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Uber Hires a Nasa Veteran Who Thinks We'll Start Seeing Flying Cars In Next Three Years (bloomberg.com)
Uber is getting serious about its intentions of building a flying car. Uber's plan involves airborne taxis that will travel 50 to 100 miles between "vertiports" that connect passengers between their homes and offices, according to a report on Bloomberg. Now it is hiring the right leader for this project. From the report: In 2010, an advanced aircraft engineer at NASA's Langley Research Center named Mark Moore published a white paper outlining the feasibility of electric aircrafts that could take off and land like helicopters but were smaller and quieter. The vehicles would be capable of providing a speedy alternative to the dreary morning commute. Moore's research into so-called VTOL -- short for vertical takeoff and landing, or more colloquially, flying cars -- inspired at least one billionaire technologist. After reading the white paper, Google co-founder Larry Page secretly started and financed two Silicon Valley startups, Zee Aero and Kitty Hawk, to develop the technology. Now Moore is leaving the confines of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, where he has spent the last 30 years, to join one of Google's rivals: Uber Technologies Inc. Moore is taking on a new role as director of engineering for aviation at the ride-hailing company, working on a flying car initiative known as Uber Elevate. "I can't think of another company in a stronger position to be the leader for this new ecosystem and make the urban electric VTOL market real," he says.
There are a lot of metro areas I've lived in that have great roads or transit to get from one area of a city to another - but make travel from different zones across the city a nightmare. If you could put in a number of aerial transit lines like this you could open up jobs and housing in much different areas of the city than is currently practical.
Depending on where you placed these zones you could make who new areas job centers that could never have been before.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I don't agree that a flying car has to also drive on the ground. I think the general idea of a flying car is something that is affordable by more families and as easy to use as a car. A helicopter is omitted from that because it is expensive, requires the knowledge of an airline pilot, and can obviously not be driven by the average person. I think more like the cars in the Jetsons.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Most stupid ape on the roads can barely even drive on land, forget the flying in the air.
It will need to be 100% autonomous. Considering we don,t have commercially available self driving cars yet, the flying ones ain't gonna come anytime soon. Not to mention, every "flying cars" we've seen so far are NOISY as hell. Now multiply that times a couple thousands flying above you. It will be deafening.