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Flying Car Ready To Take Off
ChazeFroy writes "The first flying automobile, equally at home in the sky or on the road, is scheduled to take to the air next month. If it survives its first test flight, the Terrafugia Transition, which can transform itself from a two-seater road car to a plane in 15 seconds, is expected to land in showrooms in about 18 months' time. Terrafugia claims it will be able to fly up to 500 miles on a single tank of unleaded petrol at a cruising speed of 115mph. Even at $200,000 per automobile, they have already received 40 orders."
seriously. most people can barely control a car on the ground. or even keep one properly maintained.
and you want to put these folks into the air? over your house? yeah... i don't think so.
thats what you call a 'bad idea'.
cap:unguided
I usually say this every time this comes up:
Putting stuff in the air is doable. Making an aircraft that can be piloted by you average citizen is quite another matter.
Car crashes can be quite bad as it is, but if you add a 1 km fall to every incident, the death toll would surely go up.
We would have to add steel plates to every roof to defend against distracted soccer moms raining down at terminal velocity.
I wonder how many airports are out there that have a path from the runway to the road that isn't fenced off or have some other barrier to getting this craft on the road.
In the air they have to obey the same rules as other planes. On the ground they have to obey the same rules as other cars. Simple as that. Also to fly one of these things you need a private pilot's license so it's not like any yuppie with 200K is going to be able to fly it.
wont stop them from trying tho, much like a lack of that pesky drivers license do not stop many from driving cars...
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
Maybe not but people don't seem to be stealing private aircraft very often. Maybe if this one was in your drive way it'd be more tempting to steal but it still looks like in order to fly it you have to unfold the wings by hand. It's not like James Bond where the wings fold out electrically and you fly away from the bad guys chasing you.
Well, the rules above ground are drafted for professionals with thousands of logged hours. We can either require that for everyone who wants to fly or we can draft simpler rules in height-confined airspace. Maybe we already have, in VFR flight levels, I don't know.
If people drive this like a car (even if they're qualified pilots) they may start to treat it like a car rather than like an aircraft and skip on servicing. The rest you can guess.
That's called evolution, baby! If you're the kind of person who's going to think "hey, that corrosion on the wing supports can wait 'till next year", and your still going to fly the thing, then you deserve what you get.
Oh no... it's the future.
"That's called evolution, baby! If you're the kind of person who's going to think "hey, that corrosion on the wing supports can wait 'till next year", and your still going to fly the thing, then you deserve what you get."
Yeah , but the people on the ground you land of top of don't.
Ever heard of this thing called a "pilot license?" Yeah... "most people" neither have them nor an opportunity to get one, and they'll be required to operate one of these things.
anyone that would drive a $200,000+ vehicle in the snow and salt is an idiot, and certainly not able to pass a pilots license requirement. That's the cool part, the pilot license requirement weeds out the idiots.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Think of the poor airline pilots, who have 100's of lives on board, restricted lanes to travel in, air traffic control to help guide them....now having to watch out for lunatics in personal flying cars swooping across the front of their cockpits. It'd be an interesting new approach for a terrorist attack.
Isn't that what air brakes are for? :-P
I would imagine these flying cars would have their own low-altitude restricted space to fly in. If that's the case, they wouldn't be anywhere near commercial jets, except maybe during the jets' take-off and landing.
Wouldn't these things also be linked to air traffic control?
Having a smoking section in a public restaurant is like having a peeing section in a public swimming pool.
There's really no correlation between financial success and intelligence. Those people in the rat race aren't happy anyway. Studies have shown that the American dream is a big fucking crock.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Natural selection is only good when it doesn't have the ability to take out people not associated with the idiots who are going to die.
Simulator time or not, 100 hrs @ $50/hr avg is going to be hard to come by. I think most folks end up closer to $7500/60 hrs.
Throw the bums out!
Not to burst your bubble, but quite a lot of more rural places have small airfields with little checking.
Some friends used to have one in back of their property that was shared by covenant between the 10 or 12 houses that shared the complex.
Everyone pitched in to maintain the grass airstrip. They had a windsock at the end, no lights or instruments, and it was listed on local aviation charts (along with lots of other like-rated strips).
Taking off in a plane wouldn't be the problem. Once you hit a high enough altitude, ATC will pick you up, that's when you'll start to have problem (unless you know what you're doing). Landing though is usually the part of flying that is the most difficult, even for a trained amateur, so I don't see "Joy flying" as being a big repeat sport (for the untrained).
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