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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.
so that's not so bold.
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
As in hallucinations? This guy is senile.
They can build something that can fly itself and take you from point A to point B.
What they can't do and what will take years and years is the infrastructure. Remember the Jetsons? Ya...they were following "roads".
The rules and regulations to manage millions of aircraft flying pilotlessly from point A to point B hasn't even been dreamed of yet, never mind rationally though out.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
and told you it was chocolate milk, would you believe them? 10 out of 10 tech reporters answered a resounding yes.
It's spelled NASA, not "Nasa."
Rolling on a surface is pretty energy efficient - the power requirements for flying are much, much higher.
Safety & FAA regulatory issues aside, this is always going to cost a LOT more than ground transportation- for fuel costs alone.
This may end up being the rich man's tool when a limo is too slow, but a charter aircraft overkill.
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.
Not the flying car shit again.
I dont think this happening within 3 years. For example, take a look at how long Terrafugia has been at it. It has taken them *years* to get to the point where they've been allowed by the FAA to self-certify their "flying cars" for weight and stall speed limits. They're finally allowed to self-certify as a Light Sport Aircraft (LSA). So, now they expect to have a new prototype by 2018, and customer delivery by 2024! As for flying it, I'm guessing Uber is planning on self-flying craft (there's already a ton of automation for flying that has been in place for a long time). I'd love to see it happen, but I'm not counting on it within 3 years.
What are Uber and Google rivals at?
Insane valuations? Winner Uber...
Data mining users? Winner Google...
I don't really get it. Taxi company vs. Ad agency. Not rivals, almost certainly use each other's services.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
“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.
That's because of Uber's strong engineering track record, civic integration, and long history of co-operation with governmental agencies.
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
Seriously look at the technology showcased in the last many years. They could have had flying cars years ago. I personally think they are just waiting for technology/restrictions available to keep them under control.. Free flying across borders or into restricted airspace, terrorism is the real issue.
Heck, look at the JetPack Aviation JB-9; If they can do that(and they do), flying "cars" are a piece of cake.
No need for millions of them. This is clearly aimed at the 1% being taxied from the penthouse of one shining building to another while the plebs sit in traffic-snarled, crumbling infrastructure. Think Metropolis, not Jetsons.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Safety issues for these flying cars, roads below them, and then consider the already overloaded ATC systems in the US. The idea may be interesting, but three years won't happen. Should it happen? Well, as the AC says above me, can we prevent drunk/bad drivers? Can we ensure that when one of these has an engine failure, it does not take out half a city block or a few dozen cars on the freeway making traffic much worse?
I hope he realizes also, that Helicopters are very dangerous and require a huge clear space for takeoff and landing. You are not going to have a bunch of loose propped cars buzzing around without people losing limbs.
We are not quite to the Jetson's level of technology, and won't be for way more than 3 years.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Richard Branson says "The fastest way to become a Millionaire is start as a billionaire and buy an airline".
Anyone with or working towards a pilots license knows everything used in an airplane has to be FAA certified making even simple things cost 5-10x more.
Just like Google Fiber closed up and shut down it's municipal fiber projects - real cost is much higher and revenues lower then some arrogant millennial MBA guessed - "ride share flight" idea will flame out quickly.
Unlike squeezing wages out of drivers, like Uber did for taxis, the FAA is going to be all over this. There's already lots of rules on the books regulating flight and defining the difference between commercial and professional.
We already have "flying cars". They are called helicopters and have the problems and dangers you would expect.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
People cannot handle flying cars.
Yes, I totally agree... that's why you have instead what is described IN THE SUMMARY THAT YOU SHOULD HAVE READ - essentially a small bus (they say taxi) that flies itself through the air between hubs and from there you take an uber (or drive home in your own car).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The FAA banned internet ride sharing in 2014. That decision was upheld by a court ruling in 2015. Uber tried to argue pilots in ride share didn't need a commercial license, and that argument was swatted twice. Commercial pilots are under a great deal more scrutiny than recreational, and rightly so.
This to me sounds more like Uber is going to try to create their own sky terminals to compete with public transit. Unless Uber is going to pull some magic pill out of their arse, to use a pun - this isn't going to fly. Just look at the history, both public transit and air lines for that matter, are huge money sinks. Unless they think "my man Trump" is going to remove all this needless regulation (like public safety) that only get's in the way of job creation...
I don't know about other countries, but where I live you could not expect any kind of private air-traffic allowed/tolerated that is as loud as all flying vehicles are today. Heck, even the relatively few airports around are under constant pressure to limit their noise emissions. And I think that is a good thing.
Here's the thing, quick and simple: Uber is not known for it's warm feelings toward its employees/contractors (depending on which side of the law you sit on). Driving a four-wheeled vehicle on the ground is simple enough that you can do it while seriously impaired without too much risk. Not so with something flying through the air. Pilots are not the same as the semi-employable edge of society that Uber is famous for employing/contracting (yes, I'm being intentionally inflammatory here).
Anyone, but anyone, can drive a car. Not everyone has the situational awareness to fly you through the air, and the vast majority of Uber drivers I've had would not pass even a low-bar flight test. How are they going to surmount the barrier that getting a pilot's license requires? Are they going to attempt to establish a new class of licence in the eyes of the FAA? Good luck with that. Engineering is one thing. Fighting government in 50 states plus the feds, now that's something entirely different. Finding talented people to pilot these things for bottom-of-the-bucket wages, well, that's crazy impossible.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
You will see Amzon delivering packages before you see electric flying taxis carrying fare paying passengers. FAA regulations for passenger carrying aircraft is very stringent.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
1. you are correct - indeed any battery with significant higher energy density than the current ones is hard to make safe for use 2. Fusion energy is not only possible, but alreay available in excessive quantities, readily available at no cost to us from the big ball-shaped fusion reactor in the center of our solar system 3. CRISPR-CAS9 is already there to do that 4. Hmmm... not so sure this is of such great potential 5. That's just one disease of so many, and not quite the one killing/crippling the most people. Curing cancer would help much more people. 6. A nice thing, yes, but wouldn't it even better to avoid most of the totally unnecessary traffic done today? 7. VR is overrated. A nice gimmick for gaming, maybe a tool for a few kinds of work, but that's it. 8. If WiFi was possible without supplying energy, not only your "Smart"-devices and IoT-gadgets would spy on you, but many other things, too. I see more harm than good in that. My favorite technical novelty would be a cheap electro-powered submarine, safe to use even for trips to 11 km of depth in the ocean.
How are they going to solve the problems of :
1. High fuel consumption. Fun fact : the type of batteries you need for this kind of range burn themselves up very quickly as providing this level of current is very stressful on them. It costs more to replace the aircraft's battery pack than the equivalent amount of jetfuel would cost for the same energy delivered.
2. High liability, thus very high aircraft manufacturing costs. You can't make a helicopter with any real cargo capacity for less than 10s of millions of dollars, why do you think you can make a flying bus any cheaper?
3. Highly skilled workers to operate them. Even if they fly themselves, you need highly paid mechanics to maintain them, well paid ATC operators to monitor them, an expensive place free of debris to launch them from, etc etc etc.
4. Low demand. These things only make sense for moderate distance trips. They save you about 90 minutes of driving time but now you gotta wait to board, wait to leave, and go through security. Nope.
Helicopters can fly anywhere because they cost millions of dollars, and only a tiny minority of companies and billionaires own them. If anyone suggested several hundred million should take to the sky on a daily basis, we would have to change the regulations concerning them.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Cars don't need to be remotely controlled, ever (nor will cops start lobbying for this ability until after they've already become standard.) Local, physical-access exploits are trickier and much less dangerous than someone simply putting a car bomb underneath.
:)
The way I imagine a flying car is as a vehicle that can hover almost silently, effortlessly, for long periods of time. I do not think that we have the technology for that, much less in an affordable way. Those silly planes with folding wings and the ridiculous little helicopters with an individual strapped to them are not flying cars, but preposterous contraptions.
"...do not need to be controlled remotely"...
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
If a strong position includes making profit from your current business, then there are many companies are in a stronger position than Uber.
Just what I need, someone with a CPL flying solo for Uber to gain hours for his ATPL.
NO THANKS. I'd rather walk.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
getting them past the crash testing in so short a period of time....
Non sequitur: Your facts are uncoordinated.
Why would they need to do anything except relay location to existing ATC? They can't talk as there are no pilots. They fly along a narrowly defined corridor at an altitude that would not conflict with existing airports and all local aircraft would know about.
You are either trolling or not so bright. Show me an airport that does not border a freeway or major road. Not only that, but cars would have to be tracked by ATC to prevent crashing with each other. The current ATC systems lack the capacity.
I wonder how you don't hear about that all the time given helicopters exist? Oh that's right, they take off and land on designated zones you do not let people just flail arms around on.
Okay, you must be trolling because nobody can be that foolish. Not only are helicopters extremely rare in the skies (1-2 News choppers and an occasional Military/Coast Guard craft (that is the west SF Bay from SJC to Golden Gate), but they all take off and land from very controlled spaces. Helicopters are not only rare, but they don't take off and land in Google employee parking or your favorite restaurant parking. Get the difference?
As you accused some else in this thread, "you have displayed that you are an idiot and we can all assume the rest of your ideas are equally uninformed/absurd."
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
It truly is a Brave New World
So I assume he's perfected an anti-gravity system that doesn't require power? Because as long as the failure mode of a flying vehicle is "drop out of the sky like a fucking rock onto people below"... might have a little problem there.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Hey don't underestimate NASA, they are actually pretty clever. They keep the whole global warming thing going, cover up the flat earth, run a fake space station (including fake live feeds) AND launch all those fake rockets. If it wasn't for a few dedicated Youtubers we'd all still be in the dark, so I think they deserve full respect.
alternative headline is "Uber Hires a Nasa Veteran With Severe Dementia?" We've had this flying car scenario before, it's a repeating theme, much like virtual reality. Then again, I'm not the one speaking out against some Boom-Leelo-Dallas-Multipass action, so go right ahead.
Isn't NASA that place where liberals think there's global warming? How are clueless people like that going to get a car to fly?
#FakeNews #BoycottNASA #MAGA
On slashdot nowadays you pretty much have to put a big "THIS IS SARCASM" heading on a post if you don't want it taken literally.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Fusion energy is not only possible, but alreay available in excessive quantities, readily available at no cost to us from the big ball-shaped fusion reactor in the center of our solar system
Not an object most most slashdotters are familiar with, of course.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
It's just generates a lot of headlines when it happens.
Which is the number one reason why it's a big issue. People who don't care about or understand meta-politics (which right now appears to include most of the left, unfortunately) are doomed to see disasters like Trump unfold with regularity.
What you really should be afraid of is toddlers getting hold of their fathers gun.
No, without looking it up I'm going to estimate that this probably kills 5 orders of magnitude fewer people per year. (Perhaps only 2 or 3 orders of magnitude fewer if you're going to 'racistly' limit your perspective to America only.)
And ISIS typically don't commit terrorist acts in countries that doesn't have soldiers in Iraq/Syria.
What, ISIS? You mean Obama's "JV team"? What on Earth makes you think *you* can predict their future growth rate when the most powerful man in the world couldn't?
This is the other major problem with 'terrorism' (other than the meta-political); jihadism has worldwide ramifications and latent potential that car crashes, suicide rates, gun accidents, homicide rates, etc. do not have. No one in the world is nefariously working to quadruple toddler gun accidents overnight. Multinational forces aren't attempting to annihilate/abolish multiple countries because of toddler gun accidents. (Not just Israel, but East Timor as well. Probably several others in Africa and SE Asia, too.)
Requiem for the American Dream
Is soon parted. There's a reason it hasn't been done yet. You can't do it. I'm a pilot and I've flown around the country. The weather can be a bitch. Especially thunderstorms. People in even automated vehicles are no match for mother nature. So it'll be very unreliable. It'll be very expensive. It'll never get approved.
Use a car, it's way better.
What you really should be afraid of is toddlers getting hold of their fathers gun.
After some more research, it appears as though this number was higher than I expected (it was the 'toddler' part in particular I was expecting to keep that number quite low, for both demographic and operational reasons), but of course it is still lower than terrorism unless you expose your own absurd disingenuity by purposefully excluding 9/11.