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Flying Car Crashes In British Columbia
First time accepted submitter vawarayer writes "An experimental car has crashed near a school in British Columbia, Canada. Only five cars like this have been produced. From the article: 'A release from the Transportation Safety Board (TSB) confirmed the flying car was "an American corporately registered I-Tech Maverick SP Powered Parachute" that had crashed.
The vehicle, known as "Maverick," uses a 100-metre runway to take off and flies under a parasail. But it also needs a 100-metre runway to make a safe landing.'"
Still waiting for my flying car..
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
Compared with normal cars, you have 50% more directions you can crash into something and gravity weakly prefers one of them.
...is the Whomping Willow ok?
A quick google image search its just a motorized paraglider with a car body.. I've flew a friend's motorized paraglider about 15 years ago and it was pretty scary getting off the ground with the extra weight and higher than I was used to speeds.. Once in the air, it was still subject to gusts of wind deflating the wing.. There are many safer ways to fly for $94,000.. But... glad no one was seriously hurt...
I'm guessing that the US-made car actually requires a 100 meter runway, but the Canadians substituted a 100 metre runway.
p.s. Insert obvious jokes about yards (or about rods and hogsheads) below.
What it mostly looks like is a car with a paragliding chute and a huge fan on the back.
Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
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Naming your flying car "Parachute" suggests you expect it to fail and necessitate the use of a parachute. Kind of like Dodge Aries implies your 22 hp hunk of metal is intended to ram into things.
I knew i should bring back antigrav tech in the last trip to the future.
Yes, the video leaves out the part where you gotta take off and fold up the parasail after landing. This isn't a jump in, drive to strip, take off, fly, land and just drive away.
This isdrive to strip, attach parasail, make sure it's spread out so that it'll unfold properly to give life, take off, fly, land, take off parasail, fold it up, drive to where you're going.
It's a nice toy - but impractical.
It is a streetable car, and it does fly. What was the specific complaint? That it doesn't look like you want one to look, and has more constraints on the flying cars you want? It's a powered paraglider contained within a car. You can drive the car to the runway and takeoff and fly. No, it's not the futuristic looking jet cars (like the Moller, 5 years away from approval/sale for 30 years now), but I fail to see how "flying car" doesn't apply.
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If it needs a 100m runway isn't it really just an untra-light plane?
A Helicopter is much closer to a flying car than this thing...
Yeah a flying car needs to be a functional replacement for the automobile. You need to be able to go to the groceries with it. Fly it to work. Fly the whole family on vacation. This is only useful for recreation.
When I hear the term flying car I picture something like the PAL-V (http://pal-v.com/), which had its maiden flight last year.
rather than a dune buggy with a powered parachute (as per the description in the article).
living the dream
Note to the manufacturer: substitute the paragliding gear with a hydrogen-filled, metal-framed dirigible. Ya, that's the ticket for great press coverage.
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
The real solutions are better urban planning that pulls people out of the wasteful suburbs and public transportation.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
People have tried for so many years now, and I think we are seeing a trend here now. It's almost impossible to create a flying car that hoovers stable with the technology available today, tomorrow and I predict the same for the next 30 years. And even if they get them stable, the cars will be so dangerous concerning in-air malfunction that they would require a complete double set of engines and fuel and at least two pilots.
You do the math.
So many have tried. So many companies has invested and lost their money. Still people seem to think that this will come and they think of how much they could earn in patents etc if they are able to materialize a stable solution.
It's a car that flies, so it's a flying car. Sorry if that doesn't satisfy your Jetsons dreams.
It's the 21st century!! Where is my flying car?
It's stuck in a tree, in British Columbia.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I-Tech Maverick SP Powered Parachute"
The first flying card I get in will not be named after wild cattle. It might be name after the most loyal of tame creatures or one of the more sedate birds (preferably one that floats too).
Actually, a gallon isn't the same as a gallon or the same as a gallon, if we mean Imperial gallons vs. U.S. liquid gallons vs. U.S. dry gallons.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
What are the rules for found flying cars in trees? Same as model rockets/kites? Finders keepers, get it down in one piece and it's yours?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
It is a streetable car, and it does fly.
The Maverick --- designed for medical missionary work and similar applications --- is an ATV that can take to the air with a reasonable payload when needed. Top speed in flight is a modest 40 mph. It was never intended for use in high winds or other extreme conditions.
When it's time to fly, the Maverick's central telescopic mast raises and acts as a wing spar for its chute, properly known as a ram-air wing. The flip of a switch diverts engine power from the rear wheels to the rear-mounted five-blade propeller, which propels the car across the ground, up to its take-off speed of 40mph (64km/h). Thanks to its ram-air wing design, the Maverick can take flight in only 300 feet (91 meters).
Once in the air, the vehicle's electronic fly-by-wire system allows the pilot to steer it with the steering wheel, just like they would on the ground. According to I-TEC, existing sport pilots can learn to fly the Maverick within 12 hours. A dash-mounted Garmin GPS allows for both aerial and ground-based navigation. In flight mode, it has a maximum payload of 330 pounds (150 kg).
The Maverick flying car
That thing is hardly a "flying car". More like a cheap dune buggy with an ultralight strapped to it. Even some of those autogyro craft qualify more as a "flying car".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgHSaNtAMjs
Here is a board that's white, so it's a whiteboard. Sorry if that doesn't satisfy your "but I need to write on this" dreams.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
If you're in Canada, Daily Planet carried this car earlier this month. They mentioned they were doing test flights.
OF course, you get to see a rather interesting takeoff int he clip. Alas, I think it's Canada only - not sure if the US Discovery channel has it on any of their channels (it's a Canadian production).
Guess we might see an update shortly.
Damn, I just used the last of my mod points.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
It's a car that flies, so it's a flying car. Sorry if that doesn't satisfy your Jetsons dreams.
I don't know if a two-seater kit-car with no cargo-space qualifies as a car by today's metric. It's a glorified motorcycle attached to a parasail.
It can fly and drive. But it doesn't look very maneuverable in the air (by nature of the high-drag parasail) and I wouldn't want to be in a road accident with it either... the other car will drive right though it.
Also, they make it street legal with a loophole: It's sold as a "kit car" and wouldn't pass the full road certification (no crash tests) required by what most people consider cars. You might as well try to drive a Cessna down the road and call it a kit.
Personally, I think that it's awesome, but it's clearly only meant for remote areas and not high traffic areas. Apparently it also needs a terrain avoidance system.
It's rubbish!
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Personally I think its a cool prototype (meaning does not need to be practical) but IMHO a flying car should have a performance improvement while in air. When this thing can go 2.5 times faster on the ground than in the air, it seems like it will be faster, and more efficient, to be on the ground 99% of the time (for my understanding of use of such a vehicle anyway).
Just my bent $0.02...
IMHO a flying car should have a performance improvement while in air.
In L.A., going 40 MPH in the air would be a 1000% improvement over going 4 MPH on the highway. Seriously though, it's not rocket science. First, you're limited to speed by the speed limit, so it's not a 2.5x difference, it's more like 2x difference. Than, you factor in all of the perks of flight such as direct A to B navigation (Yes, I know that if you need a runway, you can't exactly do A to B navigation, but the idea still holds). The term, "As the crow flies" applies here. Depending on where you are going, being able to fly in a direct line could cut down 20-30% of the travel distance. For instance, I live in Michigan. If I want to go to Wisconsin, I could save a crap ton of time by flying over Lake Michigan. Also, highways don't always go where you want to go. Even a somewhat direct route over 55mph roads with stoplights, stop signs, and traffic would bring your MPH average down significantly.
Having said all that, this company states in TFA that they were designing it for medical missionaries. I'm guessing that in the areas these people are operating, they aren't choosing between I80 or I75 to get to their destination. I'm sure that flying above the trees in Brazil or Africa could save you a ton of time. Also, coming into a primitive village in a flying machine gives you instant "God Cred".
It's a car..like the old saying goes " if it looks sounds and behaves like a rabbit it's a rabbit".. In fact it looks like a dune buggy, as the original article suggests.. although this "contraption" is actually registered as a.. wait for it.. a *parachute!*
Yeah, because things from Lamborghinis to Smart cars don't get described that way.
Probably a good thing. Slower means more time to recover from mistakes, less maneuverable means less temptation to do something stupid, and being a paraglider it means if the engine fails or the pilot has a heart attack it will land itself mostly safely (for people on the ground).
SUV drivers say the same things about, well, everything smaller than an SUV. Doesn't make any of those things any less cars.
Just like all classic cars if they were built today. Still cars.
I don't think the thing is worth anywhere near $100k, and I seriously doubt it's practical for anybody's daily city commute, but it is definitely a car that flies. I actually looks like of like a model T.