any automobile give you this scenario? From your garage to your destination, the M400 Skycar can cruise comfortably at 350+ MPH and achieve up to 28 miles per gallon. No traffic, no red lights, no speeding tickets. Just quiet direct transportation from point A to point B in a fraction of the time. Three dimensional mobility in place of two dimensional immobility. No matter how you look at it the automobile is only an interim step on our evolutionary path to independence from gravity. That's all it will ever be. "
looks like the US NAVY's skycar prototypes from the 1960's
They're using their grammar skills there.
Not even a little. As far as I know, that particular model has never flown untethered.
Moller's been talking about Skycars as long as I've been alive. As far as I know, its always been "less than five years away" for the past 20 or so. He also really likes talking about his "highway in the sky", which is essentially... run of the mill avionics.
And really, given the number of accidents on the highway-on-the-ground where folks only have to worry about two dimensions, I'm glad he's been a failure thus far. At least accidents on the highway don't usually come flying into my house.
--
lds
On the other hand, if people had to go through as much training to get a driver's license as they do a pilot's license the roads would probably be a better place.
I was certified to fly gliders only after many hours of instruction that included emergency situations as well as learning how to give myself large safety margins. Just the thinking process of getting my pilot's license caused me to really evaluate my driving habits as well.
As long as the license to fly a Skycar didn't end up being some sort of quickie certification you might not see as many problems as you think. Most of the truly boneheaded won't make it far enough to get the license to fly. Then again, I had some great instruction from people who loved to fly and weren't just putting in their 9 to 5 time.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
had you taken the time to check out the web-site you may have read that there are 3 back-up electronics systems and 8 engines (2 per propellor). Any one could fail and the craft would still be able to fly and land safely (according to the web-site). I think if we could convert the lexus' detection system that slows the car down or speeds it up to compensate for traffic when cruise control is engaged, only for collision detection, this thing might be relatively idiot proof.
During forward flight the vehicle generates a significant part of its lift using airfoils. These airfoils are small, but at cruising speed they are up to the task. Remember that normal aircraft use wings sized for low-speed takeoff and landing, not for cruising speed. Low-speed hovering will naturally consume much more fuel but it's only for a short time at takeoff and landing.
Ducted fan vehicles are feasible and should theoretically be capable of doing all Dr Moller claims they can do. It's a different question whether Moller's company can achieve it. People tend to become skeptical after decades of of promises...
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
but we made a cooler commercial glorious *cough* (but streamable) quicktime or window$ media video
Like space flights?
.space is not a gravity free zone.
Like when you jump off the top of a skyscraper?
Space travel is not flight. The term is a misnomer born of inapplicable earth based intuitive concepts. Space is not, despite dictionary.com, a medium. The space shuttle only flies when it lands. In space it simply falls and has some inertial motion.
Going to Mars, or Pluto, is no different and unless you burn three axis thrusters the whole way the path taken is ballistic, because. .
The medium the thrusters work against are the spacecraft itself, not a medium the spacecraft is moving through.
As an aside, penguins are not flightless, they simply require a denser medium than air in which to fly.
KFG
An inverted plane (with a normal non-symmetric airfoil) flies upside down (badly) due to the angle of attack. The air flowing over the 'top' (now bottom of the wing) still goes faster than the air 'underneath'. In fact, the air never goes faster 'to catch up with the air underneath' - the air flow over the wing is MUCH faster than underneath (where it tends to slow a little). A wind tunnel can demonstrate this quite ably.
But it's a fallacy to say that x% of lift is caused by Bernouilli's laws (which predict the pressures very accurately) or the Coanda effect or... and y% is provided by Newton's equal and opposite reaction - it's not cumulative. 100% of lift can be explained by pressure differential, and 100% of lift can be explained by Newton's theories. They are just different ways of looking at the same thing.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
The Moller Skycar will NEVER be able to fly the way he claims. First of all it's a purely vectored-thrust, powered-lift machine. All flying machines of this type are inherently unstable as hell. If any component in its controls or thrust systems fails, the machine will be wildly uncontrollable. Think bottle-rocket with the stick removed... wild unpredictable flight path... firey crashing death to any occupants of the vehicle. These kind of flying machines are very difficult to keep under control and are also *extremely* fuel-hungry. Look at the size of the Skycar, how much fuel tank capacity do you think it has. Not much? You're right. How many engines will the M400 have? EIGHT 150hp dual-rotor wankels. You know how much gasoline a 150hp engine uses? About 7.5 gallons per hour if you lean the mixture to the point where it barely runs, and of course is not putting out the full 150hp at that point. At full 150hp 100% output, such an engine will burn about 11 gallons per hour. At low altitudes, you'll need full power from all eight engines to keep the thing in the air since all the thrust will be doing the duty of lift vector. That's almost 90 gallons per hour fuel burn at full power! FAA regs say that an aircraft cannot even take off for daytime VFR flight without enough fuel to complete the flight plus a 1/2 hour reserve. Moller is now saying that he expects to run the engines on alcohol instead of gas. Well, any high school kid who has just begin to learn about engines and fuels can tell you that it takes almost 2 gallons of alcohol to do the work of 1 gallon of gasoline in an internal combustion engine. I call shenanigans on this machine. Anybody who thinks this is a viable flying machine is smoking crack.
Moller should've just stuck to making SuperTrapp mufflers for motorcycles, at least that is a successful design that works quite well. Or work some more on that wankel engine to finish getting it up to snuff for small conventional airplanes. If they could get that 150hp dual-rotor wankel to have at least a 1500 hour TBO and equipped with a planetary gear reduction drive to keep the prop at about 2700-2800 max rpm at full power, they could sell a lot of these engines to the experimental airplane homebuilders, and perhaps a de-rated 100-120hp version to the Light Sport aircraft makers That's where the real money could be.
Aircars in a post 9/11 world? Even if Moller succeeds in the next decade - and even if the FAA approves his machine - can you really see the Dept. of Homeland Security letting these things within range of an office building? And would you want them to? The George Jetson dream was born in the middle of the last century, when Americans by and large thought that technology would be used for the best possible purposes and that everyone likes the good ol' USA. The car catches the imagination, yes. But it also is a dream of another era.
Safety Cap wrote: Hey, I hear you can get some green powder that changes Water into GASOLINE ...
It is possible to create a powder that mixes with water to create gasoline. Years ago, while taking Organic Chemistry in college, I learned about the Grignard reaction. This synthesis can produce a solid that when mixed with water can hydrolyse to produce a hydrocarbon.
Just two minor problems - 1) It also produces an alkali (such as KOH or NaOH) which would be bad for the engine and the environment, and 2) the initial synthesis starts with a hydrocarbon! TANSTAAFL
[Insert pithy quote here]