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Flying Car Flies From London To Africa
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."
Does it have to pay the London congestion charge?
"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?
"They modified a parajet fan that can fly a man into a bigger fan."
I'd rather have a flying car that doesn't fly me into ANY sized fan, thankyouverymuch.
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
The vehicle flying to Africa is more a proof-of-concept than anything else, a fully functioning engineering prototype. The actual flying car model is slated to be released next year and is supposed to be a real car.
Disclaimer: I work for one of their sponsors.
But is it an European or an African flying car?
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
Parajet might be the name of the company but they modified a paramotor, not a 'parajet'(it's propeller driven, not a jet engine) and rather than a parachute (as mentioned in the BBC article) I think they mean paraglider (it is designed to fly or glide, not to fall after all).
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*
Lol, this is a swampboat like they did "Wild Kingdom", Everglades shows with. Someone seems to have ran it up the backside of a dune buggy.
With the cab to act as a soundboard the pilot should be deaf before he crashes.But, we don't intervene, because this is natural selection and interference could change the future of these fascinating creatures.Here on the African plane, a cleanup crew of jackals then vultures will soon return whatever didn't burn to nature.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Don't know what to tell you, buddy. Plays fine for me using Flash in Firefox. x86_64, even.
This author takes full ownership and responsibility for the unpopular opinions outlined above.
I just narrowed it down to ABP a few minutes ago, but I have a strong aversion to having to swallow even that small amount of castor oil to get to the video.
I'm running Firefox with NoScript and Adblock Plus - didn't have to disable Adblock Plus to see the video, but I did have to manually reload the page after allowing it under NoScript in order to load the video.
... engineers have managed to build a diving car by strapping a weight to a sand buggy. The diving car is expected to reach the bottom of the Mariana Trench later this evening.
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
Not if your net worth is below something like $5,000,000. Those poor multi-millionaires!
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. :)