Terrafugia CEO Responds To "Flying Car" Criticism

waderoush writes "The majority of the comments on last week's Slashdot post It's Not a Flying Car — It's A Drivable Airplane were critical, even dismissive, of Terrafugia's work to build a two-passenger airplane with folding wings that's also certified for highway driving. We boiled down these criticisms to the dozen most commonly expressed points, and today we've published responses from Terrafugia CEO Carl Dietrich. While hybrid airplane-automobiles are an old (some would say laughable) idea, Dietrich argues that current materials and avionics technologies finally make the concept feasible."

Comments

frost piss

[Corwn of Amber]

yay

Re:frost piss

[Corwn of Amber]

And now I'll have a visible space to comment in. Go Me!

So. Flying cars? ABOUT GODDAMN TIME. Like it's harder to fly a car than drive one! People are trusted with two tons of plastic and steel, developing power of the order of 10 to 200 kW, and not fly light devices, because it's so dangerous? Gimme a break. And my flying car.

They've been promised for a century and the tech is good enough since 1960. There was that design of two propellers turning in opposite directions with opposed angles, so as to create a blowing air column that takes the "flying saucer" off the ground. Lean right and it goes right, left and it goes left, use gears and injection to control blowing power and thus height.

That's a flying car, and it's been developed and implemented and tested and MADE in the 50s or 60s. Now add a gyroscope to that and a second safety thing and a third, so it's impossible to get it upside-down (resulting in death), to descend too fast (death or broken limbs), or crash in an other flying device (don't go too near any signal all flying devices give off).

That's one possible design. It's not a car, but it's a flying personal transportation device. Near enough for me.

Re:frost piss

[pimpimpim]

The moment that flying cars become available, I will start a business selling reinforced roofs.

Re:frost piss

[YrWrstNtmr]

There was that design of two propellers turning in opposite directions with opposed angles, so as to create a blowing air column that takes the "flying saucer" off the ground.

Two words. Gas mileage. Show me any verticle fan craft, carrying 4 adults, that gets anywhere near the gas mileage of any normal car on the road.
Using engine power to hold the craft up is the antithesis of obtaining reasonable mileage.

Now add a gyroscope to that and a second safety thing and a third, so it's impossible to get it upside-down

Hand-waving those hard parts away doesn't make it any easier.
For any type of non-airport ops, we need 6" precision in a heavy crosswind. Why 6"? That's what you do in your car in a parking lot. Not getting upside down is only part of the problem. You have to come down sometime.

Maintenance. A LOT of cars on the road are spectacularly badly maintained. Do you want those same clowns flying overhead, ready to break down?

Re:frost piss

[zippthorne]

Moller claims to get about 18 mpg on ethanol with his M400 volantor, despite it's seemingly fuel-hungry 8 engines. I think he's cheating, though, since he's only actually built a 2-passenger model, and he hasn't flown it off the tether yet, let alone FAA-certified production models.

Re:frost piss

[Overzeetop]

I think he's cheating because he's never flown the thing 18 miles to prove it, much less at 350 miles per hour for a full tank of fuel. The proposed fuel economy means nothing if there isn't even a demo model which can demonstrate the actual profile is feasible.

Re:frost piss

[MadnessASAP]

Sadly it's not quite that simple. For instance if you don't take care of your car and it breaks down on the highway you simply pull over and wait for the tow truck driver to haul your sorry ass away to the garage where a mechanic will call you a dumbshit and charge you huge chunk of cash to fix your car. You don't take care of your flying car and it breaks down at 5000' you die along with everyone else in the plane with you and whichever sorry bastard you hit on the way down.

Well I'm here how do you propose to develop an aircraft that can't descend to fast or doesn't flip over in midair? Because if you have a solution I'm sure just about every aircraft manufacturer in the world would be prepared to offer you anything you want for it.

Re:frost piss

[zippthorne]

True. And if you think Moller is cheating, what must you think of Terrafugia!

Re:frost piss

[zippthorne]

You put in a ballistic parachute. They're common among experimental aircraft enthusiasts.

They're not practical for commercial airliners due to square/cube problems however economies of scale make other enhancements more practical in that regime.

And.. Oh, Terrafugia's design does call for one. Big surprise there. IOW, unless your regularly inspected and certified safety system fails, you're not going to die from poor maintenance in other areas, although if it's anything like skydiving, you might just lose your license for a period if negligence is the reason for parachute deployment.

Re:frost piss

[MadnessASAP]

The parachute idea is a good one and could potentially save some lives there is still the problem that you have to come down somewhere and especially in an urban area where you might see these things theres alot of very bad places to come down on. The other thing is that you still have no guarantee that the safety systems will be maintained, I work in an auto shop doing oil changes and tire repairs so I know for a fact that there are all to many people who fail to even bring in there cars every 3 months and spend $30 to get there oil change despite the fact that if they don't it will create all sorts of very expensive hell, or the people who will drive there tires until the tread is completely gone and the metal belts are showing. There are even people who will drive them beyond that till the tire completely blows and then then continue to drive on the rim and then expect you ti fix their tire.

Re:frost piss

[BiggerIsBetter]

Two words. Gas mileage. Show me any verticle fan craft, carrying 4 adults, that gets anywhere near the gas mileage of any normal car on the road. I know you're talking about "vertical fan craft", but for clarification for the punters, well designed 4-seater conventional aircraft can do OK in that regard (and you could build your experimental aircraft to use mogas if you wanted to):

"Company pilots often choose to cruise at 50-55% power and take advantage of the economy available there. At 175 mph, the RV-10 is getting more miles per gallon than most of the luxury cars, pickup trucks and SUVs it is flying over." -- Van's RV-10.

Re:frost piss

[jacquesm]

if you need your oil changed every three months I think you should have a better look at your car...

Re:frost piss

[Anonymous Coward]

if you need your oil changed every three months I think you should have a better look at your car... Not necessarily, it depends on the mileage. A salesman who is on the road all the time will do quite a lot more miles than the average guy driving to work and back. Also higher performance cars can require more frequent oil changes too.

Re:frost piss

[YrWrstNtmr]

Moller claims to get about 18 mpg on ethanol with his M400 volantor

Moller also claims to have a functional 'flying car'.

Re:frost piss

[zippthorne]

It has hovered on tether. I don't know about ground translation, but I imagine that would be easier to test. His device meets the bare minimum technical definition for "flying car" and "roadable airplane"

In other words, he has a *lot* more built than Terrafugia, but he's still perpetually four years away from selling anything.

Also, if the neat-o 3d images are anything to go by, they're going to have a hell of a time getting the bifold wings to fold through the tail booms.

Re:frost piss

[mr_mischief]

You also tend to fly a little more efficient route than a car would travel, resulting in fewer miles traveled.

Re:frost piss

[mr_mischief]

"Can't" is a strong word, but a powered parachute tends to descend very slowly when power is cut. They're usually only built for one or two people, though, and not much else.

Re:frost piss

[Anonymous Coward]

Cirrus offers a ballistic parachute on all of their aircraft and they are FAA certified. The debate is still out if they are any safer for having them as it appears pilots may be more apt to do things they know they shouldn't.

Re:frost piss

[__aayurq3262]

You don't take care of your flying car and it breaks down at 5000' you die along with everyone else in the plane with you and whichever sorry bastard you hit on the way down.

Well I'm here how do you propose to develop an aircraft that can't descend to fast or doesn't flip over in midair? It's very unlikely for anyone to die just because it breaks down. By a factor of 10 to 1 the most common breakdown is the engine. With the engine off, an aircraft of this type is perfectly controllable, like a glider, and can glide 10 to 20 miles from 5000'. The actual distance depends on the final design, but aircraft capable of cruising at over 100 mph will have good streamlining. Even high drag older aircraft designs could glide 9 miles. Typical commercial passenger jets could glide 17-22 miles. Even with the minimum glide range of 10 miles they have over 300 square miles of available land to find a farmer's field, a road or some other landable area. With a 20:1 glide ratio (which is reasonable), they'd have over 1200 square miles to choose from.

If there isn't anywhere to set down they can use the parachute built in.

Aircraft don't "flip over in midair" just because they have a problem. In more than 90% of accidents there was no mechanical breakdown cause. In the less then 10% of accidents that have a mechanical failure, more than 90% of those are engine related, so we're down to 1% of accidents that are mechanical, but not engine related. Even within that 1%, there are only a few complete loss-of-control accidents, such as a major control failure or structural breakup.

Basically, if this aircraft meets the Light Sport Aircraft rules, as they claim, then it will be light, and light aircraft land slowly. Slow landing speeds mean you will survive, even if you have to land in the trees or in water.

Re:frost piss

[Kuros_overkill]

Came across mollar 8 years ago. Beleived them when the would have a working model by '04 and FAA certification by '06 '04 came, we got the tether model. Not quite as expected, but something. I stopped believing anything form mollar when '06 came and went, and FAA- Certification got bumped to '08 I started consididering them a joke when '08 came, and FAA - Certification seems to have been posponed indefinatly.

Re:frost piss

[zippthorne]

Pretty much same here. They've been "building" that "milkfarm" for a while now. How long does it take to pile up some high-clay content earth around an area the size of a city block and fill it with three feet of water, anyway?

I'd buy one.

[y86]

It's beats the heck out of waiting in line and taking a shuttle to rent a car at an airport.

Just hit the convert button..... and you are on your way --- SWEET!

Re:I'd buy one.

[Anonymous Coward]

That price would by you a lot of taxi rides to the car rental.

Re:I'd buy one.

[Sandbags]

I think if you lokk reasonably at this, you'll think differently:

- cost of hybrid flyer
- cost of license fees
- cost of STRICT routine inspections and certification
- cost of flight prep and flight plan
- airport fees for tower services, runway access, etc
- you stil have to wait in line to take off, no different than a chartered flight
- very limited flying distance (I'm guessing 2-300 miles, tops?)

vs
- standard car
- no routine hassles
- cost of charter or private flight from small airfield or larger commercial flight

A big deal will be the flight distance. If you're limited to 300 miles, unless you're in one of the wierd parts of america where a 300 mile flight could equal a 5-600 mile drive, then at best you could be saving 2-3 hours, give or take holdups at the airport? Not worth it for all the time you'll loose simply getting and maintaining certification and inspoction.

I see a few hobyists might get one, but more likely you'll see small airfields all over america get 4 passenger version of use as air taxis, pick you up at home, drive to airport, fly to destination, drop off at final depo or car rnetal station. Door to door service for pre-screened professionals who do this day-in day-out. ...a quicker, cheaper long sitance taxi, or a simpler process for chartering a small flight.

Pfft.

[Anonymous Coward]

If I wanted a driveable airplane I would duct tape a license plate to my Cessna.

I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years

[Anonymous Coward]

The flying car will be dead in 4 years. Dudes: If it flies it requires FAA certification. You may return to your crack pipes now.

The U. S. has collapsed economically and Slashdot covers flying cars. Truly moronic.

Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years

[Aranykai]

Man, for a collapsed economy, we must be doing pretty good.

Im enjoying a nice pizza tonight, and a few cold beers I bought on the way home from work. Ill admit gas and milk has gone up a bit, but its not to the point where I cant go about my daily life. If this is a collapsed economy, I say we leave it collapsed.

Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years

[jcgf]

If it drives it requires DMV certification. Why not the FAA too?

Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years

[ScentCone]

The U. S. has collapsed economically ...

I'm sorry, but you're confusing what you want with the actual state of affairs. Why you want it to be that way is a little mysterious, but your ability to confuse it with reality suggests just the sort of disconnect that might drive you to want to see a failed economy, the better to justify your world view.

... and Slashdot covers flying cars.

I'll have to check, but I assume you make the same exact complaint when Slashdot talks about new video boards, hair-splitting differences between Linux distros, the space program, squabbles over pirated movies and music, 4D rubik's cubes, what China does with web filtering, sailing robots, and whether or not Google is obscuring people's faces in Street View? Nah, I won't check, because I'm sure you did.

Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a story posted by kdawson. Whatever kdawson posts is most likely shit that probably deserves to be seen only for 5 seconds on 4chan before it gets deleted. Remember that whenever the thought "Slashdot is shit today" comes to your mind.

Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a story posted by kdawson. Whatever kdawson posts is most likely shit that probably deserves to be seen only for 5 seconds on 4chan before it gets deleted.

Translation: Oh God I'm too stupid to think of any substantial criticism of the article's content! Save me, Ad Hominem!

Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years

[Anonymous Coward]

The US economy is collapsing.

1: There is absolutely -ZERO- events causing the gas and oil spikes, which means there is no end to their price climb in sight. Picture what will happen to prices of fuel when some yahoo lights a fart anywhere near an oil refinery. $6-$8 a gallon of regular unleaded is almost a certain thing in most of the US by the end of the year.

2: Congress is absolutely powerless to do anything to stop it, the current administration just plain doesn't care about the American people in any way. Even if Congress try to do something, how can they pay for it? Sell war bonds to China? The US is bankrupt.

3: The dollar is rapidly losing ground against every single currency in the world. The only reason that the dollar buys what it does is because people believe in it... and people are not anymore.

4: There are no solutions to the energy crisis. Nuclear plants are not going to be built anytime soon, nuclear fusion is a joke to keep tokamaks funded, even though there have been -zero- advances in fusion since the laser was invented. Solar is a joke because it costs more to make a solar panel than what energy it ever gets through its useful life. Wind, geothermal, are only useful in rare areas. Pretty much, the US lives and dies on coal and oil... and cars don't burn coal.

5: The mortgage crisis is just the tip of the iceberg. Its only going to be a matter of time before banks start having to be bailed left and right, just like in the 1980s... and unlike the 1980s, there isn't money to fund the FDIC.

6: The present attitude is "Yo, Joe Sixpack... sell your SUV and buy a Prius"... yep, demanding other people conserve, even through most people would be happy to trade cars, just they don't have the cash to. Conservation is a nice feel good thing, but its not an energy policy. Again, like #4, there is -zero- interest by the government in energy, or breakthroughs in alternative energy sources that will provide more than piecemeal help.

The US is just like the USSR was in 1990. Its bankrupt, but the economic collapse hasn't propagated yet, just like (and to use a bad car example), pulling the alternator with the battery in the circuit doesn't mean the vehicle dies immediately, although it will just be a matter of time until the battery dies. What will be the turning point is when the stock market takes a serious dive, and the Dow heads under 7000.

Prove me wrong on this.

Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years

[FooAtWFU]

The US economy grew at .6% (annualized) the last two quarters, amidst a massive spike in oil prices, and food prices, and a financial service sector meltdown, and new-home-building doldrum, and assorted other minor panic. Unemployment remains about 5%, inflation (via the CPI) just .3%. If anything, this testifies to the strength of the rest of the US economy. My local Ph.D. economist opines, "If anything, the government should stop stepping on the gas."

Invest in America. It's underpriced.

Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years

[Iamthecheese]

You believe the CPI?? *points and laughs*

Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years

[wasted]

1: There is absolutely -ZERO- events causing the gas and oil spikes, which means there is no end to their price climb in sight. Picture what will happen to prices of fuel when some yahoo lights a fart anywhere near an oil refinery. $6-$8 a gallon of regular unleaded is almost a certain thing in most of the US by the end of the year.
...
3: The dollar is rapidly losing ground against every single currency in the world. The only reason that the dollar buys what it does is because people believe in it... and people are not anymore.

I believe that as oil is a global commodity, if item #3 is true, that would be a cause of item #1 for folks living in the U.S.

Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years

[unity100]

all those are the direct result of sh@tty republican reign over white house, in which they didnt do scat to regulate the filthy credit business, tried to reduce dependence on arab oil, and printed money like a banana republic. all those will change, when new administration takes over.

and im turkish, and live in turkey, and even i know that.

Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years

[FooAtWFU]

You believe the CPI?? *points and laughs*

Are you implying that the CPI is imperfecT? Well.... duh. But are you implying not linked to the state of the US economy in any meaningful way? I think that takes more than a point-and-laugh to back it up.

Actually, there is a significant body of research revealing that the CPI overstates inflation by failing to adequately account for changes in spending patterns that are tied to very prices of the consumer bundle it sets out to measure, and it doesn't account very well for incremental product improvements, like safer cars or squeezable ketchup bottles that don't get a bunch of stuff stuck in the bottom. (Though that's more of an intermediate/long-range thingy.)

Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years

[Gavagai80]

You may as well be complaining about the cost of diamonds and moaning that since a hard working Amercian can only afford a few three foot diamonds these days the economy is clearly collapsing.

most people would be happy to trade cars, just they don't have the cash to

Heh, right. Lots of $1000 cars will get 35MPG, your ego just refuses to be seen in them -- you want the trendy status symbol Prius. The same way you refuse to live within 100 miles of where you work, and then complain about gas prices, as though they're the problem.

I'd love to see $8/gallon gas. I spend about $20/month on gas, even on my small income doubling that is a non-issue.

Cars themselves are luxury items, of course, and you're perfectly capable of living in a city and using public transit like most of the world.

Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years

[Anonymous Coward]

...but, doesn't the GDP deflator do a better job of keeping track of inflation in regards to necesseties like food and uh, I don't know ... Gas?

While the CPI will just generalize the "consumer's" overall purchasing experience, where inflation can be less if you get 5x more swimming pool this year and .5x food.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Price_Index

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GDP_deflator

Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years

[i_b_don]

Wow... talk about negative.

first off, there are plenty of solutions to the "energy crisis". What type of make believe fiticious crap world are we living in where if economics force us to change it's the End Of The World.

1. Solution #1 - switch to an alternate form of energy. There are a ton of options. The last time I checked the sun was still shining and we can still get power from it. Be it solar, wind, or nuclear, there are a ton of options. Why don't we do this? Because the economics don't say we should. Oil is still cheap, but The *second* oil becomes too expensive, there will be a ton of alternate energy sources available to tap. The only reason we don't do it is becuase oil is STILL too cheap.

2. We can also *gasp* change the way we live. Shit, I know i waste plenty of energy. Heating air conditioning... hot water in the mornings, driving to work, pure wastage. How can I get away with wasting energy? Simple, it's cheap. it's less than 5% of my total income so I don't give a crap. I pay roughly 6x that on mortgage. Before the world falls apart, I'm sure we can adjust the way we live at least a tiny bit. But OMG, you may have to sell you SUV and buy a geo metro. Truely the end of the world.

BTW, I'd love to see soemthing backing up that statement about you needing more energy to create a solar panel than all the energy you will ever get out of it. Smells like slanted anti-alternative-energy BS to me, but if you got it from another article or source I'd be interested hearing their twisted logic OR I could even learn something and find out I'm wrong, but i highly doubt it on this issue. Perhaps you're thinking of Ethonal. Either way, source please.

The mortgage crisis.. I guess I don't give a shit. There aren't any losers here. You have gready companies who sold a lot of mortgages when times were good never considering that things may turn south because that might impact their current earnings portfolio. If some of them go belly up its no big shakes to me. I frankly think a few of them SHOULD be put out of business becuase if there was anyone in this mess who was at fault, it was them.

Then you have greedy homeowners who took crazy ass loans or "no paperwork required" loans. Look, buying a house is easily the single biggest investment of your life. If you don't run a few numbers through excel and say "does this make sense" then I don't really feel a lot of pity for you when you can't afford your house. It most likely means you overbought when you got the house (which most people do). But now you've lost your gamble so you have to declare bankruptcy and have to wait 7 years before you buy another house. It's not the end of the world. It sucks, but you took a gamble because housing prices were going up and up and everybody but you was getting rich but you... and now the bubble's burst.

The US is a strong country and we can survive all of these things. The world is not coming to an end. The sky is not falling.

Thank you, but I'll save my pity for a bunch of children who died when their school's clasped after the earthquake in China or other people who actually deserve it.

don

Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years

[Sabriel]

[...] 4: There are no solutions to the energy crisis. Nuclear plants are not going to be built anytime soon, nuclear fusion is a joke to keep tokamaks funded, even though there have been -zero- advances in fusion since the laser was invented. Solar is a joke because it costs more to make a solar panel than what energy it ever gets through its useful life. Wind, geothermal, are only useful in rare areas. Pretty much, the US lives and dies on coal and oil... and cars don't burn coal. [...] Again, like #4, there is -zero- interest by the government in energy, or breakthroughs in alternative energy sources that will provide more than piecemeal help. [...] Prove me wrong on this.

Photovoltaics are still messy, but solar-thermal plants are entirely doable, both technologically and economically. The trouble is, as you said, that the "powers that be" apparently have zero serious interest in replacing coal plants with anything different.

Over the years I've noticed a growing disconnect between US leaders and citizenry. I'm tempted to opine that your "leaders" simply don't give a damn; the US really needs to give the Old Guard the boot at the next election, on both sides of your weird two-party-one-horse government. I remember when your dollar was worth two of ours - now it's heading the other way around.

Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years

[Planesdragon]

Prove me wrong on this.

Since you asked...

1: There is absolutely -ZERO- events causing the gas and oil spikes...

We're AT WAR in the MIDDLE EAST. War means chaos. Chaos means production becomes unsteady. Unsteady production means LOWER SUPPLY.

Also...

CHINA and INDIA are ENTERING THE MODERN AGE. That means they want cars, and power plants, and other things that burn oil. Half the world starting to do what Americans have done for a century means INCREASED DEMAND.

You know what happens when you LOWER SUPPLY or INCREASE DEMAND? Yep. Prices go up. And this isn't even mentioning Peak Oil.

2: Congress is absolutely powerless to do anything to stop it,

The price of oil? Pretty much. Congress also can't stop hurricanes. What's your point?

the current administration just plain doesn't care about the American people in any way.

Actually, they do. Every single elected offical in Washington cares deeply about their country--the Republicans just think we're better off if they leave us to fend for ourselves, even if some of us starve. (Are you starving?)

Even if Congress try to do something, how can they pay for it? Sell war bonds to China? The US is bankrupt.

The US is FAR from bankrupt. China's only where they are in the world because we're allowing them to grossly distort the currency exchange, because we want them to work for peanuts. Push comes to shove, we can just sue in the WTO and slap a Tarrif on investments and production from China.

3: The dollar is rapidly losing ground against every single currency in the world. The only reason that the dollar buys what it does is because people believe in it... and people are not anymore.

Odd. I still get paid in dollars, and they purchase enough goods for me to go back to work tomorrow.

The dollar won't be the uber-currency of the 21st century. Good. Hegemony is boring, and Americans suck in a boring world.

4: There are no solutions to the energy crisis. Nuclear plants are not going to be built anytime soon, nuclear fusion is a joke to keep tokamaks funded, even though there have been -zero- advances in fusion since the laser was invented. Solar is a joke because it costs more to make a solar panel than what energy it ever gets through its useful life. Wind, geothermal, are only useful in rare areas. Pretty much, the US lives and dies on coal and oil... and cars don't burn coal.

"no solutions": I suppose you're right. We'll never go back to $1 a gallon gasoline. Shucks. But we knew this was coming twenty years ago.

Nuclear: Plans are on the tables, Greenpeace's founder is endorsing Nuclear... sorry, there will be new plants built or chartered by the next Presidential Election. Maybe before this one.

Fusion: I won't even dignify this with more than "you're wrong."

Solar: Ok, in small batches, for small device use, in the northeast, a photovotalic cell takes more energy to create than it will produce in its lifetime. But (1) they get significantly cheaper with larger batches and technology improvements, (2) they last longer in larger installations, and with increased tech, which increases their total energy output, (3) in some places (deserts) they pay-off in less than five years already, (4) photovotalic isn't the only means of solar power. Reflected-light to melt salt or boil water works pretty damn well.

Wind: Wind blows everywhere, some places essentially constantly. Couple a wind farm with a flywheel, and you can produce pretty damn good power. Essentially anywhere in the United States. Not eveywhere, but hardly "rare" for any meaningful definitions of that word.

It's Economics, stupid: Let me put this a little bit more clearly. Wind, Geothermal, Wave, Solar, and Nuclear lose out to oil and coal for electricity generation because the latter are so god damn cheap.

Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years

[Anonymous Coward]

Google is your friend. Just look up "solar cell energy to manufacture", and you will get 588,000 hits about this, and plenty of sources showing that the life to make up for a solar cell's cost (in perfect weather and conditions) is far greater than the usable life of the cell itself.

Everyone talks about alternative sources of energy, and how they will be sprouting up as oil's price increases. I heard about oil shale cutting in when oil cracked the $85 mark. Nope, no dice. I heard about harnessing the hot air over DC and state capitol buildings as an energy source when oil cracked $100/bbl. Still no alternative energy sources around, and to boot, things have gotten worse -- the biofuel fad has ended up taking crops out of people's mouths and are causing mass starvations. Alternative energy stuff is mainly promises from people just wanting to take investor money, just like the dot.com boom of last decade. There are lots of snake oil sellers out there, but as of now, there essentially is no alternative to oil and coal.

Nuclear would be a very good solution, but most people soil themselves if they hear of a reactor being proposed, much less built in their state, so energy sources that are nonpolluting and can offer consistent power 24/7/365 (which wind and solar are unable to) are not built. Ironically, coal releases more radioactive minerals (uranium and thorium) than nuclear would ever will, even with a total meltdown and vaporization of a core (which won't happen, period, with modern technology.)

As for conservation, again the problem is that people are barely able to feed themselves. They can't magically conserve by turning a 10 year old SUV into a Prius, nor can they magically turn their older house into a just built energy efficient home with a modern HVAC system. This stuff to upgrade takes something called money... which is scarce in this tumbling economy. Almost everyone I know is doing their darnedest to conserve.

The mortgage crisis may not have affected you, but it has done a number on the economy. Even though you did well with a mortgage, Joe Sixpack is causing banks to melt... which means the US government has to bail them out or face massive runs on banks not seen since 1929. Which means even more Federal debt.

The US may be a strong country, but in WWII, we were able to make an economy after the 1929 crash by manufacturing stuff, using domestic resources. This time around, we have almost no manufacturing capacity (the EPA pretty much banned steel alloy refinement so all metal making ends up being shipped to China), and even worse, the US far fewer resources than it did several decades ago. Good luck finding basics like copper, nickel, or other metals without having to go to great expense.

The will of the people is not there either. Instead of a united country willing to forgo differences, the US is a collection of Balkanized nationalities, who are more interested in having the latest iPod, or having the latest purple item for their World of Warcraft character, than anything dealing with national stability. There is just zero interest in how the US is doing, just how can one profit from the country, and a sense of entitlement, which will soon be shattered in a couple years, when there won't be enough money to even maintain power grids.

Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years

[Anonymous Coward]

Prove me wrong on this.

"Prove me wrong" always means "I can't prove myself right, and I know it"

Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years

[Rockoon]

The Consumer Price Index excludes all forms of Food, Oil, Natural Gas, and Electricity. Worthless.

Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years

[mr_mischief]

Well done! You'd be surprised how many Americans can't seem to figure that out. They are particularly, oddly enough, often the Democrats who are bemoaning Bush in every way but can't see that spending money we don't have is causing lots of the problems.

BTW, our Congress is 49% Democract, 49% Republican, 2% independents who tend to vote Democrat. Our House of Representatives is 56% Democrat. Guess what body of the government passed the budgets according to the President's whims? Yep, the Democrat-controlled Congress, which has an even lower satisfaction rating (16%-22% by many sources) than Bush.

Many of us in the US have been pushing for the minor parties to gain ground on the Democrat/Republican duopoly, since they're pretty much working together towards mostly common goals while appearing to be at one another's throats.

Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years

[ScentCone]

all those are the direct result of sh@tty republican reign over white house, in which they didnt do scat to regulate the filthy credit business, tried to reduce dependence on arab oil, and printed money like a banana republic. all those will change, when new administration takes over

So, since you know so much about this, you can explain in more detail. Please do explain how such tighter regulation was in place when a Democrat administration was in office for the previous eight years. Ah, I see.

While you're at it, please explain how the person in the executive office can cause the legislative actions in the congress and the senate that would be necessary to do what you're talking about. Perhaps you can cite the Democrats (who have been running both houses for a while now) who - since they have the majority, and can control what legislation is brought to votes - had a firm grasp on how regulation would have prevented people from borrowing more money than they could pay back, and put forth legislation that would have prevented it. Then point to the calander date during which the Democrats mustered a vote on that subject, being in charge of the legislative agenda as they are, and then sent such legislation to the president you hate so much, where he vetoed it - since that's the mechanism by which he would have prevented such regulation. No, really, please pass along those details... I'm having trouble finding any sign of them, or finding any sign of the actions that The Wise Bill Clinton took to address that issue, but which The Evil Bush tore down.

So, thanks in advance for providing that information. Oh, and please also, if you would, explain how a new administration will suddenly have new constitutional authority to regulate banking and real estate in a way that doesn't have to start with the congress. I'm intrigued, since neither candidate is asserting such new powers, though you're convinced they will have them.

Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years

[Anonymous Coward]

Google is your friend. Just look up "solar cell energy to manufacture", and you will get 588,000 hits about this, and plenty of sources showing that the life to make up for a solar cell's cost (in perfect weather and conditions) is far greater than the usable life of the cell itself. I find it amusing that the very first link you read when you plug that into google is a paper that says just the opposite... That solar cell payback (assuming no waste in electricity and perfect sunny days) was between 1.6 to 2.7 years for 12 per cent efficient polycrystalline modules and .9 to 1.6 years for 6 per cent efficient amorphous modules.

Obviously, real payback times would be longer, but not by an order of magnitude. Most cells last at least 20 years or so.

Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years

[drinkypoo]

The U. S. has collapsed economically ... I'm sorry, but you're confusing what you want with the actual state of affairs.

The US is in an ongoing state of economic collapse. Unemployment is at levels unseen since the depression in many places.

We are at the very minimum in a recession. And as the housing market continues to go in the toilet, which some believe will continue at the least until the baby boomer die-off reaches its crescendo in 2025, there will be more defaults on mortgages, and dropping property values - leading to dropping property taxes. This will increase municipal debt at a time in which the federal debt has reached, frankly, truly unfathomable proportions.

We didn't escape from the "Great Depression" until the end of WWII, due largely to economic sanctions placed on Germany and Japan. But you can't squeeze blood from a turnip...

Where is the money supposed to come from?

Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years

[i_b_don]

Well written reply.

I'm going to focus on the Solar discussion because I find that the most interesting and the only one where we can really argue with facts instead of stories.

When I originally wrote my reply I did a search on google and didn't see anything, but punching in YOUR search phrase I get the articles you mentioned. Typically stuff like "the US never landed on the moon" is championed by a few sights pretty heavily, so I figured the first hit would be your strongest advocate. I'll summarize it:

* This is information from a study done in in 1989 theorizing what 1994 technology would be like
* They calculated that using 1989 technolgoy they would get an energy payback of 6.4 years
* Using what they theorized was 1994 technology they would get an energy payback of 3.1 years
* The author is summarizing their study and points out some things he thinks they missed, inverters and the like, but these will only capture a percentage of the power generated so at worst it will take a percentage longer to recapture the energy.

So even in the TOP search item doesn't make the claim that it takes "more energy to create a solar cell than you can EVER get out of the life of the cell" and my quick scan didn't show any others that advocated that.

Ok, so your statement does appear to be bullshit, but i'm curious what more modern numbers are for energy usage, because 6 years is a huge amount of time and if is still that high I could be convinced your statement wasn't far from the truth!

In looking through some other webpages I found a department of energy webpage provides some really good information.

They provide several different technologies and give the Energy Pay Back Time (EPBT) of each. The times range from 2.7 years to 1.0 years for energy pay back using 2004 and 2005 numbers.

There are also some startups that say they're able to produce photovolatics amazingly cheep (which also translates to low energy), but I'll believe that when I see it.

The DPoE webpage is here: http://www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/pv_basics.html

don

Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years

[gnarlyhotep]

your ego just refuses to be seen in them
My id, on the other hand, will drive and piece of junk it can get it's hands on. Usually at recklessly unsafe speeds...

Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years

[drinkypoo]

I believe that as oil is a global commodity, if item #3 is true, that would be a cause of item #1 for folks living in the U.S.

My (limited) understanding is that the problem is actually with the dollar no longer being tied to the gold standard, but to the petroleum standard.

Currencies are worth what they're backed by. The value of petroleum is based on pure market manipulation and bullshit. Consequently, our economy is all manipulation and bullshit.

I am not an economist, so hopefully someone else can come along and regulate and explain more, or explain why I'm off my rocker, or whatever.

Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years

[drinkypoo]

While you're at it, please explain how the person in the executive office can cause the legislative actions in the congress and the senate that would be necessary to do what you're talking about

Usually, if they want to pass a bill, they send a bill that they think will pass.

Bush promised to veto a number of bills before they were even finished. Does that help you understand? You're acting like the Executive branch is powerless or something.

Perhaps you can cite the Democrats (who have been running both houses for a while now) who - since they have the majority, and can control what legislation is brought to votes - had a firm grasp on how regulation would have prevented people from borrowing more money than they could pay back, and put forth legislation that would have prevented it.

Now, that's a much stickier situation. However, again, people generally try to put forth a bill for a reason. Maybe it's not always that they know it will pass, but why waste time if it will fail and not accomplish anything? It just makes you look like a bozo.

But just do yourself a favor and compare the history of unfunded mandates during the Bush (Jr.) and Clinton (Bubba) administrations... Clinton signed the act against unfunded mandates; Bush signed the unfunded mandates.

Then point to the calander date during which the Democrats mustered a vote on that subject, being in charge of the legislative agenda as they are, and then sent such legislation to the president you hate so much, where he vetoed it - since that's the mechanism by which he would have prevented such regulation.

The preemptive promise of a veto against a bill which does not have sufficient support to override a presidential veto has a sufficient chilling effect to kill a bill before it is even submitted, and probably before pen is even set to paper. A history of such promises (especially if they are followed up on when necessary) has an even stronger such effect. Why waste your time sending legislation up to the pres if you know it won't pass? What, exactly, does that accomplish? It's not like they can impeach him for using his veto power (then again, it's not like they've even tried to impeach him for his many actual crimes...) I don't really think the Democrats are the solution, but I do think they're less bad than the republicans. Just look at what it takes to buy them; Democrats are reliably more expensive to buy off. :P (A certain Samuel Clemens quote comes to mind.)

No, really, please pass along those details... I'm having trouble finding any sign of them, or finding any sign of the actions that The Wise Bill Clinton took to address that issue, but which The Evil Bush tore down.

Well, again, that act against unfunded mandates, proposed in 1995 and passed in 1996, comes to mind. But the current administration has repeatedly abused the spirit of the law through a loophole that says that optional programs are exempt. This somehow applies to No Child Left Behind, even though if states do not comply, they will be fucked sideways. (Incidentally, the act is really about producing soldiers. No Child Left Behind refers to when we go to the next big war, and we're drafting people. NCLB is a clear and transparent race towards mediocrity in education. But the fact that GWB is clearly his father's hand puppet, and his father is The Antichrist, is a separate conversation.)

Oh, and please also, if you would, explain how a new administration will suddenly have new constitutional authority to regulate banking and real estate in a way that doesn't have to start with the congress. I'm intrigued, since neither candidate is asserting such new powers, though you're convinced they will have them.

The president provides leadershit.

No one in the government can exist long without public approval... just for the length of their term. We should have impeached this puppet idiot long ago...

Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years

[drinkypoo]

Heh, right. Lots of $1000 cars will get 35MPG, your ego just refuses to be seen in them -- you want the trendy status symbol Prius. The same way you refuse to live within 100 miles of where you work, and then complain about gas prices, as though they're the problem.

Incidentally, the total energy cost over the lifetime of a Prius has to be at LEAST twice what it is on a TDI Golf - and that's even less if you run your Golf on WVO or just biodiesel.

Cars themselves are luxury items, of course, and you're perfectly capable of living in a city and using public transit like most of the world.

Here's where I part company with you. Public transit doesn't work in the US like it does in the rest of the world. The only (well, statistically, the only) places that actually have working public transportation systems are major cities and in most cases that's not true either. I lived in SF and I could drive to work AND FIND PARKING in fifteen minutes, but it took a minimum of an hour and a half (assuming everything was on time and I made my connections, HA HA HA) to take the two buses and the light rail that represent the most rapid public transit between bernal heights and potrero hill.

In other words, even if you live in a major city, public transportation will probably fail you in the US.

This, however, is the result of deliberate actions taken on the part of the automotive companies; they bought bus and trolley lines and shut them down, and they lobbied for rail subsidies to be terminated in favor of the federal highway system. The federal government readily agreed, since it provided them with just one more form of leverage to apply against the states in their battle to severely curtail states' rights. Their attempts have been largely successful; for example, several states long avoided legalizing medical marijuana under the threat of their federal highway funds being terminated. This is all logical from the federal government's point of view, since marijuana was originally made illegal under the much-abused interstate commerce clause of the constitution, and that's the purpose of the highway system during peacetime.

Anyway, that's a slight digression, but if you can even afford to live in a city (I paid $800 for a ROOM in San Francisco, my landlord who was the manager of a toys R us turned out to be a tweaker... fun shit.) it doesn't necessarily follow that public transportation will do you any good. And before you suggest it, there is NO FUCKING WAY I would ride a bicycle. It's actually a health hazard to ride on the street not just because of the danger of some dipshit running you over, but because of all the exhaust you're sucking.

So I agree with your apparent assertion that (most?) hybrids are stupid (I think they make some sense when used as a taxi, and series hybrids make a LOT of sense) but I think the rest of what you have to say is pretty ridiculous.

Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years

[ScentCone]

So, you're saying that even though the democrats have brought forth, or at least proposed MANY bills that were guaranteed a veto (and have even sent them FOR that veto), that they won't even PROPOSE a bill to address what the GP seems to think is entirely the administration's fault? He blames the credit "crisis" (though I don't think that "coming to your senses and no longer offering absurd loans to people that are going to be overextending themselves" counts as a "crisis") on the current administration, because he says that the current administration isn't controlling the banks or the borrowers enough. Happily, the executive branch doesn't have that sort of direct control over how banks and their customers operate. Those are legislative matters.

You're saying that there are all sorts of brilliant would-be regulations just waiting in the wings, about which their democrat authors aren't saying a peep, because it will make them look bad? As bad as spending weeks and millions of dollars holding hearings about steroid use by baseball players? As bad as not ejecting a fellow democrat from congress after $90,000 in cash bribe money is found in his freezer... and then putting him on the DHS oversight committee? How brilliant can this hidden legislation be if it can't even get a simple majority in the house they run to consider voting for it? Ah... perhaps that's because it doesn't exist, and the GP was blowing hot air out of ignorance about how such things work, and you're really stretching it to give him some cover. It's just silly.

Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years

[drinkypoo]

Google is your friend. Just look up "solar cell energy to manufacture", and you will get 588,000 hits about this, and plenty of sources showing that the life to make up for a solar cell's cost (in perfect weather and conditions) is far greater than the usable life of the cell itself.

First, either you are lying or you are talking about the monetary cost of a solar system. It can take 10-30 years to pay off THAT cost, but that has nothing to do with the actual cost of producing the panel, and everything to do with supply and demand and artificially inflated prices.

You have to keep in mind that right now what we're doing with our national effort is making war. Far from being profitable (unless somehow it drives the price of petroleum in the proper direction to dramatically increase the value of the dollar - kind of doubt that one) this is actually putting us into huge debt. If we simply put that effort into producing PV solar, and instead of turning it into a pork processing system :) we just did everything at-cost, we could do this shit tomorrow. Or at least get started.

As the AC sibling comment to this one says, the very first hit on your search terms is Can Solar Cells Ever Recapture the Energy Invested in their Manufacture? and the answer is yes:

The 1983 book by Hu and White [1 ] summarises the results from a 1977 Solarex study [ 2] which found an energy payback time of 6.4 years for the manufacture of solar modules using silicon cells of 12.5 per cent efficiency. In other words, these modules would need to operate for that time in order to produce as much energy as was invested in steps such as the reduction and refinement of the silicon, crystal growth, cell production and module construction. Hagedorn [ 3] presented in 1989 a study of the energy costs for photovoltaic power stations (including grid connection) of monocrystalline silicon (such as are made by BP Solar in Australia), polycrystalline silicon (such as are made by Solarex in Australia) and amorphous silicon solar cells.

So in other words, they knew in 1977 (the linked short-paper was written twenty years later) that even at then-current (no pun intended) levels of efficiency that payoff was in under seven years. Today, with thin film panels, that should be substantially less.

If we promoted solar more, and produced more of it, then the prices would go down (if everyone and their mother made a grid-tie inverter it wouldn't cost you so damned much, for example) and then the economic payoff for the end user would come much sooner. Until then, solar is pretty much for the wealthy and those living off-grid.

Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years

[drinkypoo]

Actually, they do. Every single elected offical in Washington cares deeply about their country

What?

This proves that you have no idea what you are talking about.

People who care about this country are not starting illegal wars, driving up the national debt, getting rich in the process, and then taking the money out of the country and doing further harm to our economy.

Are you paid to say this shit, or are you just brainwashed?

The US is FAR from bankrupt. China's only where they are in the world because we're allowing them to grossly distort the currency exchange, because we want them to work for peanuts.

The US's debt is truly astronomical. We're overdrawn on our credit as it is.

Nuclear: Plans are on the tables, Greenpeace's founder is endorsing Nuclear... sorry, there will be new plants built or chartered by the next Presidential Election. Maybe before this one.

Greenpeace's founder's opinion is not being echoed by Greenpeace. 9 out of 10 hippies I talk to (this is not scientific but I talk to a lot of hippies) just refuse to come around to the idea of nuclear with breeder reactors. Incidentally, if we don't use breeders then using nuclear is a HORRIBLE and TERRIBLE idea; we can gain a couple orders of magnitude in efficiency this way. With breeders, nuclear can be not just practical but also profitable without subsidies.

Solar: Ok, in small batches, for small device use, in the northeast, a photovotalic cell takes more energy to create than it will produce in its lifetime.

Who told you that? It COSTS MORE TO BUY than it will save you in its lifetime, but that is the result of market forces, not physics.

Think about it for a second; a solar system pays you off monetarily in about 20 years (yes, it's a long time) even without any special energy credits. Are you really saying that the power company charges me more for power (and I'm just talking about base rates here) than the sum of the amount that they charge the people who make the panels plus the amount that those people charge me for costs plus their profit? Obviously it's not impossible, but it is also not true . It takes less than seven years at 12 percent, which is a pretty reasonable estimate of the actual efficiency output (who cleans their panels enough?) when your panels are supposed to be around 14 or 15%. And that was for crystalline PV, not thin film, which requires less energy expenditure. It wouldn't seem so at first because of the petroleum-based nature of the plastics involved, but it is so hugely energy intensive to produce pure silicon that it winds up being that way anyway. They also cost less to ship due to their mass being a small fraction of a completed PV panel.

Wind: Wind blows everywhere, some places essentially constantly. Couple a wind farm with a flywheel, and you can produce pretty damn good power. Essentially anywhere in the United States. Not eveywhere, but hardly "rare" for any meaningful definitions of that word.

Wind has real problems; it truly HAS been a problem for flocks of migratory birds, but that is a lesser issue to the fact that those wind turbines are not especially inexpensive to produce, they do make a lot of noise (we are slowly waking up to the effects of noise pollution) so you don't want one in your backyard, and they MUST be placed up in the air so that they get wind in most cases. This keeps small-scale wind from being broadly useful, although it IS useful in some places.

Of course, when the conveyor shuts down, and the jet stream shuts down, the weather patterns we take for granted are pretty much all going to change...

5: The mortgage crisis is just the tip of the iceberg. Its only going to be a matter of time before banks start having to be bailed left

Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years

[drinkypoo]

How brilliant can this hidden legislation be if it can't even get a simple majority in the house they run to consider voting for it?

The only brilliance they're interested in is a new, brilliant way to fleece the taxpayer.

Nearly everyone in both parties has been bought.

Status Quo: Quid Pro Quo.

Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years

[ScentCone]

Indeed. In the DC metro area, public transit can get you from one suburb (where you live) to the neighboring suburb (where you work) in about three hours, round trip. There will be essentially no parking near the transit points. It will cost you $5 to $12 per day to use it each day. I simply can't affort to give up three hours a day sitting on a bus and a train. The solution is telework for the vast armies of people that mostly just spend their days pushing around information and talking to each other or their customers on the phone. That will save huge amounts in energy, wasted time, required paved infrastructure, etc.

Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years

[FiloEleven]

The US is FAR from bankrupt. China's only where they are in the world because we're allowing them to grossly distort the currency exchange, because we want them to work for peanuts. Push comes to shove, we can just sue in the WTO and slap a Tarrif on investments and production from China. The US is not at all far from being bankrupt. We are borrowing over $1 billion a day, and most of that money comes from China. If our government tries to pull any funny business, China can dump the dollar and crash our currency in a matter of weeks or days. Now, they probably won't because it would cause a fair amount of global economic chaos, which isn't in the interest of any major nation. If you believe that we can stay financially afloat with such massive incurrence of debt, such devaluation of our currency by printing money whenever we feel like it?

3: The dollar is rapidly losing ground against every single currency in the world. The only reason that the dollar buys what it does is because people believe in it... and people are not anymore. Odd. I still get paid in dollars, and they purchase enough goods for me to go back to work tomorrow. And that doesn't strike you at all as short-sighted? Have you seriously failed to notice the slow creep of inflation over the past $number_of_years_since_you_started_buying_stuff years? Have you failed to notice how that rate is increasing? The dollar has already lost 96% of its purchasing power since 1913. Hyperinflation is a very real possibility.

The USSR did not have a free market, and was unable to feed people who did everything right. And here we come to a key part of the problem. The United States of America does not have a free market either. A free market is a market in which prices of goods and services are arranged completely by the mutual consent of sellers and buyers. Here in the US this is mostly true except that we have one buyer, (the Federal Reserve, that artificially, temporarily lowers prices by creating money out of thin air, something that cannot happen in a free market and something that devalues every dollar already in circulation. In case you believe I am going over the top, here is a video of Alan Greenspan stating quite clearly that we do not have a free market, along with some hand-waving about how we can't have one because of human nature.

The fact is, we're in pretty deep shit, and nobody's talking about it because nobody in the government or the media is talking about it, and we really need to talk about it if we're going to do anything to improve the situation.

Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years

[unity100]

well, first, it was republicans who sent over $400 bn to god knows where during the afghanistan-iraq gig. almost all is unaccounted for.

second, with that many executive powers your current rep president has handed himself and his agencies, i doubt that congress would be able to press too much against what budget he wanted.

Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure that most of the world really could get along with out a car, or have the immediate ability to move to a true city with a strong mass transit system. I live in the DC area and the Metro is for the most part useless for my commute as i would have to add an extra hour or so just to get to work on time. The Prius seems like a joke to me with it's relatively high price tag and a 7 year shelf life on the battery. Personally I am going to stick to my motorcycle for my 15-20 mile commute with its 54-60 mpg :)

**for those wondering how it can take an hour to go 15-20 miles i have to travel around the beltway meaning that to get to the metro station with in 5 miles of my office I have to take the train into the heart of DC from Vienna and then another back out into Bethesda.

Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years

[drsquare]

Cars themselves are luxury items, of course, and you're perfectly capable of living in a city and using public transit like most of the world.

That assumes of course that you work in a city. And you work hours served by public transport. For a lot of people, me included, living in a city served by public transport would massively increase my commute time and oil consumption, as I would then have to drive right back out again.

As for most people in the world living in cities, I think it's something like a 50/50 split. And then it depends on what you define as 'city'.

$8 a gallon is pretty much the going rate in the UK at the moment. Of course most of that is tax, taken by our thieving government that refuses to improve public transport. Or in fact any public services whatsoever.

Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years

[Planesdragon]

Fucking Slashdot...

Let me make one thing clear. I'll respond more, but this is important.

If you think that questioning your political opposition's motivation, intellect, or honesty is a valid tactic in political discourse, SHUT THE FUCK UP. It's a crappy idea when the Republicans do it, and Democrats--and democracy--deserves better.

John Kerry loves his country. Al Gore loves his country. Newt Gingrich loves his country. Rush Limbaugh loves his country. Keith Oberman loves his country. Ron Paul loves his country. Ronald Regan loved his country. Jimmy Carter loved his country. RICHARD NIXON loved his country.

If you think that any American who dedicated their lives to public service--which is what politics is, by the way--doesn't love his or her country, you don't know yours.

Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years

[Planesdragon]

Incidentally, if we don't use breeders then using nuclear is a HORRIBLE and TERRIBLE idea; we can gain a couple orders of magnitude in efficiency this way. With breeders, nuclear can be not just practical but also profitable without subsidies. Nuclear -- even non-breeder three-mile island reactors -- are profitable at a certain price point. Like any other alternative energy source, they just need to hit a certain cost/benefit ratio and they're in. They benefit from not needing fancy new technology or theoretical advancement, etiher -- we can just copy the French.

Who told you that? Think about it for a second; a solar system.... Stop. Note "small device use." As in, pocket calculator. You can do your own research.

I assume you didn't buy it new, or it would take you like 20 years to reach an economic payoff on that, even at today's gas prices (although if they do double, it could take a lot less time...) :) My van was ten years old, worth about $500, and needed either $800 tires or $1000 rims + tires. The fuel economy choice was made concurrent to an already determined purchase.

"Joe Sixpack" buys a new car every five years anyway. He should have gotten rid of the SUV by now, and if not by now then by, at the latest, 2010.

Unemployment is pretty high right now, and it's only going to get worse. I predict a continual rise in crime over the next twelve to seventeen years as the economy goes right in the toilet. Good luck not having your car stolen by someone who is going to take it to be stripped for the two useful parts, with which they will buy a burger and some crank. Unemployment isn't that high, and we're likely to have a significant economical boom once we stop pissing away money fighting Iraq's battles for them.

As for crime -- please. Even at the bottom end of the scale, there's enough legal opportunity to feed and house everyone. Crime's as much an addictive and cultural thing as anything else -- and the legalization of a few choice narcotics would pretty much win the "war on drug dealers" overnight, and you know it.

Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years

[Planesdragon]

. If our government tries to pull any funny business, China can dump the dollar and crash our currency in a matter of weeks or days There are innumerable ways to counter this -- from simply assessing china a punative fee to invading China. (Push comes to shove, we'd "win" in a war against China and everyone knows it. We'd be back in the wild west. They'd be dead.)

The most likely manner, however, is just to leave it be. China holds a lot of US currency, but by no means a majority of US dollars. And so long as we have enough time to have an effective home currency, we'll do fine. Even if everyone in the world dumped dollars for Euros. (Hint: We'd do so at the same time, make the Euro our national currency, and we'd be welcomed with open arms.)

And that doesn't strike you at all as short-sighted? Nope. I don't hold anything more than short-term savings in dollars. Only a fool would. I hold it in stocks et al which, although priced in dollars, reflects wealth of an altogether different sort than the simple dollar bill.

Have you failed to notice how that rate is increasing? The dollar has already lost 96% of its purchasing power since 1913. Hyperinflation is a very real possibility. 1913? NINTEEN THIRTEEN?

You'll forgive me if I don't panic. Inflation that is not fast enough to disrupt ordinary life is simply not a problem. If your currency is not out doing something, it deserves to lose value over time.

The United States of America does not have a free market either. A free market is a market in which prices of goods and services are arranged completely by the mutual consent of sellers and buyers. We do not have a perfectly free market. But we have a market that is a hell of a lot freer than the USSR's. Which is all that matters. Our semi-free Market is a HELL of a lot better than the USSR's pseudo-Command market.

In case you believe I am going over the top, here is a video [thedailyshow.com] of Alan Greenspan stating quite clearly that we do not have a free market, along with some hand-waving about how we can't have one because of human nature. You'll forgive me if I don't buy your attempt to stretch Alan Greenspan's appearance on a comedy show to equating the USSR and the USA's economic status.

The fact is, we're in pretty deep shit, and nobody's talking about it because nobody in the government or the media is talking about it, and we really need to talk about it if we're going to do anything to improve the situation. Find me one economist -- just ONE -- who believes we're in the kind of end-of-the-world shit you're describing. I'll wait.

E-mail me if you have to.

Welcome.

[ahoehn]

From the Article:

Judging from the comments last week, many commenters hadn't fully absorbed the factual points in the article (to put it politely).
 
Welcome to Slashdot.

Re:Welcome.

[MozeeToby]

You must be new here.

Re:Welcome.

[Anonymous Coward]

I, for one, welcome our fully-absorbed, factually-pointed overlords

Well...

[LuisAnaya]

I was thinking about this a couple of nights ago, and the only thing that came up to me was the following:

1. A "drivable airplane" makes sense. In the way that you do not have to pay for hangar space and keep it safe and cozy at home. You just store it at home. You just "drive" the vehicle to the airport, put it together, do your pre-check inspection, fly, do your post-check inspection, fold, drive to destination. It's not the "Jetson's" concept, you have to be a licensed pilot, but it's, in a sense, practical enough for use.

2. Terrfugia's CEO state that the materials are not available to make it practical. I certainly hope so. Folding, flying, driving it's going to put a lot of stress to a lot of parts on the vehicle. Flying or driving is bad enough to cause problems to components, combining both in one vehicle it's going to make matters worst. I sincerely wish them luck.

Re:Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

Your Sunday evenings sound very interesting.

Re:Well...

[bugnuts]

You could park 4 to 6 of these in the same hangar space as one small airplane. You don't even need to be driving it much.

Flying commuters generally already have their vehicles set up at both ends. This could save them a bundle in hangar space, though.

Re:Well...

[YrWrstNtmr]

1. A "drivable airplane" makes sense.

How so? The 'airplane' has to haul around all the crap that makes a car. Bumpers, door guards, drivetrain, suspension, etc, etc. Yes, an aircraft landing gear has to handle quite large impacts. But the ride quality to the end of runway is NOT acceptable for actual driving. Put a car level suspension in a light aircraft and you'll have to remove at least 2 passengers.
The 'car' has to haul around those bigass wings.

Re:Well...

[IdeaMan]

The 'car' has to haul around those bigass wings. Cars like vw beetles haul around surfboards all the time. Airplane wings are designed to be very light. Putting them on the sides where they create a blind spot rather then telescoping or mounting them on top is the part that doesn't make sense to me...

Re:Well...

[element-o.p.]

A "drivable airplane" makes sense.
I'm not entirely sure I agree (and yes, I am a pilot). In town, the drag of a car isn't a real big issue; at speeds of less than 30MPH, wind resistance is pretty minimal. At highway speeds of ~60MPH you've quadrupled the drag, and at typical general aviation aircraft speeds of 120MPH, you have 16 times more drag for a given shape and area than at commuter speeds. Consequently, a six foot wide car in town doesn't matter; at flight speeds, the drag of a six foot wide vehicle is pretty significant. That's why the Cessna 152 (a small trainer) is only something like 39 inches wide -- the narrower the fuselage, the less drag. A Cessna 172, a step up from the 152, is only about three inches wider than a 152, and most light single engine airplanes don't get *much* wider than that (I don't recall off-hand how wide a Cessna 206 or 207 -- the biggest single-engine piston airplanes Cessna makes -- are).

What does this have to do with how much sense a drivable airplane makes? Well, the drawings of Terrafugia's design show a vehicle with a cross-section much like a car. It's rather wide, presumably for road stability and passenger comfort. Unfortunately, this makes a poor aircraft design because of the much greater speeds at which even a light sport airplane flies. Terrafugia is claiming some pretty impressive fuel economy numbers for their car, but I'm skeptical. I own a two-place tandem airplane (http://www.gecko-ak.org/N600LW/); it's about as skinny as an airplane can get, meaning its flat-plate area is pretty minimal, and therefore it's drag should be pretty minimal as well. I burn about 4.5 gallons per hour at 60 MPH. That works out to 13 miles per gallon -- better than my Nissan Frontier, but not by much. I sincerely doubt Terrafugia will get 26-27 mpg, as they claim, in a wider vehicle, at twice the speed of my airplane.

Re:Well...

[FooAtWFU]

You don't need a luxury-car-level suspension; you're not going to be using this thing daily for trips to the grocery store or for six hours of driving on the Interstate for a business trip. You just need a vaguely-tolerable trip between your garage and the airport; the rest of your travels can be smooth and comfortable (weather permitting) and you save on hangar space costs.

Re:Well...

[icebrain]

That's why the Cessna 152 (a small trainer) is only something like 39 inches wide Try squeezing your 180lb self into a 150 with a 230lb instructor (a former rugby player from South Africa). That was fun... the tired old airplane would climb at maybe 200ft/min during a hot Georgia summer.

Both of my instructors complained and asked why I didn't go to a 172, but I was a high school student paying for the lessons myself. Couldn't afford it.

Re:Well...

[cecil_turtle]

I'm a pilot as well, if that somehow qualifies one to speak in this discussion. Anyway, you seem hung up specifically on mileage / air resistance. So let me point out a few things:

1) A Cessna 152 (a 30+ year old plane) burns ~6 GPH at 111 knots (Vno), which is about double the fuel mileage of your plane and is quite in line with Terrafugia's numbers. It would seem that your plane just gets poor mileage.

2) Yes, air resistance is exponential, it's relative to the square of the speed - your math is correct. But drag at 30 mph is VERY low, so just saying "16 times that" doesn't mean much. Secondly, to get actual drag you also need to consider drag coefficient and frontal surface area. Frontal surface area is two dimensions - you seem only focused on narrowness. The plane in the article is wide - but it's also a lower profile than "normal" planes. We'd have to have more specific dimensions to know if the overall frontal surface area is more or less than an equivalent plane. Third, as I mentioned above the drag coefficient comes into play. Aerodynamics have come a long way since Cessna's were designed and since your Falcon was designed (20+ years). If you can sufficiently reduce the coefficient, you can increase surface area and end up with the same amount of drag or even less.

Re:Well...

[YrWrstNtmr]

You don't need a luxury-car-level suspension; you're not going to be using this thing daily for trips to the grocery store or for six hours of driving on the Interstate for a business trip.

I don't mean luxury car level. Just mid 90's Geo Metro level. FAR heavier/smoother than a typical light aircraft landing gear, because it's built for a different environment.
Seriously. Ride down to the end of runway in any light plane. Now do the same in any car. Feel the difference.
Built for different things. Why is the aircraft hauling around the needless crap that goes into a car?

Car, boat, sub, aircraft. Any combination of those doesn't really work. Not anytime soon, anyway.

Re:Well...

[passthesalt]

Don't forget about drag coefficients, and performance at high altitudes. Velocity Aircraft (http://velocityaircraft.com/airplane-specifications.html) can comfortably outrun a Bugatti Veyron while using less than 1/3 of the power, and carrying 4 people comfortably. It's a matter of getting enough altitude. (This plane is at 25000 feet and getting mileage of an SUV)

Re:Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

I too am a pilot, and trained in LSA before moving on for my private. The Evektor SportStar I flew was heavier than yours, plus it had side-by-side seating which would give it around twice the frontal area as your plane, yet it burned 4.5 GPH of auto fuel at 110 MPH. This fuel consumption rate is typical of most LSAs, which is the certification that Terrafugia is trying to receive.

As far as airplanes go, your machine gets really bad fuel economy for its size. In fact its about on par with the 180HP Piper Archer I fly, which burns 9-10 GPH at 120KIAS and can seat 4 people.

Re:Well...

[tweak13]

I'm an aeronautical engineer and I've done a fair amount of work on light sport aircraft designs. Because of the 120 kt speed limit, light sport aircraft never get going fast enough for parasitic drag to take strong effect. You're also neglecting the most important source of drag at low speeds, induced drag. Because of the ratios of induced drag to parasitic drag, the overall drag of the aircraft would most likely decrease the faster you go. It's a strange concept to work your head around, but the end result is that parasitic drag is so low I really doubt they're losing much at all with the wider body.

As far as the fuel economy goes, light sport aircraft are quite fuel efficient. It wouldn't be unreasonable to expect around 6 gph at 120 knots. That results in about 23 miles (statute) per gallon. Better than my truck, and I'm sure that mileage could be improved upon.

Re:Well...

[mcrbids]

I'd reinforce your point #1 with the Rutan Long EZ which does 160 Knots (184 MPH) at about 5.1 GPH, for an astonishing 36 MPG at just shy of 200 miles per hour - even my trusty, highly reliable, and economical Saturn SL2 only gets about 30 MPG on the freeway! (at 80 MPH) And, unlike the 152, which is based on technology first developed in the mid 1950s, the Long EZ owes its legacy back to the early 1970s.

(Yes, you read that right - the C152 airframe was only minimally changed in 1977 as a tweak of the previous, highly successful 150)

It strikes me as quite appropriate that 21st Century technology would provide a significant improvement in capability/price/performance, when developed by current, high-quality engineers.

BTW, Burt Rutan is a legend in the field. You might know his company Scaled Composites which won the Ansari X-Prize. He's a legend in the field. Not only did he build an experimental aircraft design that outperformed other designs by a factor of 2 or more in speed, while halving fuel burn, he did so with a design that's relatively cheap and easy to build.

Some people like Rutan and Al Mooney just seem to "get it right" when it comes to aircraft design, and they do it over, and over, and over again. The Mooney Mark 20 is a line of high performance, high reliability, cheap, complex aircraft that provide solid performance, excellent safety and great economy. The Mooney Mark-20 line (there have been lots culminating in the current "Ovation") is one of the few GA single-engine airplanes with a proper "crash cage" resulting in excellent safety numbers - you are half as likely to die (per mile of flight) while flying a Mooney in IFR conditions than the industry average.

A good indicator of airplane efficiency is its glide ratio - how far it moves forward for every foot dropped without power. The first number is the distance you move forward, the second number is is how far you drop. It's a ratio, and the higher the first number relative to the second, the better. A Mooney has a glide ratio of about 13:1, while a Cessna does about 7:1. A long EZ or a VariEZE can do anywhere from 15:1 to 20:1, a Boeing 767 did about 12:1 in the famous Gimli Glider incident. Many ultralights do as badly as 3:1.

Can they do it? I'm quite sure they can. As soon as I can afford one, I'll probably buy. (It'll take me a few years, which is fine, since they won't be ready and tested by the "early adopters" for a few years, anyway)

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 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 want I want I want I want I want I want I want I want I want I want I want I want !!!!!!

Re:Well...

[Nethemas the Great]

I'm not familiar with the particulars of your ultralight, but most personal aircraft (FAA certified) have engines in them that were originally designed nearly half a century ago and have had very minimal updates to them. It is a small wonder that a 120HP plane engine burns several gallons of fuel per hour and a modern 120HP car engine comparatively sips it. The fact that the Terrafugia burns super unleaded rather than aviation fuel suggests it isn't likely to be powered by an old-school engine.

Re:Well...

[flyingsquid]

Car, boat, sub, aircraft. Any combination of those doesn't really work.

Just wait until my carsubboatplane hits the market. Then your face will be red.

Re:Well...

[DamonHD]

Polynomial, not "exponential". "Exponential" doesn't just mean "lots and lots"!

Rgds

Damon

Re:Well...

[raynet]

At the altitude of 25000 feet Bugatti Veyron, or just about any car, will get much better gas milage than airplanes, albeit only for a short time.

Re:Well...

[91degrees]

It's useless. It's incapable of space flight.

Incidentally - you have an amusingly appropriate username for that comment.

Re:Well...

[Jesus_666]

Actually, a prototype car/submarine hybrid (for use in shallow water) has been tested already and, as far as I know, there already are a few commercial cars that can swim.

Of course it all depends on what you want. The subcar, for example, is based on a convertible and doesn't attempt to contain breathable air. It's merely a car that can swim and dive.

Re:Well...

[icebrain]

The Mooney Mark 20 is a line of high performance, high reliability, cheap, complex aircraft that provide solid performance, excellent safety and great economy. I do see your point... but I'd hesitate to call an airplane "cheap" until the average person can afford to buy one... basically, the cost needs to be around the same range as a decently-equipped car or SUV. A lot of homebuilts fall into this category, but most people aren't willing to spend the time it takes to build one.

Re:Well...

[cecil_turtle]

Sorry, but I was correct the first time.

exponential
mathematics The exponent is the part of an expression indicating the power to which a term is raised I said "the square of the speed" - that is the speed raised to the power of 2 - hence exponential. I know what the word means and I didn't mean it to infer "lots and lots". Please try again.

Re:Well...

[BBandCMKRNL]

In general you are correct. One of the reasons that Mooneys are the sports cars of the pre-composite aircraft era is that they aren't very wide. However, remember it's the frontal area, or flat-plate area as you mentioned, rather than just width that matters.

Also, the typical 152/172 has these huge struts with steps on them that really add to the drag. That's one of the reasons the Cessna 200 series of aircraft got rid of the struts.

You can make up for some of that increase in frontal area by having a lower aircraft weight. Just look at the speeds the newer composite aircraft are getting while carrying 4 passengers.

Without engine specifics, it's hard to predict whether their fuel consumption figures are reasonable, but their numbers seem a bit optimistic.

Congrats on the aircraft purchase. It reminds me of my ultralight flying days, except you've got a canopy.

Re:Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

Exponential is when the variable is in the exponent. Eg: 2^x.

Polynomial is the other way around. Eg: x^2.

Exponential functions grow much much faster than polynomial functions.

Re:Well...

[BBandCMKRNL]

There is no such thing as a cheap production aircraft. There are three main reasons for this:

1) The cost of certification. Lots and lots of documentation and testing are required.
2) Reliability. If your car engine dies, you can simply pull off to the side of the road. Obviously, you can't do this in an aircraft. This reliability is often achieved by redundancy. A simple example if this is spark plugs. Aircraft engines have two spark plugs per cylinder. If one dies, you will get reduced power, but it will be sufficient power to keep the aircraft in the air long enough to land safely. Now add the cost of duplicating major important aircraft components.
3) Liability. This is probably the biggest reason there are no cheap aircraft. If something goes wrong and there is a crash, just about any company that built a part that is on that aircraft will be sued. Combine that with many juries anti-corporation mindset and you've got a huge problem.

Here's an example of #3. Let's say you want to take video of what it's like to drive your prized 1960 Ford Fairlane, so you rig up this huge video camera mount on the steering wheel of your car. Next, you are feuding with you neighbor and as he sees you pulling out of your garage with the video camera on the steering wheel, he parks his F-550 pickup truck across the end of your driveway to prevent you from leaving. Your car is rather old, so it's not required to have seatbelts and doesn't. You speed out of your garage, down the driveway, and hit your neighbor's F-550 with your car. This causes you to fly forward and hit your head on the video camera and mount you have attached to the steering wheel, causing serious injuries.
Your wife decides to sue. Who does she sue?
1) You for being so stupid to mount a video camera to the steering wheel of your car and not stopping when you see your neighbor's F-550 parked across the driveway.
2) Your neighbor for parking his F-550 across your driveway in an attempt to keep you from leaving.
3) Ford for making an unsafe automobile.

If your wife chooses #3, what do you think are the chances of her being successful in suing Ford?

Change the 1960 Ford Fairlane to a 1940's Piper Cub, the F-550 to a fuel truck, and the driveway to a runway and you have exactly what happened. To make things even more bizarre, the jury found the aircraft maker, Piper, liable for millions of dollars of damages for producing an unsafe aircraft design.

Re:Well...

[DamonHD]

Exponential in at least common mathematical and engineering use would be 2 raised to the power of the speed; ie x^2 is not exponential whereas 2^x is.

Rgds

Damon

Re:Well...

[element-o.p.]

lol, been there, done that :)

There's a compromise between interior space and efficiency in any airplane, but the Terrafugia design seems to take the opposite extreme from the 152.

Re:Well...

[cecil_turtle]

Thank you for a more clear explanation, I'll note that for the the future.

Re:Well...

[mcrbids]

How about "cheap - for an airplane"? Yeah, none are truly "cheap". But once you've gotten past the $5,000 - $10,000 it costs to become a private pilot, owning your own airplane starts at about $500/month + gas, if you are reasonably careful. A somewhat nicer plane like a Mooney starts at about $800/month + gas. The "Gas" cost is simply GPH * cost of gas, now running close to $5/gallon for Avgas.

Many planes (think: twin-engine, jet, etc) cost way way WAY more than this. So I'd still say that an older used Mooney is a cheap "high performance" plane, even though the cheaper Mooneys are technically not a "high perf" plane since the engine on most older Mooneys are 200 HP.

It's "cheap" if there's any reasonable chance that an otherwise average skilled worker could own one. (Think doctor, programmer, contractor, plumber, etc) I know of one guy who (until recently) had a little Piper. Single guy, drives 10 year old Ford Escort, lives alone, has a very typical engineering job, and owned a '69 Piper Cherokee. Nice guy, too. I tried to buy into a co-ownership on the plane with him, but he was starting some new venture and had to cut his costs to the bone to make it work. He sold the plane for equity.

Re:Well...

[icebrain]

I'm aware of the liability issues and such in aviation--I fly privately and work in the industry, too. There's a significant lack of common sense.

As far as cheap airplanes go, you can get hold of a used Cessna 150 or 152, or some flavor of a Piper Cub, for around $25k or less. You can build something like a Sonex or an RV for 30-40k, plus a couple years of work. Yes, it requires a little sacrifice (driving an older car instead of buying a new Explorer, forgoing that big-screen TV, buying a slightly more affordable house, etc), but it's within reach of a lot more people than you would think.

unimaginable!

[EllynGeek]

It's unthinkable that a story posted on /. should ever receive anything but careful, reasoned analysis. This story implies that most /. commenters are knee-jerk hypercritical dorks who don't read anything or like anything. Some people.

Re:unimaginable!

[argent]

Inconceivable!

Re:unimaginable!

[nbert]

What I like about /. is that people are instantly thinking the obvious. There are other places where it takes hours to explain the general problem and the majority simply isn't informed enough to get it. I don't like to drop names, but it's stunning to read Mac related forums for example (I'm using a Mac myself so I can say this :D )

It's not a club for smart people, but it's a place to discuss basic ideas without slapping marketing statements at each other. Of course there are lots of people I strongly disagree with, but I have a chance to tell them how much I dislike their concept way after the article was on the main-page.

(and please don't mod me for this - I'm writing this because it's the way I feel. It would be rather awkward to state this just for the purpose of gaining mod-points)

Re:unimaginable!

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

It's unthinkable that a story posted on /. should ever receive anything but careful, reasoned analysis. This story implies that most /. commenters are knee-jerk hypercritical dorks who don't read anything or like anything. Some people. Pftft. Make several hundred "flying chair" jokes and suddenly everybody's a comedian.

Re:unimaginable!

[antic]

It's unthinkable that a story posted on /. should ever receive anything but careful, reasoned analysis. This story implies that most /. commenters are knee-jerk hypercritical dorks who don't read anything or like anything. Some people.

I read the start of your comment and was nodding my head - yes, this should be that sort of place, full of educational and interesting comments, where obvious (especially meta) jokes from people who don't read the article are nowhere to be seen. Then I read the end of your comment and I was still nodding, but just making contact with the desk each time...

Re:unimaginable!

[nbert]

(and please don't mod me for this - I'm writing this because it's the way

could someone mod parent down to restore equilibrium in the universe?

Re:unimaginable!

[Spatial]

That movie sucked. No way I'm restoring it.

Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich

[VampireByte]

Try solving some real problems that advance society. Building crap just because selfish rich people are wasteful enough to make you wealthy providing them with useless toys is nothing to be proud of.

Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe he's not interested in "solving real problems" but making a fun toy. If you want to "advance society" knock yourself out but don't try to force everyone else to do things your way.

Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich

[WrongMonkey]

The same thing was said about the automobile, the telephone, etc. etc.

Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich

[Duradin]

The poor generally can't afford any sort of cutting edge research.

We (the masses) can benefit from the wastefulness of the rich and the advances in technology their decadent lifestyle demands.

(Cars were for the rich initially. As were TVs. As were computers. As were LCD watches. etc., etc.)

Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich

[Anonymous Coward]

On fuel efficiency: their quoted estimate of 27.5mpg in the air would place it ahead of 95+% of cars on the road today in getting from point A to point B, since there's rarely an optimal, straight-line, traffic free highway between where you are and where you want to be. (Yes, you would have to have airports at each end, but general aviation airports are amazingly common.)

As for the rich part...well, nobody is claiming otherwise.

Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich

[jcgf]

Instead of bitching about the rich, why don't you go out and get rich yourself? Either that or go and eat some cheese as it would go well with your whine.

Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich

[Gat0r30y]

Building crap just because selfish rich people are wasteful enough to make you wealthy providing them with useless toys is nothing to be proud of. - But it is the American way!

Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich

[Anonymous Coward]

Got cites?

Didn't think so.

Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich

[TheLazySci-FiAuthor]

Maybe he's not interested in "solving real problems" but making a fun toy. If you want to "advance society" knock yourself out but don't try to force everyone else to do things your way. Agreed.

Sometimes you just want to make a fun, electronic device which can help with the bills and on which you can play games and send funny pictures to your friends.

We all know that toy did nothing to 'advance society'

btw - I vow to never reply to a troll like grandparent again (even as grandchild, and even in support of good responses as here), although sometimes the moronically obvious statement must be made, just to get it out there, and it's nice to know slashdot has so many individuals qualified to make such statements.

Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich

[Anonymous Coward]

please provide link or shens

Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich

[bugnuts]

Try solving some real problems that advance society. Building crap just because selfish rich people are wasteful enough to make you wealthy providing them with useless toys is nothing to be proud of. ... and what did you do today to solve real problems that advance society?

Did you do some aerospace engineering?

Composite design?

Impact resistant deformable bumpers that are aerodynamic?

I can imagine you grunting that same thing to the guy inventing the wheel, instead of sharpening a pointed stick like you think he should be doing.

Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich

[aztektum]

PICS! or it didnt happen!!!!1

oh wait

Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich

[Scrameustache]

selfish rich people are wasteful enough to make you wealthy providing them with useless toys is nothing to be proud of.

But a never-was making fun of someone who built a fraking transformer car-plane (for crying out loud!), he's got something to be proud of. He used someone elses' site to put down someone elses' work! What a champion! Let's build him a statue.

Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich

[pimpimpim]

I earn my living trying to add my little contribution to advance society through material science, and I, for one, welcome our selfish rich people overlords.

I welcome the rich pensioners that bought Mercedes cars with airbags in the 80's, so that development by Mercedes could be financed and now you get life-saving airbag in even the smallest cars.

I welcome the yuppies that bought the first aluminum bikes, costing probably several thousand dollars back then, but now anyone can have a bike that is light and doesn't rust.

I welcome the showoffs that wanted a mobile phone in the early 90s, so now wireless technology is cheap enough to be used in third world countries, and get people connected.

Should I go on? Advances, especially in materials, are often sustainable because of some marginal hobbies of rich people. They want the lightest and strongest, even when it is actually not needed for their cause (do fishing rods really need to be made out of carbon-fiber?). But the amount of money that they want to invest can keep small innovative companies alive. In the end, we all win.

Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich

[dgatwood]

From http://www.audiouk.com/vintage/telephone.htm

Bell's "speaking telephone" was not universally welcomed. Some people dismissed it as a scientific toy of little value. Others saw it as an invasion of privacy. However, the telephone began to make its way into society, catching the public imagination.

From http://www.evancarmichael.com/Famous-Entrepreneurs/559/Lesson-1-Stick-With-It.html

"Failure is only the opportunity more intelligently to being again," said Ford. "One who fears the future, who fears failure, limits his activities." Even before Ford founded his own motor company, his numerous experiments often led him down the path of failure. Working in a small wooden shack next to his farmhouse, Ford spent years attempting to perfect his automobile design. In one such case, Ford built a steam car that did successfully propel itself, but its kerosene-heated boiler proved too dangerous for it to be driven. "But, I did not give up the idea of a horseless carriage," he said, which at first was considered "merely a freak notion and many wise people explained with particularity why it could never be more than a toy."

Next clueless AC response?

Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich

[marxmarv]

Getting rich does not increase the amount of low-entropy energy sources. Clearly you are no smarter than yeast.

Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

And what problems are you helping solve in order to advance society?

Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich

[marxmarv]

Try solving some real problems that advance society. Building crap just because selfish rich people are wasteful enough to make you wealthy providing them with useless toys is nothing to be proud of. ... and what did you do today to solve real problems that advance society? Personally, I'm just about to solve real problems and advance society by walking to the supermarket.

Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich

[Lumpy]

REally? The RICH like to tout that their home automation systems save energy. I am a Crestron programmer, I design, install and program the most expensive systems for the upper rich. My sales force use the bullshit line that it saves energy and all the other crap. In reality it does not. The soft start (2 second fade on or off) that the rich people so adore and the underlying technology is 100% incompatible with efficient lighting systems. CFL lamps do not work in a Crestron,Vantage or lutron systems (No X10 and the crap you buy at "smarthome" is NOT home automation.) Most of the modules/switches, if it's a retrofit, consume 12-15 watts in the off state EACH! A typical small 3400 sq foot summer cottage (Yes that is small to these people) that has automation will have a $100.00 a month electric bill with everything turned off and set for the "away for the winter" mode. To these people $4.00 a gallon gas is not even a issue worth talking about. The current 10,000 SQ foot home we are finishing has 3 200amp electric services coming into the main home to meet it's needs. I am controlling 11,000 watts of lighting. Yes LIGHTING not equipment but just the freaking lights and every one of those will have a good old 60-80Watt tungsten element light bulb. My equipment racks will use 15 of the 20 amps it is given 24/7.

Energy is incredibly dirt cheap to the rich. They dont want hybrids, they want a sexy exclusive car with 1000hp. (Bugatti Veryon) They want a comfortable estate with expanses of elegant green grass that takes a ton of water to keep green. and they burn more electricity in their home than what 10 homes use.

Energy or transportation efficiency does not come from the toys of the rich. These innovations come from scientists, entrepreneurs, and yes some of the rich that want to give back to society by financing grand and foreward ideas. Like the New york subway, Space Ship 1, etc....

Done even think that the rich are playing with high efficiency items and they will trickle down. They dont. They play with their exclusive devices and then sometimes finance efficient things.

Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich

[legutierr]

You've got it wrong. This flying car ain't nothing. THIS is a REAL energy-wasting toy for the rich. $1 million, 5.8 mpg city, and 250 mph top speed? The fact that it even exists is a sin (but you have to admit, it is beautiful).

RE the flying car, it's actually much more reasonable than most other private planes, for which the Transition's $150k price tag is really bargain-basement (for a new plane). A new Cessna 172 is around $250k. And this particular model has a number of money-saving features compared to other light-sport aircraft; specifically, it runs on ordinary super-unleaded gas, it should get ~27 mpg while in the air, and most importantly, it doesn't need to be hangared, which can cost upwards of $500/month in some airports.

If they can pull off the engineering, I could see these guys having a good, stable business selling a couple hundred planes a year (which is about what other LSA manufacturers do). If they hit their price point, there will be good demand.

Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich

[Anonymous Coward]

wouldn't killing off all the poor and homeless advance society by weeding out the weak? poor people are generally poor because they're lazy or crazy, both of which our species (or any species) can do without.

Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich

[c6gunner]

Personally, I'm just about to solve real problems and advance society by walking to the supermarket.

Walking advances society? Goddamn! If you had told me this a couple months ago, I could have had one hell of a tax write-off!

Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally, I'm just about to solve real problems and advance society by walking to the supermarket. Solve? Lessen the impact of food consumption by an imperceptible amount you mean? Since you said supermarket I assume that much of the food was likely produced half way around the world and comes with multiple layers of packaging...

Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich

[slashname3]

They claim to use super unleaded gas. Was that before or after they put 10% ethanol in the gas? I suspect they won't get the performance they think out of the engine with such a mixture. This not only will impact the MPG but also the load capacity that the plane can carry in flight.

Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich

[Anonymous Coward]

Airbags were available in GM and Ford cars in the late 70's. Everything you are "thankful for" was available to the common guy at a decent price way before you knew it existed.

The rich did not have it. The common guy had it, we just did not want it back then. you have them now because the cost of it is rolled into the price of your car. if you could delete the airbag system your car's price would drop by $1500.00 and there are many people that WOULD delete it. I personally make sure I dont get cars with Antilock brakes. But then I know how to drive and antilock are for those that dont.

Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich

[Culture20]

As were LCD watches. Oh my gosh, I just realized how advanced we really are now; no one buys LCD watches any more. Galactic Civilization, here we come!

Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich

[zippthorne]

What even IS super unleaded gas? Is it gas whose lead content is "really, really low?" Or is it "premium" gas (which is actually an anti-knock formulation for poorly designed or aging vehicles, but labeled premium to make people think it's "better")?

Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich

[Anonymous Coward]

Energy or transportation efficiency does not come from the toys of the rich.

Really? Where do they come from? Oh, I see you're about to tell us. Let's see...

These innovations come from scientists (funded by the rich), entrepreneurs (AKA the rich), and yes some of the rich that want to give back to society by financing grand and foreward ideas

So it DOES come from the rich, and your little lighting anecdote completely fails to prove your sweeping generalization. So congratulations on proving beyond all possible doubt that you are the biggest idiot in history.

Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich

[Anonymous Coward]

Premium gas has a higher octane content than regular. It is for cars with a higher compression ratio, not "poorly designed or aging vehicles."

Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich

[Anonymous Coward]

And you dont have the balls to say any of that.

He did you pussy fuck. plus you are WRONG, he is RIGHT. and you hate it.

Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich

[Duradin]

My sales force use the bullshit line that it saves energy and all the other crap. In reality it does not. So it's your client's fault for believing your false advertising? Brilliant! (Great advertising for your competitors btw)

It usually doesn't take much to convert technology that increases energy output (high performance cars) to increasing energy efficiency (high efficiency cars). Weight reductions make a bigger engine drive the car even faster *or* it can let a more efficient but less powerful engine drive the same size vehicle. Joe Sixpack couldn't afford the early systems, those were paid for by Mr. Martini. Aluminum engine blocks, computer control, those things didn't start out in Yugos.

Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich

[PottedMeat]

All the angst aside, you seem content to enable this disgust to pad your own pockets.

It isn't just the rich who have misplaced priorities.

PM

Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich

[Anonymous Coward]

The telephone was nothing more than a useless toy, and an invasion of privacy to boot! We didn't need it then, and we don't need it now! Why, in my day, we cared enough to write things down on real paper, none of this zero one mumbo jumbo. Now get off my lawn!

Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, buddy! Want to step into my office and chat for a few minutes? Thanks.

George Feldstein
CEO, Crestron Electronics, Inc.

Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich

[cecil_turtle]

1) You have the grouping wrong - it's not "(Super Unleaded) Gas", it's "Super (Unleaded Gas)".

(which is actually an anti-knock formulation for poorly designed or aging vehicles, but labeled premium to make people think it's "better") 2) While I agree with you on the second point, it's not an "anti-knock" formulation, it simply has a higher flash point. And you got it backwards - most older cars can't burn (ignite) the higher flash point as well and will actually lose power on "premium" fuel. The premium fuel is for higher performance vehicles which push compression ratios higher to achieve more power and thus generate more heat and need a higher-flash point fuel or else they will knock, or rather their anti-knock sensors will kick in and retard the timing thus again losing power.

Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich

[cecil_turtle]

THIS [bugatti.com] is a REAL energy-wasting toy for the rich. $1 million, 5.8 mpg city, and 250 mph top speed? The fact that it even exists is a sin The thing is without somebody pushing performance on the high end, the low end would never see efficiency improvements. We wouldn't have 60 mpg cars if it weren't for racing development over decades improving engine / transmission / aerodynamic design.

Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich

[Garabito]

Bell's "speaking telephone" was not universally welcomed. Some people dismissed it as a scientific toy of little value. Others saw it as an invasion of privacy.

Who would have thought there were slashdoters back then? Maybe time travel is really possible.

Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm... I hate to say it, but I'm rich. And this guy is pretty much right on the money. I had to go find my electric bill - it's just auto-paid anyway so I don't always look at it. It turns out it's about $900 per month. Just for fun I went down to shut off the 2 20A circuits to the equipment closet... quite noticeable!

Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich

[Boronx]

Hey man, welcome to the world of growing income inequality, where you're either rich or gardener to the rich.

Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich

[itsme1234]

And why would "know how to drive" cancel the benefits you would get from ABS? Can you calculate and can you apply different breaking force to each wheel in those moments just before a (potential) crash? Also one of the features that comes on top of ABS (it is independent but I haven't seen it without ABS) is Emergency Brake Assist. EBA will detect the "urgency" of breaking by analyzing the speed and pressure applied to the pedal and decide if you are actually trying to stop ASAP (as opposed to just slowing down) and will completely break for you (of course until ABS engages). This works VERY well and apart from breaking sooner in all cases it will also save the (usually but not always women) drivers that just don't press the break hard enough even in an emergency situation.

Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich

[pimpimpim]

Ok, thank you for pointing that out, I didn't know. So, to correct: I welcome the rich pensioners who bought Mercedes cars with the first airbags that didn't kill you, which Mercedes developed DESPITE the bad reputation the inferior early airbags had in the US at that time. Now that must have taken some guts.

And, thanks for pointing that other one out, I thank the people who bought the first expensive cars with anti-lock brakes (again, not used the first time by Mercedes, but still greatly improved by them and Bosch, so that not only the driver with amazing driving "skillz" like you can brake safely, but also the unexperienced driver behind him (!) so that that one wont crash into the driver who knew who to stop safely. You're not the only one on the road, you know.

Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich

[mibus]

Have you considered that your statistical sample of 'the rich' is biased, due to you meeting mostly rich people who buy your product?

You later even mention 'some' rich people as doing the right thing - perhaps it's more heavily tilted towards the "right thing" than you think?

Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich

[Clockwork Apple]

He didnt say it doesnt come from the rich, he said it doesnt come from the TOYS OF THE RICH. So unless you consider those scientists to be the toys, it looks like his claim holds up.

But maybe if you stuff enough hay in that strawman some folks will take it out for dinner and dancing.

Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich

[Anonymous Coward]

This works VERY well and apart from breaking sooner in all cases it will also save the (usually but not always women) drivers that just don't press the break hard enough even in an emergency situation. Most women I know tail like a mofo and slam the brake hard no matter what the situation. Too soft? Nah, the ABS was made because they wouldn't keep take their foot off the brake.

Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich

[Dr. Cody]

I welcome the yuppies that bought the first aluminum bikes, costing probably several thousand dollars back then, but now anyone can have a bike that is light and doesn't rust.

You can thank the unwashed masses for recycling their pop cans, and penny-pinching Chinese framemakers for that.

Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich

[CompMD]

I couldn't agree more. If it weren't for the things rich people throw away or sell on the cheap, I'd never have had the chance to own several Mercedes and Volvo cars, Bang and Olufsen stereo system components, an HD LCD video projector, half of my computers, three of my last PDAs, and a pinball machine all before I turned 25 years old.

Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich

[pimpimpim]

Actually the cans are recycled into ... cans. Apparently recycled aluminum are not good for the strength needed in bikes or cars.

As for cheap chinese framemakers, I have to agree with you there. Also if the factory was working on the penny they might have skipped some crucial hardening steps and then your frame can just rip apart easily at some point. You should however be able to buy a good-quality aluminum bike from about 500 euro. Still a factor 5-10 better than in the early days. Carbon fiber is a different story, because you need actually skilled, well-paid people to do that by hand, the price will remain on the high side for a long time to come.

Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich

[MattskEE]

The reason that your company's products are so energy inefficient has nothing inherent to do with the product.

It is expensive, but quite possible to make an electronically controlled dimmable CFL. They even have dimmable CFL's designed to work with standard incandescent dimmer switches - the CFL has to handle the dimming in a different way internally, but its internal electronics make it a drop-in replacement.

You don't say exactly what your modules/switches do, but I'm going to assume that among other possibilities they sit there and wait for a signal to turn on a light. A device like that does not need to consume 12-15 watts of electricity. Although most of my work is in other areas, I have designed embedded systems so I know how these work. When I was in school we were actually graded on our electronics labs on the basis of power consumption, because it's often very easy to solve problems by throwing power at them, but it is an inelegant solution, so for the best grade you must also have an efficient design. For a system like a switch waiting for a signal to turn on, you barely need any power. The power converter which takes the 120V AC and converts it to the 5V or so DC that the circuit runs on will probably use up most of the power, because it can be more expensive to make a low power circuit which has a big change in voltage very efficient. However beyond that you basically only need a microcontroller (which can drop into power saving mode, and be woken up instantly by an interrupt whenever a signal is coming in), a few external components for whatever interface is implemented (signals over power lines, separate control line, button on the wall, or wireless), and some semiconductor switches to control and dim the lights. A system like that can be built under a watt.

It honestly is not much harder to design systems to be power efficient, but sometimes people don't do it because they are either lazy or they think that it will be less reliable if they do "tricky" things like utilize power-savings mode on chips and lower bias currents.

Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich

[drsquare]

Does that 27.5mpg include taking off, landing, taxiing and driving to and from the airport? My car gets 35 and is relatively inefficient.

Gay Nigger Goatse

[Anonymous Coward]

Gay Nigger Goatse

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re: collapsed

[mark72005]

lolasaurus eating a roflanadon

whatever, good questions

[edn4]

while I didn't read the original article, the slashdot concerns made for an interesting and relevant interview... I say good job slashdot

Re:whatever, good questions

[TheLazySci-FiAuthor]

while I didn't read the original article, the slashdot concerns made for an interesting and relevant interview... I say good job slashdot A good point you make, actually. Strong adversity to an idea exerts a selective pressure. Much as the harsh and competitive environment of Africa did spawn the most successful mammals, so too might slashdot spawn successful technologies.

I wonder (or wander offtopic slightly), has Africa any invasive species?

Re:whatever, good questions

[dgatwood]

I wonder (or wander offtopic slightly), has Africa any invasive species?

Besides people? I can't count how many invasions there have been in Africa (and everywhere else, for that matter) over the past few centuries. :-D

Re:whatever, good questions

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Strong adversity to an idea exerts a selective pressure. Much as the harsh and competitive environment of Africa did spawn the most successful mammals, so too might slashdot spawn successful technologies.

Or at least help evolve PR statements to promote the investment and sales necessary to turn a functionally successful technology into a marketplace success. B-)

Re:whatever, good questions

[NeMon'ess]

The problem with slashdot isn't strong adversity, it's uninformed or overly simplistic adversity. Too many posters don't read the articles and jump to stupid conclusions. Even when they do RTFA, there's lots of dumb comments from people who don't understand why they're wrong until others explain it to them.

That has its uses as a way of educating others on why the fallacies are wrong, but it sure takes up a lot of time and text.

mod 0Down

[Anonymous Coward]

Mire of decay, corpse turned over successes with the hear you. Also, if NetBSD posts on to this. For halt. Even Emacs of the above ones in software FreeBSD showed Of a solid dose which don't use the is wiped off and empire in decline, has ground to a TO GET SOME EYE Users. Surprise any doubt: FreeBSD SURPRISE TO THE to yet anothEr [gay-sex-access.com]? world. GNAA members the 4olitical mess move forward, Trying to dissect and what supplies here, please do by fundamental SHIT-FILLED, as those non gay, case you want to give BSD credit

RTFA

[Mab_Mass]

Judging from the comments last week, many commenters hadn't fully absorbed the factual points in the article (to put it politely).

I, for one, am shocked that /.ers didn't fully read the article before posting.

Shocked.

It's already slashdotted

[VampireByte]

How can we read the article if the site's already down after just 19 comments? This is part of the problem, if everyone waited to read the article then comment, the story would already be a day old.

Re:Inconceivable!

[WalksOnDirt]

Unpossible!

Still waiting for my jet powered wing suit.

[BlueshiftVFX]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eS2rjcVcaqQ

Just need to make it powerful enough to climb aswell, as it is now it can only prolong your fall.

Re:Still waiting for my jet powered wing suit.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Just need to make it powerful enough to climb aswell, as it is now it can only prolong your fall.

It's there now.

It appears that this one was more than powerful enough to climb. He could have proved it by climbing back up and overflying his starting point (if he had enough fuel). Instead he just used it to fly level until he ran out of fuel. That says he had at least as much thrust as drag, which effectively means he had thrust to spare for climbing (since these things never match exactly).

Notice how rapidly he builds up speed and vanishes into the distance. You can easily trade that velocity for altitude just by pulling up slightly - then level out and build more if you trade it away faster than the jets replenish it.

But why does a car need to convert to a plance

[91degrees]

Okay. I'm convinced that there is a small market for a plane that you can drive from the airport to your destination. Seems it would make as much sense to have removable wings as foldable wings, and be a lot simpler.

Then again, a taxi is probably kinda convenient as well.

Re:But why does a car need to convert to a plance

[mdarksbane]

Apparently you live somewhere with reasonable taxi service.

Flying small aircraft like this for fun and convenience, you land in a lot of one strip airfields with one guy, a radio, and a single bathroom. You'll have to wait as long as your flight for a cab driver to come out to meet you.

I can see this being quite useful for people who want to use their pilot's license to travel wherever they want like this.

Re:But why does a car need to convert to a plance

[Snad]

Removable wings assume you are leaving from the airport you landed at - since you would, presumably, be removing the wings and storing them at the airport otherwise there's no real advantage.

At least with foldable wings you can land at one airport, take a bit of a tourist trip in your car, and depart from another one without having to backtrack.

But will it work?

[joggle]

That's really all that matters. It doesn't take any money and hardly any skill to make a nice animation of an airplane with folding wings, but to actually build one and fly it, that's entirely different.

I'm looking forward to the performance of the flying prototype. I wish them good luck on making it and flying it to Oshkosh this year. If they make it to Oshkosh even without meeting all of their planned specs I expect them to make money for years since this really does fit a niche that no other vehicle does. While they'll have plenty of revenue, hopefully they'll be profitable too.

solves the hangar space problem

[wreave]

Great response from Xconomy. The need for an aircraft that can be used for limited driving is real. Some GA (general aviation) airports have very limited and/or very expensive hangar space. In fact, some airports have no available hangar space, in part because companies lease hangar space and use it for business operations rather than aircraft storage. In CA a few years ago, small aircraft were forced out of a hangar so it could be leased to a company that used it for business operations. That's still not right, but at least with the ability to park their airplanes at home and drive to the airport, small aircraft pilots still have options. At the other end, if you're traveling point-to-point, the ability to skip car rental and use your airplane might be an option as well. Obviously, a driveable airplane would be designed for short-distance driving. It's not a car replacement by any stretch of the imagination. (Yes, I am a certificated pilot.)

Re:solves the hangar space problem

[Zak3056]

I really shudder at the thought of something like this. It's scary enough what GA aircraft can be subject to at airports, but can you imagine trusting your $150,000 light aircraft to the mercies of rush hour traffic? You're a braver man than I am...

Re:solves the hangar space problem

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a great concept but one or two things worry me. Really it's just one thing. Damage. Fender-benders, vandalism.

Bumps and scrapes in a car are one thing and happen from time to time to most cars. Most of the time, you can keep on driving to work or whatever.

But have a fender-bender in a flying car and first thing, it won't fly again until it's repaired or at least inspected. I can even foresee idiots out for kicks deliberately damaging such cars just to cause hassle for the owners.

The only worse thing -and again it applies to accidental and deliberate damage- is damage that happens and is NOT noticed by the pilot/driver until it's too late.

Pilot/drivers are going to have to be incredibly observant and careful about their machines even more so than regular GA pilots. Why? You can leave you plane at an airport and be reasonably certain it will sit there unmolested. With a flying car, you won't be able to leave it unattended for even a second lest some curious person go poking around the strange machine that doesn't belong in the parking lot.

In my area, it would probably help if the car was also bulletproof because I can assure you the locals will test for that.

Re:solves the hangar space problem

[dintech]

People drive even more expensive cars on the road all the time. You see, we have this thing called insurance...

Re:solves the hangar space problem

[Zak3056]

If someone pushes in the fender of your Ferrari, it's cosmetic, and an annoyance. You take the car to a body and fender shop (as upscale as you want to be... it IS a Ferrari, after all) and they fix your vehicle in a couple of hours, maybe a day or three.

If someone pushes in the "fender" of this car/plane hybrid, it's a damaged airfoil and potentially hazardous. You take it to a federally certificated A&P mechanic, of which there are relatively few these days--your airport may or may not have one--who will take a couple of days if you're lucky, and weeks to months if you're not.

This is not an apples to apples comparison.

You keep using that word

[blueZ3]

I do not think it means what you think it means

(My name is NOT Inago Montoya)

Re:You keep using that word

[Spatial]

As always, a clever ploy... Inigo.

The most important question, though...

[jwriney]

is why they decided to make the thing so unspeakably, shit-hammeringly ugly.

According to the old aviator adage, "If it looks good, it flies good," this thing will fly about as well as a charred Strawberry Pop-Tart.

Re:The most important question, though...

[QuantumG]

Agreed, they could have at least made it look like an SUV.. that thing looks like it is made for a European market.

Re:The most important question, though...

[duckInferno]

Speak for yourself. I think it looks way cool. Add the rubberneckable "holy shit a flying c- I mean, drivable plane" factor...

Half of one, 6 dozen of another

[randmcnatt]

Aircraft make lousy cars and boats; boats make lousy cars and aircraft; cars make lousy boats and aircraft. And none of them make good helicopters.

Re:Half of one, 6 dozen of another

[Lanoitarus]

"Aircraft make lousy cars and boats ... And none of them make good helicopters."

Yeah, and helicopters don't make good aircraft! Wait.... ;)

Unimaginable? I beg to differ, but where'd it go?

[Animaether]

Really, we used to - this has been some time ago - have new front page posts about a particularly popular topic and have some of the most insightful comments, often from differing views, rehashed as a starting point for a far more interesting comments thread than the original story's (with dozens of trolls, flamebaits, ill-informed comments, etc. often based on just the title or summary).

In fact, the section is still there. So is the link. Welcome to BackSlash: http://backslash.slashdot.org/

But where the heck did it go? Did the 'editors' realize that "whew boy, this sure is hard work!"? I never found any information on why it seems to have suddenly just stopped dead.
Maybe I missed a comment from an 'editor' somewhere in an unrelated thread, perhaps it's under some catch-all in the FAQ (it's not listed as a section in the "What are the sections for?" item).
What I do know is: I miss it.

Now to see if I'll get a +5 Off-topic..

When is a car not a car....

[fermion]

When it is a living room.

No one thought there was a problem building a living room car that every one can afford. Many people still do not. To many people, the living room car is a reasonable and necessary item. Many even invest in tricking out their living room car with full entertainment centers. The benefits are clear. So much time is spent in a car, wouldn't it be great to have all the comforts of a living room. A beer, a tv, a phone. Room to spread out, get conformable, even made engage in intimate relations. And there is little to show that this is a bad thing. The drive is more conformable. Oil prices are up, which is good thing unless one is stupid enough to live in an oil poor region. General safety is up, unless one is stupid enough to drive a car that is not a living room.

Reading through the summary and responses there seems to be this same air of uncertainty that existed when the auto manufacturers were using a loophole in a law so that farmers could continue to farm to provide cheap inefficient cars to the masses. There is nothing particularly wrong with it. There is no reason why a person who can afford it should not have a aircar, or a land yacht, or anything else they think they need to be happy. However, such things do have long term effect on the human condition. Speaking personally, there are already severe safety issues on my street dealing with land yachts that they streets are too narrow to accommodate, especially at the speeds that these drivers like to travel. I can imagine somebody buying one of these, and trying to land. At the very least, i would expect a lawsuit demanding that we cut down the trees and pave the front yards to accommodate such planes. And don't laugh. Similar lawsuits have been filed as people wish to reclaim overgrown land for their big houses and big cars.

landing places

[alrudd1287]

as a pilot, i love the idea of being able to fly into a tiny strip by the beach and then drive the few miles to the nearby town. what i want to know is what stops someone from landing on a country road somewhere and then folding up their plane and saying 'oh no officer, i drove here'? there are plenty of roads that are landable around.

Re:landing places

[rcw-home]

what stops someone from landing on a country road somewhere

Gas stations and road signs. I'm sure they'll make a law just for you though.

Re:landing places

[Dare nMc]

fly into a tiny strip by the beach and then drive

The article did make me wonder, seams like 80% of the functionality here would be covered by a Vespa stuck inside a normal small plane. driving home to park/repair, and the bad weather recovery (always put the vespa in a rental, and come back another day for the plane, the non ultra wealthy, this is doable quite often for the price.)

saying 'oh no officer, i drove here'

same thing that stops a sport bike rider from driving 200MPH then slowing to 50, and saying I was always driving 50. IE if you did it, and you came out safe, and no one saw, then why should I care?

Re:landing places

[elrous0]

It's actually legal to use roads as runways in Alaska. Planes even get the right-of-way when taxiing.

Flying car a great idea!

[Anonymous Coward]

Once all training is out of the way, for safety reasons the craft would no be allowed to go into plane mode in populated areas. So one would have to drive to a 'take off' zone and fly away. and if someone was allready flying, and tryed to fly into a populated area, the computer would take over and fly them away. yes, it is just that simple.

Thanks for the response

[AeroIllini]

I'd like to take the opportunity to thank Carl for his well thought-out response. It's not every day that busy entrepreneurial CEOs take time out of their schedules to address the unwashed internet masses.

I think this project has a lot of potential. I'm always surprised at the attitude people have that "well, I wouldn't buy it, therefore it's not a good product." News flash, folks: there are market segments you are not a part of. Just because not everyone would buy something doesn't mean no one will. Judging from the number of preorders this has gotten (and knowing many general aviation pilots who would leap at an opportunity to own something like this), I would say it has been very well received.

And he's right about the timing. While carbon fiber technology has existed for a long time now, it is just now gaining traction in general-purpose manufacturing, and the economies of scale are bringing the price down to the point where products can be built with it for roughly the same cost as some other materials. The convergence of affordable composite manufacturing and a new type of sport-plane license have finally made this type of vehicle possible.

The licensing programs for general aviation are much more strict than they are for automobiles. If this vehicle inspires regular car drivers to get their VFR licenses, I suspect the training will also make them better drivers.

However, I don't envy the cost of Terrafugia's product certification program. This vehicle needs to be certified to both FAA and NHTSA standards, which aircraft and automobile companies spend many millions on separately, just for the paperwork alone. Godspeed to the certification team!

Re:Thanks for the response

[Anonymous Coward]

For security, the MD5 hash of this message and sig is 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0. % MD5SUM msg
8a7844f4466a355b388b6babd084f6f8c

Run in cygwin but I tested it with dos2unix and got the same checksum.

Re:Thanks for the response

[kieran]

If this vehicle inspires regular car drivers to get their VFR licenses, I suspect the training will also make them better drivers.

Tell that to my friend Pete, who nearly crashed his car into a roundabout after a flying lesson because his brain thought the accelerator was the right rudder...

Re:Thanks for the response

[AeroIllini]

That's just a user interface problem...

Phantom 2 With Wings!

[Vampyre_Dark]

This reminds me a lot of the Phantom. A lot of big talk, and low quality 3D renders. They spend all their time trying to convince you that it's real, and 0% of the time doing anything to actually make it a reality.

However, you can pre-order one! Just ask all their investors. The only thing that will fly here, is their money!

Re:Unimaginable? I beg to differ, but where'd it g

[metlin]

Interestingly enough, I find a Backslash article on the front page right about now.

Maybe the editors *do* read our comments, after all! =)

I pity the...

[Anonymous Coward]

...pedestrians who walk in front of you and become hamburger.

If you had R'd TFA...

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Dudes: If it flies it requires FAA certification. You may return to your crack pipes now.

If you had read the fine article you'd have seen that there were two major components to the answer for "Why now when it has always before been infeasible?":

  1) New materials make it technically feasible.

  2) New FAA regulations, creating a new class of aircraft (Light Sport) that's drastically easier to certify, makes it bureaucratically feasible.

I believe 2) completely answers your objection.

But thank you for playing.

No no no..

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats not the question.. The question is.. But will it BLEND?!

But making everyone else do things their way...

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Maybe he's not interested in "solving real problems" but making a fun toy. If you want to "advance society" knock yourself out but don't try to force everyone else to do things your way.

But making everyone else do things their way is how people who claim to be "advancing society" have their fun: using the rest of us as their toys.

And they consider it necessary. After all, "society" is everybody (except when it's "everybody but YOU"). To "advance" it they have to change the behavior of its members. Of course they change it to be more in line with what they consider "advanced".

If the poor, benighted people were happy doing things in a "less advanced" but more self-directed way, tough!

Re:Unimaginable? I beg to differ, but where'd it g

[RobBebop]

Off-topic mods for this article are reserved for anybody who mentions soviet Russia, Natalie portman and hot grits, or flying cars. Your helpful discussion of Backslash actually got a +5 Insightful mod.

Walk around inspections

[QuantumG]

The article mentions walk around inspections. He talks these up and I've heard other pilots do this too. I'm sure it is a good thing to do, if you fly infrequently. If you're flying much more often and that really is the point of this vehicle, to get pilots flying more, then a visual inspection is just "eyeballing" .. you're going to get complacent and miss things. With today's technology is there really any need? Even light planes can have a sensor array network with computer analysis of the sensor data giving a green light to fly or not. Aircraft is so behind the times in this way. Even the big commercial operators get by with people visually inspecting the plane.

Re:Walk around inspections

[yabos]

The main checks are to see if your pitot tube(tells you air speed) is working and not full of junk, check your tires for wear, check brakes for leaks, check wings for dents or other damage, check your fuel to make sure it's actually full and your gauge is correct, check that your control surfaces move freely, check propellor for damage, etc. I'm not a pilot yet but these are most of the things you visually inspect. Tell me any computer that could do all that for you. You are right that if you just landed an hour ago that not much has changed most likely and you *can* skip the checks if you want. It's your life, just don't take up any one else if you crash or don't aim for people on the ground when you run out of fuel.

Re:Walk around inspections

[QuantumG]

Sure, all of that could be automated.. a lot of what you've said have already been automated for cars.

Re:Walk around inspections

[nexuspal]

One of the inspections that may have some trouble with automation is checking the frame. I know helicopters, and I would assume airplanes as well, have paint that flakes to a different color if there is a problem with a weld, so one can tell right away that a joint is dangerously close to failing. I don't see your average mom and pop commuter doing such an inspection each and every time they fly...

Re:Walk around inspections

[YrWrstNtmr]

Sure, all of that could be automated.. a lot of what you've said have already been automated for cars.

It's already automated for a lot of aircraft. And pilots still do an eyeball handson walkaround because you can't just stop when something breaks, even after the computer told you it was OK.

Re:Walk around inspections

[tweak13]

That's interesting, I've never heard about paint like that before. All the light aircraft I've flown are riveted, not welded though. As such, visual inspections just pretty much involve looking for holes where rivets should be.

Re:Walk around inspections

[Arimus]

How often do you use a piece of software which goes wrong?

Now do you want to get into an aircraft which has got software carrying out the basic safety checks?

Even if the software comes as SIL 3 or better I'll still do the pre-flight checks by eye thanks (Oh and I skip the part about checking fuel - not much need on a 'straight' glider - actually I'd be worried if I did find fuel ;) )

Re:Walk around inspections

[Arimus]

Remind me not post prior to consuming coffee. Replace software with system in the final paragraph...

Comparing apples to oranges

[VampireByte]

Not a good comparison. Those cars typically seat four adults. This thing seats 2 (read the older article on this topic). Two seater cars (other than sports cars, again, toys for the rich) get much better than 27.5 mpg. The Honda Insight is a two seater hybrid getting 60 mpg city / 66 highway.

Re:Comparing apples to oranges

[cecil_turtle]

As pointed out above, for a longer trip a plane will generally go straighter and thus cover fewer miles overall. Also 4 seats vs. 2 is only an efficiency advantage if people are actually sitting in them. What percentage of time are 4 seats used in a four-seat car vs. just one or two? I would assume a very small percentage.

iPlane

[mreggen]

No parachute. Less range than a Cessna. Lame.

the real solution

[jollyreaper]

The problem with flying cars, as has been pointed out, are a matter of piloting. If we can automate air traffic control and the autopilot so that there's no human control required, then it's practical.

Re:the real solution

[jollyreaper]

Off-topic? Fuck you, sir.

Cognitive bias

[Goonie]

Basically, you're falling prey to two classic biases.

1) You remember things that rise in price, and forget things that fall.
2) You remember things you buy all the time, and forget things you buy every so often.

As it turns out, gasoline and food - which you buy all the time - have gone up a lot. Things that you buy relatively infrequently, like big-ticket electronics, have dropped dramatically.

Re:Cognitive bias

[Anonymous Coward]

do they account for moore's law?

Re:Cognitive bias

[Anonymous Coward]

So the big screen TV I could get if I was rich helps pay for my beans and rice?

It's a scam

[Anonymous Coward]

There's still no explanation about how to make something that weighs 1/2 as much as a car meet the same crash test ratings, just some bullshit about advanced composites. There's already a lot of carbon fiber and advanced composites flying. The reason I think this is a scam is that there's nothing published, at all, about FAA certification. The FAA is hostile to all innovation (it's by nature a very CYA organization) and certifying the manufacturing process of an existing, certified design takes a year. Certifying a new aircraft with new technology will be an incredible hurdle. I think this is an elegant scam or a pipe dream.

Re:It's a scam

[NeMon'ess]

The article clearly talks about a safety cage. My first thought is that it'll be similar to the Smart car cages, just made of lighter materials.

For hobby pilots, not for everyone

[Raven737]

I see this not as a car replacement for everyone but a great convenience for hobby pilots.
With this you can own your own airplane without having to leave it at the airport (with all that this might entail, such as airplane hanger/parking/club affiliation cost etc). Also great when flying to another airport (visiting relatives for example) because you don't have to worry about leaving your plane there.

Of course this convenience will probably come at steep premium compared to other small planes and ultra light aircraft but it probably makes sense if you depend on a larger airport (class C for example) and don't have to park it there. Although i wonder how/where you would enter the airport ground environment.

Flying Under The Influence.....

[IHC Navistar]

Let's see, what dangerous things do people do while driving:

1) Drink
2) Drive while sleepy
3) Take imparing edications (like painkillers)
4) Shave
5) Read the paper
6) Talk on cell phones
7) Fiddle with the radio
8) Drive recklessly
9) Ignore posted traffic signs
10) Eat .....and probably more. So, what is to stop his customers of "Suburban Pilots" from doing these things? Now, he wants to COMBINE the two.

In a worst-case scenario, a drunk or willfully impaired pilot will crash their plane and kill people on the ground. In a best case scenario, the pilot will crash and only kill themselves, eliminating the chance they will make the same bad choice again.

For some reason, this idiot thinks flying should be a casual activity. Unfortunately, that's not the case: Flying is NOT a casual activity, even for pilots. It may be relaxing and recreational, but even then its something that requires serious attention. I am not a pilot, but I am pretty sure pilots would not take the act of flying with the same approach as driving to the corner store.

Furthermore, there is the question of maintenance: As a mechanic, I've see nhow people maintain their cars: They don't. The biggest excuse is cost, with "It was making funny sounds", a "little light came on", or "I think something is wrong". Usually, people wait until a minor problem (such as an oil change being needed or a small radiator leak) becomes a major problem (engine seizes or radiator hose fails). If his target customers can't afford to perform maintenance on their cars WHEN ITS NEEDED, what's to say they'll fix their planes when it's needed?

Also, one needs to compare the accident rates for proffesionals (i.e. people who do it for a living, or spend the vast majority of their time doing it):

Driving: Compare the accident rates of proffesional drivers, such as stunt car drivers, test drivers, and race car drivers (who are driving outside of a racing environment) with those who drive to work, school, the store, etc.

Flying: Compare the accident rates of recreational pilots with those who fly for airlines.

The difference betwee the two isn't as significant as that between average drivers and professional drivers, but it will become far more pronounced if the idea of marketing these "cars/planes" succeeds. Plus, when a plane crashes, it does damage to whatever stops it, much like cars, only alot more since it's falling from tens of thousands of feet and moving at about 200 MPH.

Also, provided any insurance company insures it, just how much will it be? I seriously doubt this will pass a crash test, either from falling from the sky or getting hit by another car.

Someone needs to teach this guy: An exotic idea isn't always a good one. Hybrid planes/cars are a good example.

Re:Flying Under The Influence.....

[NeMon'ess]

You still didn't read the fucking article did you? If you had, you'd be thinking about this as a drivable plane. Your crap about drunk driving and drunk flying could happen today in regular planes. Some drunk pilot kills himself and others. What stops him from flying drunk is the same thing that will stop him from driving drunk. Plus I'm betting there are harsher penalties if a pilot crashes and is found to have been drinking.

Maintenance - this is a plane meaning regular maintenance is still expected. Anyone not maintaining this is just about as bad as not maintaining a regular airplane. Since these can only be flown by certified pilots, either they have the proper respect for maintenance or they don't.

Insurance - supposedly it could have about the same insurance costs as a regular small airplane.

Crashing - if you read the article you would know about the safety cage that makes it strong enough to protect people crashing into cars. That same cage actually makes it stronger and more protective than other small planes which are more fragile. Furthermore, if it should start falling out of the sky, it will have a parachute. Some new aircraft have them, while most old ones don't. The parachute will make it extremely survivable if it falls from the sky.

Re:Flying Under The Influence.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Insurance - supposedly it could have about the same insurance costs as a regular small airplane.

Well, *I* did read TFA, and I still don't quite believe this. He talks about deformable bumpers protecting the vehicle from parking lot fender-benders, but I think the real issue is the slightly more serious accidents that occur on freeways or surface streets. These sorts of accidents *would* render the vehicle un-airworthy, and likely entail costly repairs (remember, the standard Aviation Maintenance Unit is one kilodollar).

In short, this vehicle is going to combine the same frequency of accidents as regular cars with the high cost of aviation repairs. I just can't see a way to justify the statement that insurance premiums would only cost as much as those of other light planes.

Crashing...

Airframe parachutes are seriously overrated. I've read that Cirrus installs them as standard equipment because it's the only demonstrated way to recover from a spin. Few other manufacturers include them as standard equipment.

There aren't many situations where it makes sense to use the 'chute in a regular airplane. That's partly because doing so usually totals the airframe.

hit the convert button...

[someone1234]

in the air, and you are on your way - LOL.

As Always

[willy everlearn]

Feasible != Practical

Re:Unimaginable? I beg to differ, but where'd it g

[Animaether]

Sadly, that's not on the front page; unless you have a custom front page that always shows backslash articles... from August 2006 :\

Blind spot

[Anonymous Coward]

Did anyone notice the small obstacle in the blind spot?

A Private Pilot & Consultant's Point of View

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a tech-sector consultant. My job is 100% travel. I drive or take a commercial flight to a client site, spend a certain number of days there, then return home. I am also a licensed private pilot (PPSEL, not IFR yet, but I've been wanting to get a "wet ticket" for a long time)

I have about a 6hr tolerance for the time/distance I am willing to drive in order to avoid having to fly commercial. That's the distance at which the savings in wheels-up/wheels-down time in a commercial aircraft is nearly cancelled out by early arrival requirements, the time spent checking in, the time spent waiting for baggage, the time spent getting rental cars (or getting my car out of the park-n-save), the time spent driving to the job site (or home). At that point, the flexibility of leaving whenever I damn well please plus reduction in the likelihood that weather will affect my travel makes a compelling argument for driving myself. At that time/distance, the only good argument for flying commercial is the "let somebody else do the work" argument. If I let American or Continental take the wheel, I can reduce the pain of the delays by using the time productively (or sleeping).

If there were a roadable aircraft, it would be an attractive option for me. Nearly all the arguments for driving myself would apply. True, weather would be a much larger factor, but the ability to "drive under" the bad stuff would make up for it somewhat. I think the end result would be that I could extend the range of assignments I could take. I would also get home sooner at the end of the week, spend less on expenses (no rental car, no parking, no commercial flight). If my employer were receptive to the idea, I could expense the cost of the flight. If not, I could incorporate as a FAA Part 135 air taxi and invoice myself for it and submit the receipts. Worst case, I could submit an expense report for the miles I would have driven. At the current $0.55 rate, it would at least pay for gas. The FAA Part 135 air taxi is probaby the best way to go- the requirements are a little stricter than for simply owning an aircraft (commercial license, 100hr inspections not yearly, etc.), but is that such a bad thing if I were planning to use the aircraft in that manner?

Anyway, from my point of view I hope this thing takes off. I'd be able to spend more time with my family and more time in the air, both of which I love. And as an added benefit, I will be better able to serve my customers. So either way, I am eagerly awaiting this project.

Seen who's driving lately?

[Anonymous Coward]

Feasible or not, have you seen who's driving on our streets lately? Either the IQ curve is lowering or people are trying to drive with their head somewhere else besides their shoulders.

If you put the average driver in an airplane, it'll make 9/11 look like a joke. We'll have people crash landing into God knows what and no airbag or ABS will save their sorry asses then.

Wouldn't it be better...?

[StCredZero]

To eliminate the super-long commute?

power plants not instant

[Geoff-with-a-G]

Oil is still cheap, but The *second* oil becomes too expensive, there will be a ton of alternate energy sources available to tap.

I actually agree with almost all of your post, and the mindset you have of "we will deal with change as it comes, with the economy guiding us", but I think this one point is an important correction:

When nuclear power finally does become significantly cheaper than oil power, the switchover will not happen in one second, or even one year. The design, approval, and build time on nuclear plants in the US is around 10 years on the low side. Also, replacing gas stations with power stations will take a while too. But like you, I'm confident that the economy will help us all sort it out together, without any great disaster.

Perhaps the transition time will include more expensive energy and gas prices, and people will be forced to conserve a bit to save money. But that alone is far from catastrophe, and will likely bring efficiency improvements which would stand everyone in good stead when their new power plants come online.

Re:power plants not instant

[i_b_don]

That's true that there is more baggage associated with Nuclear power than with most other power types, however I think we're anti-nuclear power becuase we *can* be anti nuclear. If cheap oil/coal went away I believe we'd change our outlook on nuclear power well before we turned down the air-conditioner or started riding bikes around town.

The fact of he matter is we DO have nuclear power plants and once their built people just learn to live with them. Just becuase we can't get enough political willpower to build more today doesn't mean that it'll never happen. Political will is something that changes with economics too.

don