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DARPA Kick-Starts Flying Car Program
coondoggie writes to share that DARPA is finally trying to make good on the promise of flying cars for our future with the new "Transformer" (TX) project. "DARPA said the vehicle will need to be able to drive on prepared surface and light off-road conditions, as well as support Vertical Takeoff and Landing (VTOL) features.
The TX will also support range and speed efficiencies that will allow for missions to be performed on a single tank of fuel. DARPA said the TX will 'provide the flexibility to adapt to traditional and asymmetric threats by providing the operator unimpeded movement over difficult terrain. In addition, transportation is no longer restricted to trafficable terrain that tends to makes movement predictable.'"
Darpa schmarpa!
Whatever happened to that DARPANET they used to have? Losers.
Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
I never liked the idea to let people have flying cars. They can't even drive on the ground so why letting them road-rage in the air too?
Teleporter is such a better idea anyway.
who tagged this "fixtheeconomyfirst"?
like darpa projects never lead to civil advances?
or like it's darpa's job to fixtheeconomy?
Or is it still Real Soon Now?
ObXKCD
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Can't they put a starter motor in the thing? I'd hate to have to get out, kick-start the thing, and have it fly away; that'd be almost as bad as having an old crank-start car trying to run you over.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
You are genuinely and thoroughly stupid, because you truly believe that DARPA is in charge of the American economy.
I'm guessing it's an argument more like, "why are we allocating a bunch of money to [x], when [priority y] is more important, and we don't have unlimited money".
It's an odd sort of argument, in that it make sense to some extent, but in practice has to be ignored to some extent also, or we'll never do anything except really basic stuff. For example, if you have extra money you're thinking of donating to charity, why donate to the EFF, or to support an artist you like, when kids are dying in Africa; that's surely more important, right?
The more high-level question makes some sense though: is our current overall allocation of money to the military the proper level, or should it be reduced to free up money for other priorities?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
A nuclear warhead from a railgun. Just watch out darpa chief for heart attacks
They want a fast roadable vehicle that does VTOL and long-distance all on a single tank of gas?
How much does the grant include for the development of unobtanium-powered engines?
Or have they finally waterboarded the Little Green Men at Area 51 sufficiently to reveal how to distill two-headed Martial Elvis babies into flying saucer fuel, and this is just the setup for the cover story preceding the public unveiling?
Cheers,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
One of the first tags on this story was "fixtheeconomyfirst"... but the core problem in our economy is that the dichotomy between wealthy investors and owner calss, and the mass of stagnant income earner class who mostly provide service to eachother and the wealthy. Flashy inefficient technology like these are about all we can do at this point to get anything out of the currently rather sheepish investors/owners. Our political system will NOT be fixing this situation anytime soon - not when money spent on campaigns is considered "political speech", and corporations are counted as people for those related rights.
Still, if most golden-parachute equipped managers can be convinced to sign a bankruptcy inducing contract just because one of these things are SO flying-car-smexy, and they can only get it through these government channels fully equipped to extract that money - then there's a chance to reduce their political power. And that WOULD fix the economy, in a roundabout way.
Not going to happen - but like with cheap flying cars, one can always dream.
Ryan Fenton
HumVTOL.
Welcome to civilization, where "unsolvable" problems are tackled with technology, ingenuity, and a desire for human progress.
Oh, never mind. This is 21st Century America, where nothing is possible, and every dollar not spent on weapons technology, luxury goods, or puerile entertainment is "wasted." I keep forgetting.
This nonsense from the same bastards that said we could build a worldwide computer network that may change the world as we know it, and wasted hundreds of millions of dollars developing it. Morons!
The workshop will: (a) Introduce the research community (industry, academia, and Government) to the TX program vision and objectives;
So who wants to start a pool on which agencies/industry power hitters make the biggest contributions? Lockheed Martin has a great military aircraft record but Boeing seems to work magic in the advanced controls systems. Personally I would put my money on Northrop Gruman or some university coming up with the most significant design contributions. Both of those sources have quite the tenacity for half-crazed cutting edge ideas that the government loves to gobble up.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
Prior art: I think batman has one of these already.
We don't need flying cars. Flying cars = Falling cars. Add in volatile fuel and you have bombs. What they need to work on is a car that will hover about 2-3 feet above the ground. A hover car would eliminate the need for paved roads, road maintenance, bridges, bridge maintenance, etc... You just need lane guides and median dividers.
"In addition, transportation is no longer restricted to trafficable terrain that tends to makes movement predictable.'"
If this technology is being developed for war, it's a pork barrel project.
Who needs an enemy to be predictable, just NOISY , and all elements of surprise are lost.
It's all fun and games till numb-nuts ram flying crafts into a buildings. Oh wait...
Life is not for the lazy.
No real military use for this thing.
If you see it, you can kill it, with RPGs or whatever, so hovering in the air merely increases the range from which it can be struck.
Then there are no current levitation systems that don't involve massive airflow, making a huge dust cloud (also ingesting all kinds of junk into the engines)
Then they mention "asymmetric threats" because everyone knows that guarantees grant money, but in my opinion using a levitating APC or whatever in the middle east would be fairly suicidal...
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Want to bet that this will lead to a whole new section of Darwin Awards?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
If it's a VTOL vehicle, why the need for roads?
Concrete puts out a lot of CO2, both making it, mixing it and hauling it, and as it decomposes. If we had flying cars we would not need concrete for roads so we could factor that in to the flying cars carbon footprint. I can't wait to get mine.
Arpanet was slow, incredibly laggy, incapable of supporting a huge userbase, and as a result, impractical except in limited military and large-scale academic applications. It was largely ignored by the general public, and was of little value to society at large. It became the internet.
The original GPS system was horrifically expensive, and had a large enough margin of error that it was mainly used for coordinating naval fleets, where being a few hundred feet off course generally wasn't an issue in the middle of an ocean. You can now buy a fairly cheap device that both visually and verbally directs you through cities, usually with a margin of error of no more than 3 meters.
Note that in both cases, it only took about 20 years to go from an expensive, limited technology that the military had limited use for and civilians had none at all, to a common technology that no one thinks twice about using. So yes... the original flying car is going to be slow, terribly inefficient, and useless except in battlefields that it fits perfectly... but give it a decade or two, and you just may be driving one.
Also, keep in mind that even if taking off burns a huge amount of fuel, and your air MPG is not better than your ground MPG, the fact that you can aim in a straight line to your destination instead of following roads is going to save fuel on anything but very short trips... and you can still drive for those.
Flying cars are a really bad idea.
The vast majority of drivers are failing in 2D.
Add another dimension to fail in and the problem explodes.
I also don't want them over my house, land, pastures.
Costs and fuel consumption will hopefully kill this dead.
I recommend not living or working in any high rise buildings after flying cars are mainstreamed....
Here comes Mr. Alluh Fubar in an Aerial Audi.
Duck and Cover
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
I dont give a crap about the environment, but flying cars are much greener then regular cars. As previously stated modern planes nowadays achieve better efficiency then most SUV's, and trip times will be majorly shorter, thus less fuel will be used in achieving a journey. Provided consumption rates can be kept similar to present planes or even large cars, being able to travel directly to your location in a straight line, as well as (with our current population at least) having no such thing as traffic jams since if the guy in front of you slows down just go above him.
Fucker couldn't even remember Meryl's codec number and I RENTED THE GAME.
Not really, I owned it.
When I was in a Blockbuster after having played it, I looked on their case for MGS (a standard DVD-style case with their printed out BLOCKBUSTER sleeve, not the real one) and they DID in fact reprint Meryl's codec number.
I was pleasantly surprised, though I do know it was a problem for a bunch of people. Apparently Meryl calls you eventually anyway, though.
I say just slap a 6 wheel chassis under an Osprey. I mean that conversion will cost less than converting a HUMVEE right? And the wings and blades of the Osprey fold down anyway. I can't imagine the Osprey being any bigger and bulkier than an MRAP or another one of those mine resistant vehicles.
Namaste
I'd venture a guess that the whole reason this is being researched by DARPA is because of the high number of casualties caused by roadside bombs. If an insurgent enemy knows that you must transport personnel and materiel via existing roads, it makes it easy to target you without being seen. The US wants an engagement where they know where the enemy is. The US doesn't want an engagement where the enemy knows where they are (i.e., on the road) but the enemy can himself remain hidden while inflicting damage.
If you have a vehicle that allows you to choose a more unpredictable path (i.e., not always use roads) then an insurgent enemy has one of their most effective weapons taken from them. In effect, a vehicle like this would force an insurgent enemy to come out into the open to attack it. This is a good thing if, like the US, you have superior weapons, logistics, communication, air support, etc. The enemy must reveal their position, for example, to fire an RPG, and experience shows that when they reveal their position, they die.
There is no way a flying car can use a reasonable amount of energy. Giving this to all the civilians in the US will cripple the environment for certain. The US should give money to DARPA - but why not instead something a little more holistic, low cost energy (limit the need for resource-competition, avoid the "war" problems in the first place)
Unless you are wearing camos with bars on the shoulders, I don't think DARPA is funding this for YOUR future!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I got so high in my car last night!
The initial momentum vertically is the highest energy requirement, which severely limits payload as energy storage becomes a huge issue. Large fan blades are probably not possible as well.
Perhaps a spring or hydraulic based jump-start system (undercarriage paddles?) could enable a vehicle to begin large hops while engaging a ducted fan system that doesn't give full lift, but can slow a landing. For full flight, I suspect a folded wing system of some kind will be necessary.
With our new push toward green, you'll see less travel in the blue. My bet is that the carbon footprint of any flying car will be perfect for Gore to replace his plane, but be prohibitive for us common folks. Unless this flies producing only water vapor as a result of any combustion, of course.
jsut athnoer menagiensls ltitle psrhae for you to dcoede. Why do we wtsae our tmie dnoig tihs?
... provide the flexibility to adapt to traditional and asymmetric threats ...
Excellent, it's being prepared to handle South Australian drivers then. Sweet.
--Greg
"Only thirty-nine, nine-ninety-nine, ninety-five."
Remember when that sounded like a lot of money for a flying car?
Are flying cars even feasible? The energy required to push a car forward is nothing compared to the energy needed to keep it in the air. Even if flying cars are developed, their not going to be economical until we get past the energy crisis.
Most human behaviour can be explained in terms of identity.
I would like to subscribe to your newsletter, if only for the reason that "it would be cool if it were true". And hey, maybe it is!
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
...but can I get my very own jetpack first?
Obviously, the request is ill-worded, but they explained well enough why they need it, or what they need: a land vehicle that can traverse terrain obstacles by using a vertical maneuver.
I imagine it should be something like a cross between Hummer and hovercraft (or some sort of low-flying chopper, using as much of ground effect as possible). That concept should allow the vehicle to go over landmines and pressure activated IEDs without setting them off, to skip over rough terrain and water obstacles, etc.
However, any vehicle which is associated with fast displacing air (and that includes fast moving land-only vehicles too) will rise clouds of dust visible from afar. For some values of fast, they are noisy too.
Unfortunately, as Vietnam war experiences clearly show, low flying instead of driving over ground is not enough to evade unmanned (and especially not enough to evade human operated) traps and IEDs: their fluid and ever adapting nature will shift to enable detection of this new "threat".
That's a quote from and the theme of "Flying Platforms and Jeeps" http://www.vectorsite.net/avplatfm.html all PD and referenced material on VTOL air/ground craft from 1950s to present. No, these weren't just a 50s and 60s fad. The last military oriented program was running in 2002. There have been greater and lesser successes within the class, but none have been successful compared to other vehicle types. When they compete with say, helos or hovercraft, they're just too inefficient. The amount of power it takes compared to their mass makes them notoriously hard to control.
Included in the web site referenced is the Avrocar, the 'flying saucer' built by AVRO for the US Army. When it wouldn't hover stable, the engineering team told the chief engineer that a flexible skirt would make it more efficient as well as stable. The chief engineer refused (likely was instructed to by management) and so missed out on developing the GEV (ground effect vehicle). ie. hovercraft.
One of the two Avrocars is on display in a military museum in Canada. The other suffered a great deal of rust damage on display outside the US Army Transportation Museum at Ft. Eustis, Virginia. It is now inside, waiting on a funding source that so far has not materialized that will pay for its refurbishment. Another attempt to salvage it, based on having it taken home to Canada, has progressed further in the talking phase thanks to many fans of AVRO and its products as well as authors of books on them, but has made no other progress. Full disclosure: I'm one of those fans, have been in talks with the authors, Canadian military and AVRO fans, and the Ft. Eustis museum. This is in large part to having been to the museum and seen the Avrocar many times (as well as being an AVRO Arrow fan), and having been stationed at Ft. Story, a satellite facility of Ft. Eustis, where we had a whole fleet of operational hovercraft. I'm not soliciting for it now, but hopefully someday soon.
Truly, the idea dies hard, with regards to both the future and the past efforts. Despite their problems, likely unsolvable, they'll keep building them. And we'll keep nostalgizing them.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
If I run out of gas in my car, it stalls and slows down to a stop which I can pull off to the side of the road.
When I run out of gas in my sky car and it stalls... err wait...
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-