It's Not a Flying Car - It's a Drivable Airplane

waderoush writes "Aviation enthusiasts have been dreaming of flying cars since the 1940s. But in an old machine shop in Woburn, MA, a team of MIT aero/astro grads is building what could be the first practical airplane that's also certified for highway driving. Angel-funded startup Terrafugia, headed by 2006 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize winner Carl Dietrich, hopes to have its first full-scale proof-of-concept vehicle ready to show off at July's AirVenture aviation festival in Oshkosh, Wisconsin."

Comments

Stupid idea

[Reason58]

Look at the accident and fatality rates with the masses and regular cars. I can't imagine how many deaths this would cause worldwide. A flying car is great in cheesy novels and movies, but horrible in reality.

Re:Stupid idea

[NewbieProgrammerMan]

Somehow I doubt the various aviation authorities (FAA and its equivalents outside the US) are going to start blindly issuing pilot certificates to people just because they have a driver's license and a flying car.

For places with no aviation authorities, yeah, they'll probably see their share of car-planes landing/falling in interesting places because some moron was trying to shave, drink his coffee, and check his email while flying to work. But those places will be few and far between.

Re:Stupid idea

[Free the Cowards]

These numbers are meaningless without corresponding numbers on how much flying was done. With the soaring price of avgas I wouldn't be surprised if accidents were down slightly simply because people are flying less.

And to the grandparent poster: judging safety by reading the news is almost precisely backwards. The reason you hear about small planes crashing into things on the news is because it's rare enough to be newsworthy. A hundred people die on the roads in this country every day, and they almost never show up on the news because it's simply too commonplace.

Re:Stupid idea

[Jafafa Hots]

RTFA. This is NOT a "car that can fly." In other words, its not aimed at allowing drivers to take to the skies.

It's aimed at allowing PILOTS to take to the roads.

In other words, people who fly now don't have to pay a hangar fee, they can keep their plane in their driveway. If going somewhere, they don't have to pay a hangar fee and then rent a car to get to their final destination, they can drive their plane there.

Totally different focus, totally different market. Flying cars were stupid, but this is a damned good idea.

Re:Stupid idea

[mcrbids]

Totally different focus, totally different market. Flying cars were stupid, but this is a damned good idea.

Oh my !@#king godz yes!

One of the biggest limitations of flying is... what do you do once you land there? It's just like fast Internet - the famous "last mile" problem. Great, there's a small airport just 3 miles from your destination, making your 6 hour drive, 3-day trip into a 1.5 hour flight, day-tripper, but how do you get that last 3 miles from the airport to your actual, intended destination?

You can rent a car, but that's hassle-prone and expensive. You can ask somebody there to pick you up, but that's dicey at best. Also, if the weather goes bad, you're stuck. And then what?

This "drivable airplane" solves both problems completely!

Yes, I'm a private pilot. I fly for business and pleasure. (had a great time taking my sister up just yesterday!) And let me tell you: I want I want I want I want I want I want I want I want I want I want I want I want I want I want I want!!!

I don't get it

[muellerr1]

How is this different from any other crazy flying car? It's still vaporware as long as there isn't a working prototype, and as far as the difference between a flying car and a 'roadable aircraft'--it seems like a marketing gimmick to me.

Re:Flying cars are nonsense.

[smellsofbikes]

>The skills needed to fly are a lot higher than those to drive.

As a regular driver and a semi-regular pilot, I'm not sure I agree with that. Driving takes continuous alertness and work because you're surrounded by dangerous stuff, much of it being driven in the opposite direction only a meter or so away by crazy idiots talking on cellphones. In a plane, somewhere between 70 and 95% of the time, you have nothing more than air molecules in all directions for better than 2 km. I know pilots who have set alarm clocks, gotten the plane in stable flight with their 3 axis autopilot, and then gone to sleep for an hour while the plane tooled through the sky: a damned bad idea, but perfectly viable in a plane.
Aircraft demand some skill in handling the plane in takeoff, and rather a lot in landing, and *enormous* amounts when there's an emergency and you have to do a bunch of intelligent things in the right order to survive. But overall, as regards routine flying, I don't think they require anywhere near as much consistent skill as driving.

Re:negative /. response

[badboy_tw2002]

Ah, but now you've seen a classic /. poster archetype, the grumpy old man/Luddite. See any article on phones with more functions than making phone calls ("I just want something simple that makes a phone call"), game consoles with HD graphics ("no one wants these fancy graphics, no thanks"), HD TVs/BluRay/etc ("No one owns an HD tv, no one wants this, DVD is just fine for me thank-ya-very-much"), or websites that resemble anything past 1996 ("Whats with all these flash ads and graphics, give me 3 fonts on a repeating background!") This poster enjoys racing other posters of the same type to the bottom of the heap to show how old-school/not-affording that latest crap they are. Frequently spotted in threads about the iPhone, Wii/PS3/Xb360, and programming languages that were invented after 1981.

That's all for now. Tune in later for "I know about topic X, topic X rhymes with article topic Y, let me tell you how smart I am" and everyone's favorite "This scientific breakthrough is no big deal unless I can buy some practical application of it tomorrow at Wal-Mart"