NASA Is Working With Uber on Its Flying Taxi Project

Ride-hailing service Uber on Wednesday took a step forward in its plan to make autonomous "flying taxis" a reality, signing a contract with NASA to develop the software to manage them. From a report: Uber said at the Web Summit tech conference in Lisbon that it signed a Space Act Agreement with NASA for the development of "unmanned traffic management." This is NASA's push to figure out how unmanned aerial systems (UAS), such as drones that fly at a low altitude, can operate safely. Uber wants to make vertical take-off and landing vehicles. That will allow their flying cars to take off and land vertically. They will fly at a low altitude. This is the start-up's first partnership with a U.S. federal government agency. NASA is also working with other companies to develop traffic management for these low altitude vehicles. "UberAir will be performing far more flights on a daily basis than it has ever been done before. Doing this safely and efficiently is going to require a foundational change in airspace management technologies," Jeff Holden, chief product officer at Uber, said in a statement on Wednesday. "Combining Uber's software engineering expertise with NASA's decades of airspace experience to tackle this is a crucial step forward for Uber Elevate."

Comments

Re:Can nobody do the math???

[AmiMoJo]

Even if you somehow overcame all that, the other major problem is noise. Because you have to move a lot of air to life that amount of weight, it's impossible to make it quiet and non-disruptive (strong winds blowing everything nearby over).

The only people who will be able to make use of this are the same ones who can use helicopters now. It's basically a cheaper helicopter alternative. Maybe they will offer semi-affordable hops between helipads.