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Flying Cars Hop Slightly Closer With FAA Weight Waiver
JimFive writes "For years we've been waiting for the flying car to arrive. The FAA has made an exemption that moves this one step closer to reality. Terrafugia has been granted a weight limit exemption for a 'Roadable Airplane.' Next up is passing the federal highway safety tests."
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Years? Anyone? Anyone....? Bueller?
- Moller Skycars: 1962
Try decades.....nearly two generations if you go back to when PM touted them as the next step in the American dream...
What people really want is personal airplanes they can buy for cheap, land anywhere, and manually control, like on the Jetson's, but probably better looking. Would any of you truly feel safe with that kind of thing mass-produced and essentially replacing the automobile? Most people have problems with 2-D control, much less 3-D. Even with multiple levels of safety systems, and a computer programmed to somehow prevent people from doing stupid things, I still don't trust any of you to not fly into my house. Too much can go wrong with flying objects everywhere, especially in the hands of the plebs.
Yes you see I've already got one. The flying, though, isn't the difficult part. It's the landing that's a bitch. Gravity sucks. Quick change of inertia sucks more.
People have enough trouble using their turn signals, safe following distances and I don't know, general road rules? Adding a 3rd dimension and 200mph is asking for chaos. So what we're talking about is a aircraft that fits in a domestic garage and has road-legal extended taxiing ability. It's still a aircraft first. Thankfully.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
I was told we would have flying cars in the year 2000. Where are my flying cars damnit!
...a flying fuck.
No, no, you've got it all wrong--it's a flying car. A flying fuck is an entirely different thing and, as anyone who's ever banged a flight attendant can attest, probably almost as much fun. Easier to find and no hangar fees to pay, either.
This ain't rocket surgery.
http://xkcd.com/678/
1500 pounds? Humm, you are going to drive that on the hwy? You are braver then I. I think the Jeep Wrangler weighs twice that. What kind of engine is in a 1500 pound plane, wait I know, what kind of safety cage is in that? Oh, wait I know that too.
6.8SPC TR of 550, l xwind at 6, drift rt at 26" drops 77". AT has 503 ft-lbs at 1403 fps. FT 0.86
We call them helicopters.
Most of you cannot afford one, and will never be able to afford one.
Tough shit for you.
I've got one.
- Clint Eastwood
Two favorite destinations for a flying fuck are a rolling doughnut and the moooooooon!
This is reality calling, you silly humans won't have the ENERGY for this nonsense! This is as deluded as all the Space Nuttery from the 1960s.
Not gonna happen!
Flying cars are a disastrously bad idea. People have a hard enough controlling cars on the ground in 2-D at slow speeds of 65 mph (legal). Put them in 3-D in the air all over the place, over people's homes and you have a total nightmare. Time for the home made anti-aircraft batteries.
The Terrafugia does save money on rental cars, but much more importantly, it makes it practical to use small airports where rental cars are difficult or impossible to obtain. On round trips with several days between the outbound and inbound legs, it is difficult or impossible to be sure that the weather will be aceptable for the return flight. With a roadable airplane, if the weather turns bad you just drive home instead of flying.
You're right, drivers aids in F1 were limited as to make driver participation a part of the sport. Drivers aids in current road automobiles are a reaction to the absolutely horrific driving skills of the average driver, or even worse, the aging driver.
Ocean is land, covered with water.
http://www.terrafugia.com/newsreleases.html
http://www.terrafugia.com/newsreleases.html#110
I hope these people can engineer better than they can spell. Maybe a slashdot editor is running their site..
NASA's Puffin flier looks like a better bet to me, partly because it's single-person, meaning it has a lighter power need and smaller parking profile.
Table-ized A.I.
Computer-control would be a better bet in urban areas. Not only would that reduce human error, but also find the safest emergency landing areas quickly using GIS databases.
Table-ized A.I.
let's say it works and people arent so retarded that they smash into stuff. what about security? right now, you can stop cars with barriers and planes... well, if you get close to a building with a plane, you are going to get your stupid ass shot down. so are all our high security buildings going to need SAMs to take out rogue cars? i can see the see the news now, some dumbass soccer mom gets blown out of the sky (and rightfully so) because she flew too close to a secure building. really flying cars are just like missiles.
Had a few to many the other night and left the stick up and bumped the back of the sky port. Jane had a fit and Astro peed on Rosie!
Light sport aircraft are permitted at major airports in the U.S., including Class B airports. You may be thinking of the modest restrictions on traditional Experimental Category aircraft. Pilots with a sport pilot license must receive additional training and a specific endorsement to fly to/from airports within Class B, C, and D airspace, but there's no restriction on the LSA, assuming it is transponder-equipped.
There have been at lest three flying cars in the past. There was Molt Taylor's Aerocar, one design in the 50's from an organization in Greenville, Texas, and another whose genesis I don't specifically remember. At least the Aerocar (and maybe the others) had FAA certification. Once the technical problems have been surmounted, it always winds up that the cars are using an expensive aircraft engine to drive down the road. The cost of driving goes up fantastically. People say they want a car that can be flown (or an aircraft that can be driven), but when it comes to actually buying it, the cost of operation drives them away rather quickly. The thing that distinguishes this latest effort is that it supposedly will meet the light sport aircraft (LSA) criteria. That would open it up to a much wider range of potential purchasers, since it could be flown with lessened pilot criteria. It's pretty obvious it didn't meet the LSA criteria. The FAA wavier is to allow this thing to be heavier than the LSA rules otherwise allow. I wish these people luck, but history suggests they are investing their development dollars in the wrong place.
Cost of operation should be in the ballpark for a typical aircraft. Granted, that's a lot more than a car, but it's a non-issue here, since this isn't intended to be a car replacement. Despite hype in headlines, this is meant to be used as a roadable aircraft, not a flyable car. No one will be looking to buy one who wasn't already looking at buying an airplane, and will expect it to cost as much as it actually does to operate. They're competing with Cessna, not Toyota, and they have an advantage that will be worth a little extra dough for some people.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
"you are way too fucking close" sort of light."
I am all the way in favor of this feature! Stupid drivers following too close is not limited to teenagers, but more teenagers do it than adults, in my experience. That feature should be mandatory.
The wavier they granted is to allow this aircraft to be consider "light-sport", which means you can fly it with out a third class medical. This is NOT that big a deal and the summary makes it sound like some sort of break-through and that the FAA has held everything up. This just not correct.
The flying car sucks because just like the moped, it doesn't excel at either it's missions. It can never be as good an airplane as one designed just for flying and it can never be a very nice, safe car either. I think goal is home garage to destination in one vehicle while flying above traffic. I think the best hope for that is the CarterCopter (http://www.cartercopters.com/). It's not a car, but it's an affordable, safe aircraft that can take-off and land vertically. The downside, it that these guys have been working for years....and making progress...but they probably have many years still to go, with little funding. The CarterCopter will never out run an airplane in it's same price range, but the vertical T.O. and landing makes up for that.
It's basically insane to REQUIRE crashworthiness for such an obviously special vehicle. I drive a Honda Helix, freeway legal. No crash tests.
As a long time /.er, you clearly will never have a need for any additional passengers!
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
It seems our FAA just made it a bit eaiser too as the raised the maximum weight for this thing to 1430 lbs see this CNN article.
it costs $194,000.00 USD so you know who is going to be buying this thing. Yup the CEO that is on his third by-pass operation and no medical certificate required. It is only 170 lbs lighter then a Cessna 150 which you cannot fly after you have had a by-pass operation because you cannot pass a 3rd class medical examine without an exemption from the FAA, which in the case of of heart problems is very very rare.
I hold a private pilots certificate and I passed a kidney stone, ONCE and it took me 6 months to get my medical certificate back and that was only after about $5000.00 USD worth of tests and examinations, not to mention the gross amounts of paperwork I had to file with the FAA. Kidney Stones hurt like hell, but at least I am not dead of a heart attack in the left seat.
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
Well, keep in mind that if you have a medical condition "that would make [you] unable to operate the aircraft in a safe manner," you're supposed to self-disqualify, even in an LSA.
Of course, you can also fly a Stemme motorglider with a 115hp Rotax, 140 knot cruise speed, and 1850 lbs MTOW with no medical whatsoever.
So my question is: Is the problem that medical requirements are overly weak for LSAs and gliders, or is it that they are overly burdensome for non-complex ASELs?
No they are not overly burdensome. I was pissed at the hoops I had to jump through but as a holder PP-SEL certificate I can fly figure eights of the the city of San Francisco, or Dallas or wherever and can land at any airport I want, yes even Washington National.
The problem is that this is a slippery slope because the people buying these things are going to be CEO's and the like then big time lawyers who think that their time is worth more then anyone else's and I am guessing a bunch of them will be K Street types and pretty soon they are going to want to land these things anywhere they want. Then the money starts to flow and a Congressman or Senator or 20 will get leaned on who will then in turn lean on the FAA and so forth and so on.
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
In Terrafugia's wildest dreams.
The CEOs and K Street types already have the helicopter exemption to FAR 91.119. They can already land wherever they want. Most of them have no interest in flying - for them a pilot is someone you hire, not someone you aspire to be.
You can't fly in to Washington National on a PPL-ASEL any more. It is closed to all Part 91 operations.