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Where are the Flying Cars? (Video; Part One of Two)
Detroit recently hosted the North American Science Fiction Convention, drawing thousands of SF fans to see and hear a variety of talks on all sorts of topics. One of the biggest panels featured a discussion on perhaps the greatest technological disappointment of the past fifty years: Where are our d@%& flying cars? Panelists included author and database consultant Jonathan Stars, expert in Aeronautical Management and 20-year veteran of the Air Force Douglas Johnson, author and founder of the Artemis Project Ian Randal Strock, novelist Cindy A. Matthews, Fermilab physicist Bill Higgins, general manager of a nanotechnology company Dr. Charles Dezelah, and astrobiology expert Dr. Nicolle Zellner. This video and the one you'll see tomorrow show their lively discussion about the economic, social, and political barriers to development and adoption of affordable flying cars. (Alternate Video Link)
Forget flying cars - this group can't even get a decent microphone.
Couldn't someone have recorded this on a broken cellphone to improve the audio quality?
Obviously, the sleek, compact flying cars we're waiting for are sitting right alongside the compact gravity repulsion units and the ununpentium powercells...
"Space exploration and fusion skeptics like you are the just like the people who said we'd never have flying machines, cellphones, and televisions."
"No, I'm like just the people who said we'd never have flying cars, home nuclear reactors, and robot nannies."
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
We don't have flying cars because they wouldn't be practical outside of long travels, and for long travels traditional airplanes are more economical and the ability to not be dependent on a third party service matters less.
I want my hoverboard!
They're a long, long, looong way off. Let's focus on more realistic and practical things, like self making beds and toilets that put the seat down for women automatically. Now that would be progress.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
How do you stop them quickly without too sudden a stop, like nose first in the ground, or into the next flying car? To me this seems like the biggest issue. Air vehicles are too hard to control compared to a ground vehicle using friction between the control surfaces. Maneuvering ise too complex for most people. Granted we can wait till someone extrapolates self driving cares into 3 dimensions and let them fly themselves. But that is a technological issue that we haven't got to quite yet. Maybe it won't happen until we have the whole gravity thing figured out and can manipulate that. But then again knowing us, before we can use it for good someone will figure out how to use the tech to negate gravity around earth entirely, and all the particles of the planet will drift apart. The next super weapon! Keep your sharks with lasers bwa ha ha ha ha... [cape pulled up over face, walks away]
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
You clearly live in a flat place near an airport hub. Flying cars would be tremendously practical for most of the US, which are not near hubs. It's 40 miles to my parent's house, 100 if you drive. They happen to live two mountain ranges over and across a lake from me so the path to get there is rather circuitous. I'm 3-4 hours drive from 4 different large airports, but the only one within an hour has a horrible flight cancellation record, costs $100-200 more per trip than a hub, and to catch a flight that takes me to a hub I have to leave the house earlier than if I just drove straight to the hub.
Sure, travel more than 200 miles or so is probably more economical on a commercial jet, and more than about 400-500 miles is probably the break point for convenience/cost combined. But outside the big cities, which comprise less than 2% of the land area of the US, there are lots of use cases for a flying car.
Besides, a real flying car (not a roadable aircraft) should be able to reasonably navigate local traffic as well as airborne travel.
It's arguable whether having five million flyers is a safe thing, but as for the utility - it's definitely there.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
That was pretty painful
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Flying cars are right in the same bin as:
(1) Colonization/living on other planets
(2) Uploading brains from bodies to computers
(3) War via robots resulting to no human deaths
(4) Technology giving the masses a life of leisure
Classic geek myths.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
I want something that can fly but still be limited to a one dimensional track such that only forward and reverse are the only directions allowed. This way I can know that my kids are not deviating from the route to and from school, but still be in the air.
We have flying cars, they are called helicopters. They are dangerous and appear (to the public) to be notoriously hard to fly...partly because people keep using them as flying cars/platforms.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
It's obviously because Dante wouldn't let some insane German scientist diddle his pennie..
End of line..
I think this is tied somewhat to the issue of the issue of self-driving cars. Part of the problem with flying cars is the question of, who do we trust to fly them? What's the process of licensing people to drive/pilot these things? Do we trust people not to fly over protected airspace? Do we trust people not to fly into buildings? Along with everything else, driving/piloting a vehicle designed both for driving and flying might very well be more complicated than learning to drive and learning to fly combined.
However, if you can have self-driving cars, and you can make a self-flying driving car (including take-off and landing), then you could have the whole thing controlled by a computer guided system, adhering to restrictions to traffic and air traffic. Along with everything else, you could have restrictions that say, "When you're in NYC, the car knows that it needs to drive because airspace is restricted. Once you drive X miles outside the city, you can take to the air along certain restricted routes, following certain procedures." All of that could be controlled with computers, disallowing various kinds of abuses.
Of course, that assumes that we have sufficient systems for safe autonomous driving/flight. It also assumes that everything is coded well enough to prevent people from hacking the car to allow them to break the rules. It also assumed that people will be ok with being restricted and tracked. Finally, it assumes that, when you've put all these restrictions in place, you haven't made the idea so un-fun that people don't want a flying car anymore.
Fuck the flying cars, we have a tough time enough just getting electric cars on the road...
Reminded me of George Carlin...
"We're gonna go to Mars. And then of course we're gonna colonize deep space. With our microwave hot dogs and plastic vomit, fake dog shit and cinnamon dental floss, lemon-scented toilet paper and sneakers with lights in the heels. And all these other impressive things we've done down here. But let me ask you this: what are we gonna tell the intergalactic council of ministers the first time one of our teenage mothers throws their newborn baby into a dumpster? How are we gonna explain that to the space people? How are we gonna let them know that our ambassador was only late for the meeting because his breakfast was cold and he had to spend half an hour punching his wife around the kitchen? And what are they gonna think when they find out, its just a local custom, that over 80 million women in the Third world have had their clitorises forcibly removed in order to reduce their sexual pleasure so they won't cheat on their husbands? Can't you just sense how eager the rest of the universe is for us to show up?" - George Carlin, Complaints and Grievances
-AlPhAbEt
The reason I'd want a flying car is so I could avoid all the idiots by flying over them. It wouldn't be so much fun when the idiots have them and are flying around while talking on their phones! Yikes!!
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
The only "flying cars" possible today are airplane-automobile hybrids that can get neither the driving nor the flying right. In the 50's and 60's the promise of science seemed unlimited, discoveries that would lead to a entire new method of flying, not relying on lift and drag, seemed not only possible but just around the corner. 50+ years later we still don't have a quantum theory of gravity and the mystery has only deepened.
Far too true:
http://www.tomsmithonline.com/...
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> in Detroit
Say what now?
Good job promoting it.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
No flying cars.
But we do have videos about how there are no flying cars on slashdot. That's worth something. Well, for very small values of "something", anyway.
-
Once a car gets wings it usually ceases to be a car and becomes an airplane.
Six reasons we do not have flying cars:
1. Unforgivingness: Run out of gas, stall, fail to perform scheduled maintenance? You plummet and die. Road vehicles are more forgiving of errors and faults.
2. Regulation: There is an overwhelming regulatory burden imposed by the FAA. This restricts R&D, commercialization and ownership.
3. Expertise: Piloting requires specialized skills and extensive training.
4. Expense: Flying vehicles are expensive.
5. Infrastructure: The air traffic control system can not handle ubiquitous flying vehicles. Take-off and landing zones are not ubiquitous. For short distances, it is inefficient to to the airport to fly to the next airport to drive to where you are going, Why not just drive to where you are going to start with? For longer distances, drive to the airport and take a plane. The flying car only makes sense if we put airports everywhere. Yes, VTOL would mitigate this.
6. Inherent inefficiency: Hauling your car around with you everywhere you fly? Carrying your airplane with you everywhere you drive? A combination car/plane of the future makes about as much sense as traveling with your car on a commercial passenger flight today.
You are stuck with #6; Flying cars might just be an inherently stupid idea. Other barriers can be overcome with technology and mass commercialization except for the FAA regulatory burden and restrictions.
Ubiquitous personal air transport makes more sense for short to medium distances if you do not try to make combination, flyable/roadable vehicle. As-the-crow-flies routes are way more efficient than road networks and with automated navigation and automated air-traffic control there would be no traffic jams in 3 dimensions. Automated VTOL would largely obviate road travel.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
1 The ability to park a car, high in the air, and not have it move a millimeter until desired and to consume no energy in that state.
2 the ability to fly at zero speed and maintain position and consume no energy
3 the ability to control the position and velocity of any flying car with precision, so you could have them fly in rows in different directions in the equivalent of lanes in the sky - OR, the ability to control the exact position and speed of a car, all the way down to parked in the air.
4 power used = function of speed, as it is with road cars.
Until we can do this, the idea of a huge flock of cars, all dependant on wings with lift to stay in the air or helicopter/gyrocopter blades to stay in the air is impossible. No self flying car could do it.
The ability to 'park' in the air and use zero power.
I recall the pulp magazines of the 30's and 40's with cities surrounded by enormous flocks of flying cars as a joke until we have full spatial control of position and velocity and zero energy lift to keep them up there
First, there are all the regulations governing development of any new production aircraft; It currently cost approx $50 million to get a small aircraft through the cert process. If a small company thinks it will sell 1000 of its shiny new flying cars it will have to add $50K to the pricetag of each just to cover these costs.
Second, there are all the regulations governing pilots; Getting a pilot's license costs thousands of dollars and takes many people over a year but that license can be taken away from you by the FAA (grounding both you and that flying car you payed too much for) if you suffer any of a myriad of health problems that nearly every human being will eventually suffer. (there's no equivalent national revocation of drivers licenses even though many people are killed every year in car crashes and small planes do not cause much more damage when they crash than cars (somewhat faster, but less dense))
Third, The FAA has become very confused; it thinks it's primarily there to support commercial aviation and that the airlines have an a priori right to the skies. The regulatory mechanisms of the FAA allow the only airline maker left in the US to self-certify many things (it can get its employees trained and certified as Designated Engineering Representatives, wh can then sign-off on things) which is something small companies cannot afford and probably contributed to batteries with fire problems getting deigned into their newest plane and a "fix" being implemented without a root cause being understood first. This same loophole is not so readily available to small plane makers because its very expensive for non-billion-dollar coprorations. The airspace is regulated in ways that favor the airlines, and in this mindset a bunch of flying cars just adds risks to the commercial people movers.
Fourth, the FAA, which is now so concentrated on high-end aviation, has little concern for the costs of its actions. It is currently debating requiring a new bit of avionica in all planes. The new devices will probably cost about $5K per plane which is affordable to an airline or a business exec with a Gulfstream and less so to a Flying Car owner. The actual cost of the instrument should probably be about $250 BUT it can only be made and sold by FAA approved corps and the design must be certified by the FAA - so the regulatory overhead costs and semi-monopoly effects kick-in.
When the Wright Brothers invented the first successful powered heavier-than-air plane, they were a couple of bicycle builders on a shoe-string budget (they would never have been certified to manufacture, never have gotten pilot licenses, and their planes would never have been certified). When their earliest competitors, like Curtiss, got into the market there were still NO regulations and NO government overhead. Even when Boeing got started in a barn, it faced NONE of the current regulations. Every significant aerospace firm in the US (except SpaceX which was founded by a billionaire who nearly went broke doing it, is only doing rockets, and is sort-of "sponsored" by NASA which needs it) got up-and-running BEFORE the FAA arose to squelch innovation and freedom. Had the FAA existed 100 years ago there would be no commercial aviation. The only aircraft would probably be giant one-time-use planes flown across the oceans on research missions by men trained and treated like astronauts and supported by 100K ground support people (think Saturn V, but in aviation). Giant, inefficient, government designed-and-owned-and-operated with no concern for sustainability, reusability, etc and no imagination for the idea that average people should be able to be involved in it.
As long as we have an FAA you can forget about anybody who is not rich having a flying car or a jetpack... and hoverboards are probably out too given the desperation with which the FAA is currently trying to spook the public (with fears of "peeping tom" drones) into letting it regulate ANYTHING (including model planes) operating all the way down to zero feet (WELL-below the "navigable airspace" they are currently charged with overseeing).
I'm a big Quad Copter fan myself, and I can tell you that these are SUPER safe to fly today, WAY safer than ANY helicopter or airplane.
Equipped with stabilizing 6 axis sensor and hefty gyros, combined with GPS technology, these things are a WALK in the park to fly. Check this video out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... . As you can see, these things are stable as they can get. Imagine a REAL LIFE size of the same thing, no sweat at all, the problem is elsewhere.
We can have these life-size quadcopters tomorrow if you like, the problem isn't the technology...it's right amongst us everywhere, but I suspect the military doesn't like the idea of personal quadcopter mobiles, nor does the gov. And the infrastructural problems we would have if these became legal tomorrow? Oh boy, don't even go there. So don't blame technology, we HAVE these things right now! Blame the slow development on transportation laws, airspace, aero planning, military and much more that I don't even know anything about, all these issues prevents us from having the flying car today!
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Flying Cars. Uber. Flying Cars. UBER! Hmm....
Most humans can barely control automobiles that are limited to TWO dimensions.
And we still have millions of accidents and tens of thousands of fatalities every year.
Add a vertical dimension and watch statistics skyrocket (no pun intended).
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
The FAA regulations are the biggest factor.
The next is liability litigation. Try to run a company when one suit from one crash (even if it's not your fault) might drain your entire investment and bankrupt you. Try to get insurance in the same situation.
Either alone might make it hard. Both together have essentially frozen designs for private aircraft for over half a century and nearly destroyed civil aviation.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
... speeds without hilarity ensuing. They already have gravity HELPING them stick to the ground, with giant bright lines and concrete barriers and street lights and signs everywhere reminding them not to be jackasses. And still 30,000 people die this way in the US alone every year. What on earth makes anyone think millions of people will be better trying to do this in mid-air at twice the speed with no barriers, lines, lights or sticky-safe gravity? "But air travel is much safer" - sure, with two highly-trained professionals at the yoke, with miles of horizontal separation and thousands of feet of vertical separation with dozens of highly-trained professionals advising them on how to avoid the next perfectly natural thing that might drop them and their hundred+ passengers out of the sky. There are 600K +/- private pilots in the US. There are 200M +/- licensed drivers. I love bopping around in a Skylane as much as the next person, but do I want even 10x more private pilots / planes in the skies? Heck no!
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Flying cards are energetically stupid, safety-wise stupid and traffic-capacity-wise stupid. That means they may not ever happen except for meaningless stunts. Those that want them are like little children crying "I want! I want! I want!" all over without realizing that this physical reality has limits. Really pathetic.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Flying vehicles are expensive: to build, to operate, and to maintain. Probably close to an order of magnitude for each, though the last may be close to two magnitudes.
Cost per pound of cargo in an airborne vehicle is huge. Here's an example: the HondaJet runs around $5m. A comparable Honda Odyssy is $35k.
Flying is a significantly more energy-intensive operation than rolling along the surface. A cheap prop plane like a Cessna has an airspeed around 100mph, and gets 20mpg. The equivalent super-cheap subcompact doesn't have to worry about winds, and gets 40+ mpg. Turbofans (like the HondaJet) which you'd want on a "flying car" get 4x or worse gas mileage than a Cessna. VTOLs (whether helicopter or directed thrust) are getting 6x or worse gas mileage.
The vast majority of aircraft require HOURS of maintenance per hour of flight time. Even the small, simple stuff like Cessna are more than a 1:1 maintenance:use ratio. There's not really any way to avoid this, since flying is significantly more hard on the vehicle than driving. So, for each flight you take, you're going to have to pay several hundred dollars in maintenance fees.
Overall, even with some reasonable improvements and economies of scale, you're looking at a vehicle that costs 10x or more than an equivalent wheeled vehicle to start with, and has an annual operating cost around 100x.
Besides, we already have flying cars. They're called helicopters. Notice how the pricing on those has kept them from be adopted. There's no real way to make a flying car significantly cheaper. And you're still stuck with the 1-6 reasons above.
Asking where flying cars are is only slightly more inane than asking why we don't have personal teleporters, and about the same as asking why personal jetpacks aren't sitting in everyone's closet.
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
They're called ultralights. Same price range (well, sorta, you may have to double or triple the tag), same kind of performance and mileage.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
For the use case with the mountain and the lake in the way of the car: Why no use a plane? Lots of roads a wide enough for a real plane. I think with self driving cars and mandatory apps for the rest it should allow to dynamically clear roads of cars. The the pilot of the plane pays the drivers of the cars some compensation and: Win-Win. The other use case is traffic jam or an obstacle on the road. For this the cars only need to hop to the next free road. They need not to be efficient.
There are basically two versions I have seen: A) Vertical take off devices that are basically the equivalent of helicopters. In fact, you might consider a Helicopter to BE a flying car, if you are rich enough to own one. But there are smaller things that don't look like helicopters and can easily fit in a typical driveway. Their practical limitations are: 1) expense 2) limited range, 3) fuel is not gasoline, and 4) takes a lot of training to operate.
The second version I have seen is B) Cars with wheels that can deploy a wing, and with a run-way take off. Most of these are very expensive (one exception below), and take a lot of training to operate. The single exception is the powered parachute wing vehicles. They are relatively cheap little frame cars with a big fan pushing them. Once they get up to speed, they release a parachute, which forms a wing, and effectively they become an ultra-light airplane. The problems with these devices are very slow speeds - they tend to max out at about 35 mph. You need special training, though not quite as much as a full airplane or helicopter device. They also do not fly very high, can't fly at night,
The good news: 1) Computers may solve the training problem. We make software that we can trust to take off and land, we might be able to get into these devices safely.
2) New modern materials may bring the price down.
3) If they become more popular, then the fuel problem will not matter, whatever we decide to use will become as easy to find as gasoline.
That said, range, and speed problems are not likely to be easily overcome. They need dramatically improved engines.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Heck, anyone thinking of building a flying car should probably hire you.
It's the miles of separation that's the biggest issue. If I'm in the air and I see another aircraft a mile away I think I've cut it pretty close.
The best pilot in the world flying as close to me as I routinely experience in ground traffic would scare the bejeezus out of me. Yeah, the Blue Angels can do it, but even they don't spend a lot of time going in opposite directions at those distances.
Ignorance killed the cat. Curiosity was framed.