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No Longer a Dream: Silicon Valley Takes On the Flying Car (theverge.com)
Last year, Bloomberg reported that Google co-founder Larry Page had put money in two "flying car" companies. One of those companies, Kitty Hawk, has published the first video of its prototype aircraft. From a report on The Verge: The company describes the Kitty Hawk Flyer as an "all-electric aircraft" that is designed to operate over water and doesn't require a pilot's license to fly. Kitty Hawk promises people will be able to learn to fly the Flyer "in minutes." A consumer version will be available by the end of this year, the company says. The video is part commercial and part test footage, starting with a lakeside conversation between friends about using the Flyer to meet up before switching to what The New York Times says are shots of an aerospace engineer operating the craft in Northern California.
...chop off their foot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IK-SVmZUoSg
I mean, seriously, just take one for the team, am I right?
In what way is that a "car"?
eg. Where do the kids/shopping go? If it rains you'll get wet.
No sig today...
CEOs are obsessed with flying. Larry Page, being a man of the people, wants to bring flight to the masses so we too can die in small personal aircraft.
The first flying car will be named the "El Dorado."
What would happen if only 1 in a million flying cars just dropped out of the sky every day? Scale that up to big city commuter traffic.
Would it help reduce population?
Would it create more building repair and construction jobs?
Maybe flying cars is an idea whose time has finally come?
But can flying cars run on coal to put the coal miners back to work? What!?! Nevermind then.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
This is as close as we've gotten so far. Not that there's anything wrong with buoyant / water based aircraft or roadable airplanes - but they're not flying cars
The problem with flying cars is neither technical nor financial. They will remain a dream. People can't even be trusted to move vehicles around on the ground without killing themselves or others. Flying cars will forever remain a dream even after they demonstrate a prototype, and even after they start offering them for sale.
With self-driving cars putting vast numbers of people out of work, WHO will afford the flying car? Silicon Valley is out of touch.
It's more of a flying motorcycle, except without any of the advantages of a motorcycle. Presumably the advantages of being able to fly outweigh them, but if you're only allowed to operate over water, you'd probably be better served by a boat. It's a toy. The only time it seems like it would have any actual utility is if you live in some place where you're not allowed to move quickly on the water, but they'd still allow you to operate one of these. Which I suppose could exist... somewhere?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Honestly - do you REALLY want to be up in the air with dozens of people who "learned to fly in minutes"?
"Just as there is nothing so unreal as reality TV, there is nothing as unsocial as social media." - Alistair Dabbs
Yet more proof that money contains a dark matter substance which causes dementia.
How does it play such loud music while it's flying?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I'm usually against clicking any of the links and reading the article, but do yourself a favor and click on the link for the video.
This is a joke so big that it'll carry me through Monday.
Don't get me wrong, the more flying car projects around the merrier, but with all the other interesting projects happening right now, like the Lilium Aviation model from Germany, I was expecting something a little better than what I saw in the Kitty Hawk video.
Besides, this flying car from Kitty Hawk looks quite untrustworthy, to be honest.
Energy is the problem, and it's pure physics so we won't be able to get around it. Burning energy to hover someone in the air against gravity, especially if they are mostly "hovering" and not flying 500 MPH forward, is going to be orders of magnitude more energy required than rolling them forward on wheels. The majority of the energy will be spent on the horizontal vector, not the forward vector. So unless we suddenly develop anti-gravity technology from aliens, or we want to increase the energy required for transportation by a few orders of magnitude, it's not going to happen.
Just because I can hook a shark from a boat, I do no offer to wrestle it in the water.
...They are called airplanes. And there is a reason who don't just let people willy-nilly drive them around like we do cars
1 99.999765% of car drivers can barely handle 2 dimensions, going flying in 3 dimensions? Not a chance in hell.
2 the FAA will require a pilots license
3 the FAA will require aircraft maintenance. This means 99.999768% of all typical car owners will never be able to own one as they will whine like hungry babies when told they need to spend $8900 to have the engine rebuilt that is working just fine. Yes the FAA requires scheduled engine rebuilding.
4 Parking and FAA flight restrictions means you cant just fly from home to work.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
...to get killed. Or do harm to people on the ground. This is end stage bubble material.
...both gold medalists in the hipster hype Olympics.
Nothing like flying around with dozens of exposed blades sitting under you, ready to whack limbs off of anyone who you get too close to. I'm sure this will be a big hit at someone's 4th of July party.
Just make sure that the ambulance services and surgical staff is on call.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
But, at least, it is not one of those ridiculous airplanes with folding wings. Not there yet, by a definite improvement on those pathetic designs that some have been pushing for decades now.
Well, this is ridiculous. This is not a car, it's a floating jetsky for recreational purposes only. I think we'll only truly get a "flying car" when we have figured out some kind of crazy propulsion system that allows us to hover using some kind of Marty's Hoverboard style anti-gravity mechanism that allows for traditional looking land vehicles fly over traditional traffic, all automated and linked up via P2P and learning from the rest of the nodes to allow for efficient and safe travel through the air. These projects seem just like more toys for people with way too much money.
640k ought to be enough for anyone.
A woman can fly it!
Next week on "Silicon Valley" Baghead designs a flying car for Bachmanity. Hilarity ensues!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Considering all the trouble over people flying small drones, imagine the trouble with people flying objects that could easily take out your house if it crashes! It's not that I wouldn't love having a flying vehicle to go places. The scenery alone would be pretty cool but the fact that if your engine stalls or something breaks due to poor maintenance is going to result in a very nasty crash is not encouraging. Commercial aircraft is relatively safe because of good maintenance and pretty extensive pilot training. Compare that to driving and you'll see a pretty drastic difference. Maybe a possibility is a fully-automated flight system / transport that takes you from point A to B where maintenance is out of your hands but that's hardly the flying car experience folks expect.
and who's going to pay to ride if they're broke and out of work?
Hello!
You can't kill the golden goose (US Middle class) and expect to keep getting gold.
Do want a real pilot or some crap AI that code is no where near what can pass an FAA code audit.
real autopilot fail back to manual control when things go bad. Will this thing be able to make an emergency landing on LSD (the road) and yes an real airplane did that or will just error out and hit an building?
Don't get me wrong, when I read that issue of Popular Science with the Moller flying car on it, I wanted in, but these days I have a hard time seeing where the flying car concept fits into the modern world.
--If you're interested in flying for the fun of it, you see the limitations of an all in one and would get more bang for your buck with a dedicated light sport airplane.
--If you're interested in flying as a practical means of travel, you see the limitations of an all in one, and probably have the financial resources to A. get a plane that offers car level of capacity (4 passengers and a reasonable cargo load) and B. deal with getting ground travel at your destination.
In neither case, will you be able to fulfill the dream that these projects always hold out of jumping in the vehicle at home and making a carefree hop to the mall/movies/work. I've known people that live in these aviation oriented home communities, the ones with hangars, private runways, streets used for taxiways. People that worked at local airports or were professional pilots. Most of them didn't stay more than 10 years before moving to a more conventional neighborhood and driving to an airport to fly. The ability to fly from home to work, never outweighed the added logistics and cost in the long term. My point being, that these were people who were in an IDEAL setup of location, finances, ability, motivation, and it just didn't pan out. How do you possibly bring this to the masses?
That video was *painful* to watch. This is obviously not a viable car (typically used for commuting), but just a fun toy for rich people. Nothing to see here, folks.
How exactly are these flying-car companies planning on managing public safety? One one crazed jihadist can drive a truck through dozens of people, just imagine what kind of damage they'll be able to do by driving one of these flying cars into a building or some mass-gathering of people.
These flying cars are simply incompatible with multiculturalism. They'll never be practical.
Jetsons Rule: When R&D-intensive firms switch focus from one Jetsons-like technology to another, I means they ran into a dead-end(s) in the first. And, we'll probably get neither any time soon.
Must mean AI and cheap-space-travel hit a wall in this case.
Table-ized A.I.
They are called PPC's (powered parachutes).
They consist of a small 3 or four wheeled vehicle (car), with a big pusher fan behind it. Attached to the frame is an airfoil = i.e a square parachute.
The fan pushes the car on land, typically at speeds of up to 35 mph (high end). Once up to speed, the parachute is released, fills with air, and begins to act like a wing, providing lift.
It has wheels, an engine, can move on land, fits in a garage, and can fly. It is a flying car.
People do not think of it because it has a) very low speed and b) need at least a sport pilot license.
Granted, google is solving those two issues, but they are not creating the first flying car, they are merely making it commercially viable.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Like throwing a beer bottle up into the blades to bring it down?
I note the complete lack of wind. If they can make it work that well in windy conditions, and you can take off with at least modest lake waves they're getting somewhere. The video only shows a scaled up hex copter flying. The problem is lots deeper than that - I want to see some evidence that they've made real headway.
Every couple of years another company comes out with their flying car concept. Aeromobil, Terrafugia, Moller have all grabbed headlines with their concept vehicles. Moller sank 100,000,000 dollars in research for flying cars. None have gotten past the concept or prototype stages.
The risks to the passengers and by standers due to a vehicle failure are very high.
Let me state that clearly: As long as the vehicle is operating correctly, everyone is okay; the moment the vehicle has a "mechanical issue" someone is going to die. With a flight elevations of 100-500 feet there isn't enough time to properly deploy a parachute. A fall from 100 feet means you are going 50mph from the fall alone (ignoring initial speed and wind resistance). In high density areas the odds of a flying vehicle hitting something else (pedestrian, vehicle, building) gets a lot higher.
Vehicle reliability and maintenance is going to be paramount. It is no wonder the FAA (as noted elsewhere in this thread) is going to go nuts over this subject. Even with high reliability the law of averages will catch up and someone will fall from the sky. The FAA does not want that level of crap on their desk.
Architectural plans are like computer source code with a couple of differences: You only compile once.
This kind of thing reminds me of leafing through 1960s popular technology magazines. Same type of gee-whiz wildly impractical demonstrations.
What's next? Rocket-powered go-karts?
The 7 reasons that the vehicle is not coming to your garage. Covered in that same article.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
The flying car has been the stuff of science fiction for generations. If the CEO can find a way to make a flying car that the average person can buy and use for their normal work. They think they will earn a place in history like Henry Ford. As a flying car would be recognized and used for hundreds of years. Unlike say a Relational Database system, so if they did a good job, they will get as much history fan fair as Nikolaus Otto (One of the inventors of the internal combustion engine)
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
of a similar thing. Less rich people who can afford lake houses and sit around sipping microbrews, more garage hacking, moments of sheer terror, exhilaration and proximity to death and/or loss of a limb. Better soundtrack than yoga studio lite.
http://www.colinfurze.com/hove...
For the impatient: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Prior his death, but it will be certainly unable to carry on your average U.S. being worth of 250 lbs,
Slim-Shady win.
They'll have a ready for consumers version in no time at all if they put as much effort into R&D as they did in producing that promo video.
They completely killed the personal aviation industry with liability lawsuits. The precedents set are like, "the manufacturer is liable even if there was no way they could have known such an issue could exist when the flying machine was manufactured."
So the relatives first guy to die in this will become millionaires. The sugar daddy vulture capitalists will flee.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Looks like a fairly small wave could reach the rotors. Waves pickup a bit and you be stranded in middle of lake.
Speaking of middle of the lake, they sure landed a looong way from the boat they were visiting. And took off from a long way away. No footage of this 'taxi' maneuver to get there however. The whole 2 minute thing in the video is cute, but they landed 5 minutes away from their goal......
No clue why this is any different than a couple of hoverbikes that already have a video.
Calling this a flying car is just lame.
"No Longer a Dream" -- oh really? Can I buy one? Can anyone? No? THEN IT'S STILL A FUCKING DREAM.
Oh, you have a prototype? Well then, excuse the fuck out of me.
There are so many obstacles before we will have lots of people in flying cars. Creating "a vehicle that flies" is the easy part, and it's getting easier every year. It's little things like "it takes an order of magnitude mre energy to fight gravity than to roll on the ground" and "prevent it from falling on people when ONE critical component fails" and "prevent nimrods from crashing into stuff" that will be hard to solve.
Other than that, yeah, no longer a dream. Great. Now we can work on world peace and curing cancer.
LOLOL - I actually RTFA (yeah, I'm new here) and caught this gem: "... designed to operate over water..." Fucking fantastic. So as long as you live in Foster City or Atlantis you're fine. (Sorry, Venice, no plans to sell outside the US.) I guess if you live in the port of Oakland and work on the Embarcadero it's also viable.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
A retard wrote this. It took him 45 minutes. Now you have partial retardation too. Benefits may vary.
Need I say more?
Disclaimer: I'm white. And normally I hate when people make white stereotypes, but this video was ridiculous. Omg.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Nothing like a car. Super obnoxious noisemaker with pathetic range and no creature comforts. Maybe fun for chasing the neighbour's cat.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.