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Flying Car Flies From London To Africa

Posted by timothy on from the laden-or-unladen dept.

krou writes "It may not be exactly what people have envisioned or tried over the years, such as the flying car in Bladerunner, or the previously reported Terrafugia Transition, but the BBC is reporting that a flying car (creatively dubbed the Skycar, but different from this Skycar) has flown from London across into Africa. They modified a parajet fan that can fly a man into a bigger fan with a canopy that is capable of flying a car."

11 of 148 comments (clear)

  1. Confusing Wording by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "They modified a parajet fan that can fly a man into a bigger fan with a canopy that is capable of flying a car."

    WTF?

    1. Re:Confusing Wording by Dmala · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I'm also having difficult envisioning how one flies across into Africa. "Into Africa" suggests a less than perfect landing, "across Africa" implies a much longer trip. I'm not sure how you do both.

    2. Re:Confusing Wording by Lifyre · · Score: 2, Insightful

      So he flew across what France and maybe some of Spain? It's not like it was someplace important...

      --
      I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
  2. It's just a simple paraglider...so what? by Ritz_Just_Ritz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What's all the hubub about? It's simply a paraglider that has been made large enough to carry a payload larger than a man (a car in this case). That's like saying someone who connects a blimp to a camper has invented a flying home. *shrug*

    1. Re:It's just a simple paraglider...so what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Where can I get a blimp that's connected to a camper? That sounds like a good idea.

    2. Re:It's just a simple paraglider...so what? by DragonWriter · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That's like saying someone who connects a blimp to a camper has invented a flying home.

      Or like saying someone who builds a house on top of a floatation hull has made a "houseboat".

    3. Re:It's just a simple paraglider...so what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      It's a car which can fly. What more do you need to qualify it as a flying car?

    4. Re:It's just a simple paraglider...so what? by superyooser · · Score: 2, Insightful

      That's like saying someone who connects a blimp to a camper has invented a flying home.

      That might be a good idea for getting mobile homes out of the way of tornadoes.

  3. Bigger news than you think by btempleton · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This is brilliant because it's simple. People have dreamed and worked on flying cars for ages. And failed. They could not figure a way around the trade-offs. Make it too much like a plane and it's hard to get the wings away for driving.

    With a cloth wing, this is mainly a car, but if you come to something you can't drive across, or want to fly over, and the weather is good, you can fly over it.

    It is not the car that takes off from your house like Moller or the Jetsons, nor a plane that only goes to airports. I think it's a very clever compromise. No reason for it to cost 50,000 pounds though, and soon it probably won't.

    --
    Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
  4. Re:Not sure about other places but the US has... by MadUndergrad · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Not if your net worth is below something like $5,000,000. Those poor multi-millionaires!

  5. Wonderful, and Practical by Thumper_SVX · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Lots of negative commentary here about the concept... but whatever.

    Honestly, I can see this being incredibly useful. There are areas in Africa specifically that are almost completely inaccessible, or very hard to access easily for medical or personnel reasons. Something like this I can see being extremely useful (and probably cheaper than an helicopter) because you can take off from any reasonably flat area, land within a mile or so of your destination and then drive to your destination.

    This concept takes a lot of the problems out of the equation that are involved in light aircraft (no ground transportation at your destination, needs at least a partially finished runway) or an helicopter (expensive to buy and maintain, pilot training is extremely expensive, sand in the engine is a BAD THING!). This thing could be used in these environments to improve the lot of those people.

    I don't see this as being really designed for the Western world, we have great roads and cars designed for that... but we are not "the world"... we are just a small part of it that sometimes thinks we are all there is.

    I love this concept... I can see so many practical uses for it... but hell, I'd love to fly one myself. :)