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Photographer Glimpses Larry Page's Flying Car Hovering In California (Maybe) (siliconvalley.com)
From Hollister, California -- population 40,000 -- comes a good update from the Mercury News on Larry Page's efforts to fund a flying car:
Even from a few hundred yards away, the aircraft made a noise strikingly different from the roar of a typical plane. "It sounded like an electric motor running, just a high-pitched whine," said Steve Eggleston, assistant manager at an airplane-parts company with offices bordering the Hollister Municipal Airport tarmac. But it wasn't only the sound that caught the attention of Eggleston and his co-workers at DK Turbines. It was what the aircraft was doing. "What the heck's that?" saleswoman Brittany Rodriguez thought to herself. It's just hovering."
That, apparently, was a flying car, or perhaps a prototype of another sort of aircraft under development by a mysterious startup called Zee.Aero...one of two reportedly funded by Google co-founder Larry Page to develop revolutionary forms of transportation... A Zee.Aero spokeswoman said the firm is "currently not discussing (its) plans publicly." However, a Zee.Aero patent issued in 2013 describes in some detail an aircraft capable of the hovering seen by people working at the airport. And the drawings showcase a vision of the future in which flying cars park in lots just like their terrestrial, less-evolved cousins.
Page has invested $100 million in Zee.Aero, which appears to have hired more than 100 aerospace engineers. But the article reports that apparently, in the small town where it's headquartered, "the first rule about Zee.Aero is you don't talk about Zee.Aero."
That, apparently, was a flying car, or perhaps a prototype of another sort of aircraft under development by a mysterious startup called Zee.Aero...one of two reportedly funded by Google co-founder Larry Page to develop revolutionary forms of transportation... A Zee.Aero spokeswoman said the firm is "currently not discussing (its) plans publicly." However, a Zee.Aero patent issued in 2013 describes in some detail an aircraft capable of the hovering seen by people working at the airport. And the drawings showcase a vision of the future in which flying cars park in lots just like their terrestrial, less-evolved cousins.
Page has invested $100 million in Zee.Aero, which appears to have hired more than 100 aerospace engineers. But the article reports that apparently, in the small town where it's headquartered, "the first rule about Zee.Aero is you don't talk about Zee.Aero."
I want my flying car Larry!
A bullet may have your name on it, but artillery is addressed to " Whom It May concern"
Why the fuck didn't this "photographer" take a picture of this "flying car"? Could it be the same reason cameras don't seem to work around UFOs and Bigfoot?
You are welcome on my lawn.
filled with ads, tracking, DRM and telemetry
Yep looks like a real flying plane to me... not a car.
I suppose there's more than one way to do it?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It's a weather balloon.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
How much you wanna bet this thing is loaded with spyware and tracking. These "business people" just can't help themselves.
So you do it with a local AI and sensors. Sorta like a self-driving car. Great. Let me know when it's bulletproof in a 2D environment and I'll consider the 3D version. Let's remember that a groundcar can reasonably be operated manually by most people. Letting untrained pilots fly higher than three feet off the ground will require the addition of a new category to the Darwin awards.
Too bad. I really wanted a flying car.
Mostly manual control with augmented reality overlay to indicate the places where automated control would be engaged (high density areas, extreme weather, other vehicles' current flight path, the whitehouse etc).
Recreational enough for people who want to do it for fun, but backed by always-on automation for town centres, parking lots and potential collisions with ground, buildings or other vehicle.
Just to view the video on that page?
What the fuck is wrong with modern web developers and their obsession on using tons cross-domain-unsecure-bloat just to render a simple page?
That was a waste of time, so I'm going to bitch about it. The modern web has become a really shitty browsing experience, so thanks for that all of you dorks that continue to produce these shitty websites; and thanks for also being responsible for mobile-sites that are 100x slower than the older desktop versions.
Avery Brooks is smiling.
#DeleteChrome
No, there's a lot more than providing an arcade experience involved. Thinking in three dimensions isn't quite as built-in to humans as you seem to think. Hell, half the drivers on the road can't handle thinking in flatland. What do you expect to happen in cubeland?
Great. Let me know when it's bulletproof in a 2D environment and I'll consider the 3D version.
That's actually backwards. Solving for the 3D case is vastly simpler, because while in the air you have very few obstacles to content with, you basically just have to be sure you can react to other planes, and have programmed in the coordinates of no-fly zones - otherwise travel is just a straight line. There are already drones that can find their way back home if the control signal is lost, and almost drones that can fly around tree branches without hitting them...
For takeoff landing you can simply dictate that a solid volume of sufficient space must be below or above you to land/takeoff.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Honestly? I never once associated a flying car with a human pilot.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
There's a lot less to hit in the sky
There have been flying cars and vertical takeoff aircraft for decades now. The issues have always been engineering practicality. Carrying capacity, efficiency, range etc. The question is whether they have found a way to fix the technical issues that lead to these problems.
All electric may wind up cheaper, but the energy storage is even lower than for gasoline, so the weight problem becomes worse.
Vertical takeoff helps in some ways, but tends to lead to less efficient aerodynamics in cruise, and requires even more energy storage.
Very large single props are the most efficient (to reduce then number of tip vorticies), but lead to a helicopter like design. That leads to perhaps the most serious question - how is this better at flying than a helicopter? Helicopters are already very energy inefficient .
Except the down part kills everything below it. And up for altitude isn't infinite either since engines stall, etc. Also side-to-side is limited by heights of objects on the ground, and other flying traffic like airliners. Actually it's still worse!
And anyone can dive bomb or kamikaze a place or person. Anyone can become a terrorist that doesn't need a bomb.
They're called helicopters
The simplest problem is also the hardest to solve: All it takes is one sudden cross breeze to make something in the air go splat against the nearest wall, wire, or other flying thing. A hovering, or slow moving, vehicle on a breezy day is a disaster looking for a place to happen.
On the one hand you take life too seriously, and on the other, you do not take playful existence seriously enough. Seth
TFA says:
Americans collectively spending 8 billion hours a year stuck in traffic, (...) lifting off and cruising above snarled roadways has considerable appeal.
I suspect that Americans that have to drive to work during congested hours, will not be the ones that can afford a flying car.
I want flying cars as badly as any kid that grew up watching The Jetsons. Problem is, you can't let Joe Sixpack drive - regardless of what everyone saw in Star Wars.
The problem is that flying requires significantly more energy than driving, so the viability of this as a mode of transport will always be questionable.
I want flying cars as badly as any kid that grew up watching The Jetsons. Problem is, you can't let Joe Sixpack drive - regardless of what everyone saw in Star Wars
I am not sure everyone flying can ever work, though with computer control the potential is certainly there. Still, flying limits the rate of travel a fair amount.
If we had much better ability to create tunnels, then maybe we could make airless tunnels with easy airlocks. Then you could have car modules that link together above a maglev track. Air would have to be stored for the journey, though the system could be rapidly filled with air at need. Computer control would be essential, but speeds would theoretically be nearly uncapped, beyond what safety requires.
To really work, you'd have to have access to the network from your house. I'm not sure if the infrastructure costs would ever make sense, but travel within a continent would be very fast.
Computer control of automobiles seems where things are going, so rather than wasting time driving, you can do something productive, or even simply sleep, read a book, do work, etc.
Still, what would the world be like if, for the most part, you didn't have to live where you worked? I don't see any scifi transporters ever happening, but incredibly fast transport in airless tunnels. That is possible.
Anyone else find this an engineering feat?
I really don't care about flying cars.
What I want to know is, if I rent a flying car instead of flying the traditional way, do I still have to be fondled and have my shoes violated by TSA, or not? It might be worth the additional safety risk to avoid the indignities of security theater.
Free sandblasting every time someone lifts off or lands next to you. Maybe a center out pattern of landings could facilitate the process of the parking area keeping itself clear.
"Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." - Alan Greenspan, 1999
Thanks Elon, we know - Hyperloop is revolutionary and amazing and will change the world, you're just too busy working on your actual money-making projects to waste time on it - or should I say, "make your amazing prophetic vision a reality"?
If you have to build a massive infrastructure on the ground, then you are NEVER going to be cheaper than an aircraft, which simply needs infrastructure on the ground at either end of the trip.
Isn't that just a plane?
I expect the autopilot to take over everytime the manual input it is monitoring doesn't make sense, like you're heading towards other flying vehicles or the side of a building. Thus obviating the need for incompetent persons to do difficult flying, but preserving the functionality of swooping about in an entertaining manner when there's nobody else in your cubic mile.
Literally the point of the post.
Thought I made it more obvious.
nike tn 2016 Quels en seront les conséquences pour la filière automobile (ne parlons pas de la filière pétrolière) ? La voiture électrique ne nécessite qu’une douzaine de pièces mécaniques, contre plusieurs milliers pour la “thermique”. Son entretien en est infiniment plus simple, ce qui aura un impact sur la filière de maintenance et réparation. Son coût de fabrication- hors batterie – est nettement moins élevé. Comme pour le mobile, on pourra trouver des éléments de carrosserie, de châssis et d’aménagements intérieurs “sur étagère” chez d’innombrables fournisseurs. Certains sont même déjà en open source. Nul doute que les logiciels qui feront fonctionner ces voitures seront également standardisés et accessibles facilement et à la demande.
None of these concepts solve the problem of utility lines. A LOT of streets are criss-crossed with the damn things and none of it is on maps.
One advantage of airports is that they don't have overhead wires all over the place. And one advantage of regular cars is that they don't need to care about overhead wires, which is great, because cities and utility companies love stringing crap everywhere and making it all into an eyesore.
Sig for hire.
A well designed single person hybrid ICE powered (ICE for cruise, electric for takeoff) VTOL glider could do 200km/hr on 2L of fuel. That is close to 1/10th of the energy that a typical single-occupant car will need to do the same distance (driving slightly more circuitous route), and about 1/3rd of a typical motorbike.
VTOL personal air vehicles will revolutionise society, let people live in cheap rural villages rather than dense super expensive cities, and cut transport fuel usage massively.
Guess I need my morning 8-ball!
Aside from take-offs and landings, the problems the AI of a flying machine will face are a lot more simple than those an AI of a car must face. Drones show that many flying AI issues are already adequately solved. Issues concerning toddlers chasing after bouncing balls or ice on the shady curve just simply don't exist at flight levels above 10 feet. And take-offs and landings are probably not going to be much of an issue, what with sonar or laser assisted optical rangefinders managing the last little bit.
I look forward to the day when I can call up my personal drone on my smart phone, have it meet me on the rooftop, climb inside and tell it to take me the beach--- by the scenic route. It will join the airborne swarm and the distributed group AI will maintain safe distances between all the personal drones, cargo drones, airliners, and incoming meteors.
I don't think the future is like a flying car. I think the future is like a quadcopter on steroids, with wings for long distance aerodynamic flight.
Flatland is a lot more dangerous than 3D space. So many factors to consider--- is that ball that just bounced across the road ahead being followed by a kid or a dog? Is there an icy patch on that shady curve up ahead? In the air, potential hazards can be spotted long before they become threats and there are a lot more options for avoiding them.
The way to reduce traffic fatalities is to put everyone in the air, but make it so that they have to leave the driving to the AI. The operator's input should be no more than what we tell our Garmen, Tom-Tom, or other GPS to do now: this is where I want to go, show me the alternate routes and I'll pick the one I want.
Letting untrained pilots fly higher than three feet off the ground will require the addition of a new category to the Darwin awards.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
Peace is easy to achieve, just surrender. Liberty is much harder get/keep.
Why doesn't the actual vehicle look like the sketch?
This would have been more believable if they hadn't put all that makeup on Nicolas Cage and got him to portray the town mayor.
No, there's a lot more than providing an arcade experience involved. Thinking in three dimensions isn't quite as built-in to humans as you seem to think. Hell, half the drivers on the road can't handle thinking in flatland. What do you expect to happen in cubeland?
People better be thinking in at least 3 dimensions when they are driving on land because most control actions take a non-zero amount of time to take effect.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
“I just believe in people’s privacy.”
Well Larry if you want privacy why are you always looking in my window?
Larry Page the biggest Peeping Tom in the world wants privacy.
Yeah, I forgot about that whole energy storage density thing. Damn . . . for a relatively weak force, gravity is a bitch!
Physics and Math aren't your strong point. Gravity is a bitch, but rarely an issue at ground level. (Mass is.) Have you ever actually flown a Glider? I have. Once. Great Fun. But getting one to ~3000 feet takes a lot of Horsepower, finding Thermals to ride takes quite some skill, and you usually end up right where you started, because the average driveway just isn't long enough.
Adding ICEs and Electrics to a Glider adds a _lot_ of weight, and that is something Gliders aren't happy with. And another thing- Gliders have been around longer than Planes, and in some ways, are better developed. But Gliders, even powered ones, have never been found to be useful for getting from Point A to Point B, unless Points A and B are very carefully chosen, such as at the end of the first week of June, 1944, over Normandy. To get the Gliders up and away from Point A back then required ~1700HP Spitfires, which weren't noted for Fuel Economy.
"VTOL personal air vehicles will revolutionise society, let people live in cheap rural villages rather than dense super expensive cities, and cut transport fuel usage massively."
I sort of like your delusions. But VTOL sort of runs out of practicality or practicability at the average height of a Hovercraft. We don't see many of those around much these days...
A last thing- I never worked with Moller, but I worked with people who worked with him and invested Money... Three decades and some 100 Million Dollars later, Moller has yet to produce even one working VTOL Skycar. And Moller is considered the most credible of them all. Dick McDonald, who taught alongside Moller at Davis, recalled him fondly as the Resident Nutcase, and relatively immune to the Laws of Physics. But this is surprisingly common among mere Engineers.
"...a maglev track..."
"I don't see any scifi transporters ever happening, but incredibly fast transport in airless tunnels. That is possible."
Ah, this rubbish, yet again. All that is needed is relatively low pressure in Front, and relatively pressurized to the Behind, and Scoot! No additional propulsion needed. And this has been done at least twice already with People, and many Billions of times with bits of paper:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beach_Pneumatic_Transit
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube
This is a concept that people have difficulty grasping- It's not the absolute Pressures or lack of same that matters, it's the Differential.
I'm sure sooner or later, if you live in the US you'll have to have that when you walk out your front door