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Miniature Flying Car Receives US Airspace Approval For Testing
An anonymous reader writes: The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has this month approved test flights for a one-tenth scale version of Terrafugia's flying car. The team behind TF-X, patented in 2011, will see the two-foot-long unmanned aircraft headed to the skies. The scale model is permitted to reach a maximum height of 121 meters, and a maximum speed of 100mph. While it is allowed to use U.S. air space, the team must be in constant communication with FAA authorities. The data collected during the special FAA-approved test runs will help Terrafugia plan the future development of design for its flying cars. The testing will also allow the engineers to assess the hovering capabilities of the drone.
...what can be done with CGI.
I suppose the military version will have light sabers.
...and I'm still waiting for my flying car!!! Oh, wait!! :-P
I've been curious about this thing for some time now. It' certainly not the flying car that we imagined one would look like, but something that can be both driven and flown would be very useful and versatile--fly to an airport close to your destination and then drive the rest of the way. You'd still look like you're driving a UFO on the highway, but so what? If they ever make a 4 seat version of this, I'm in! The price isn't too bad, too, IIRC considering what it can do... Certainly cheaper than a real plane, and it runs on regular gas and can be parked in your driveway instead of renting out a hangar!
Why does a company need government's permission to fly a 10:1 model of their future product? It is not like they are testing it in public or on animals...
(And here is the link I submitted about the same thing earlier.)
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
The video suggests that it is a gas/electric hybrid,
So its great this thing is finally going into testing. Now we will finally now who in the world actually needs on of these? I give no more then two tests before one crashes. What a waste of time.
So this is a 1/10th scale model, fine... but only 50lbs? Doesn't that mean the full size can only weigh 500lbs to match the flight characteristics of the model?
Still seems very much like vaporware.
From the looks of the thing it doesn't appear to have much wing surface area for the weight. If one of those two prop pods gives out, is there anything to be done? I guess it does have a whole-craft parachute backup, but that seems a lot less desirable (and less controllable) than gliding into a field somewhere in a controlled manner as a Cessna might do upon engine failure.
So with something that small with such a small wingspan how is it going to handle in non ideal conditions? My guess, not to well.
make up your mind!
..government/military/emergency vehicle only, at worst. For safety purposes, you'd have to be a licensed pilot, with special training by the manufacturer and certified by the FAA, in order to operate it. How long did it take for the automated systems on current passenger jets to be certified? Will take at least that long to certify something like this is fail-safe enough. Maintenance would have to be performed with the same rules/laws as any other aircraft, i.e. you'd have to take it to a licensed aircraft mechanic; no home repair by amateurs allowed. They'd probably have to create a whole new class of insurance for the craft and the pilot, and it too wouldn't be cheap.
This is all assuming something like this would ever go into actual production, and even in 'production' it'd be more or less hand-built, one at a time, to order.
I can definitely see something like this being very useful in a military version, though, or as an emergency vehicle version (flying ambulance, for instance, better equipped for the job than a helicopter because it would need a smaller area for takeoff and landing). Not really practical for mass-production though; you could never make it affordable enough for even an upper-middle-class family, especially considering all the incidental expenses involved.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Does it come with a "Your horn will not transform my car into a helicopter" bumper sticker?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Yes, great, but it's 2015, where's my flying car? Oh, wait...
Someone threw their hat over the wall, gave up foot, and let the scientist and his friends have their way with them. All for the flying car.
And it has magic morphing rearview mirrors, apparently based on a new quantum metamaterial, only stable in cyberspace.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Think about the primary reason you don't live at an airport. If flying cars ever "take off" like cell phones, your neighborhood will be an airport.
The full-size wing will be 10x as long, with 10x the chord, and the same curve, so it could be 100x the weight.
Yes, it's also 10x as tall, but what matters for wings is the shape, the ratio of height to chord. A 1/10th model has 1/100th surface area so at the same shape it can support roughly 1/100th the weight.
We're talking about a model airplane here, smaller than a lot of hobbyists are already flying on a routine basis. Why in the world would they even be talking to the FAA about it?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Thanks for that. A good laugh once a day makes you live longer. Amongst the innumerable aerodynamic engineering issues:
- Center of gravity is well forward of center of lift, so the only possible stable flying attitude is straight down
- Wing loading is off the end of the scale. If you put a big enough engine on it, anything will fly - this one would would stall somewhere over 300 Mph, if it could ever fly straight that is, which is doubtful. Too bad it's limited to 200 Mph, I guess it's a helicopter after all.
- Vertical and horizontal stabilizers are miniscule and tucked away in the turbulence of the fuselage. Control surfaces are apparently nonexistent. To get an idea how that might work, tie a string to a shoe box and fly it as a kite while driving down the freeway.
- How much will those retractable engine engine covers weigh, if they ever exist? Which they never will.
- Where are the roof racks? It needs root racks. And a trailer hitch.
For further research, see here.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
You'd need anti-grav and reactionless thrusters for an acceptable flying car, which, afaict, is quite impossible.
Where's the Moller Skycar?
On the 1st of April!
I got to the chocolate box before you, that's why the hard ones have teeth marks.
Car breaks down = dead.
Accident = dead.
yeah, this will work.
The Transition is a STOL aircraft which does require a trained pilot.
The TF-X is a VTOL aircraft and it is being designed around automated flight. They haven't invited anyone from the aviation media to try it out because it isn't ready yet. Ford hasn't invited any members of the automotive media to test-drive their 2020 vehicles yet, I guess that means they are impossible to drive.
Sure it costs money to go faster, but lots of people have money and are willing to spend it to go faster.
They're actually building a prototype, so if it can't fly then we'll all find out soon.
The way a wing works is that the (flat) underside of the wing has higher air pressure than the curved top side. The total lift is the pressure difference (in psi) times the area of wing underside, in square inches. Pressure multiplied by wing AREA, not wing VOLUME.
Where are all these Luddites coming from? I was assured 3D printing changed the game permanently, and since hard drives got better, anything is possible, right?
Remember that computer you had in high school! Hahahaha! Obviously we'll be piloting our flying cars on Mars in no time.
"The scale model is permitted to reach a maximum height of 121 meters, and a maximum speed of 100mph"
That is a very slow viehecle. Or do OP mean km/h?
I work for the emergency services. The amount of calls we get from SOS boxes as people have run out of fuel whilst travelling on a motorway having just passed a petrol station is unbelievable.
Flying cars aren't a replacement for cars, they are a better general aviation aircraft--one that in the future will pull more people into general aviation.
I like regular cars better. If the engine stops running, I'm already on the ground.
until the first one gets dinged by a soccer mom in a supermarket carpark.
The FAA is going to have its work cut out keeping these safe in the real world.
And apparently no interior.
You originally said that flying cars would never exist because physics, and then you pointed out a lot of economic & practical problems with replacing all cars with flying cars. I point out that they aren't a replacement for regular cars but rather a better GA aircraft, and now you admit that there is [in fact] a market for them--perhaps even one that is 3x larger than the existing GA market (which supports several companies, BTW), but we should all consider that a failure because there won't be one in every garage?
It is truly fascinating how short-sighted aviation experts are. This is an industry which is ripe for disruption and I'm going to laugh my ass off in 20 years when I'm flying around in a ride-share self-piloting VTOL aircraft while you're staring at your dusty gauges and talking wistfully about the good old days.
> 1. There is little reason to make it VTOL, when it will end up being at an airport anyway. Assuming you make it self-piloting, it might as well be an airplane, which will always be cheaper than a VTOL anything.
HTOL makes sense for internal combustion engines because the engine is so heavy you don't want more than one of them if you can avoid it. And HTOL aircraft are easier to pilot by humans. But HTOL requires big [costly] wings to get sufficient lift and then you have all that drag at altitude. And if we were talking about a flying car for 1970 then you'd be exactly right, but we're talking about a flying car for 2035.
VTOL makes sense for electric drive aircraft. You can use multiple redundant cheap electric motors rather than one highly reliable super-mega-certified internal combustion engine. VTOL has a trickier control loop, but that doesn't matter if a computer is doing all the flying. VTOL obviously has advantages for takeoffs and landings in denser areas, but also should lead to a cheaper airframe. I suspect VTOL makes more sense for our 2035 aircraft, but we'll see.