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One-person Air Scooters

Posted by Hemos on from the beats-traffic-all-the-time dept.

Tempest wrote to us:"Ever wanted to soar over tall buildings with the greatest of ease? In a few years, with the help of NASA and a Silicon Valley engineer, Michael Moshier, you may be able to do so. After a lengthy training program, of course. " The specs are impressive: 80 MPH, 20 MPG. You can check out the story on CNN or the company's website.

2 of 126 comments (clear)

  1. Could this be feasible for the public? by Daffy+Duck · · Score: 5
    Suppose these things are cheap enough to mass-produce or perhaps mass-produced enough to be cheap. Suppose also that every owner gets whatever training is necessary. Then you can say goodbye to the oft-mentioned fantasy of chuckling to yourself as you serenely fly over the traffic jams below, because now the sky is full of people who used to be driving. What kind of flight-control, traffic-control, and safety systems would be required to make them safe? Well, as safe as car traffic is now, for argument's sake.

    Unless every unit is centrally controlled or has on-board 3D radar coupled to the nav system (and would you really trust that anyway?), you can't just let people fly wherever they want at 80 MPH. I'm not a pilot, so maybe those of you who are can enlighten us on airspace regulations. Would there be a minimum altitude for "high" speed travel? Would different altitude ranges be reserved for different headings?

    How about failure modes? Are emergency parachutes enough? Mars-lander-type external airbags? What about the traffic below you? Compressed helium and emergency balloons?

    It seems like there are a lot of issues to be resolved apart from mechanical and economic feasibility. Does anyone know what the state-of-the-art thinking is here?

  2. Saftey? Nahhhhhhhhh! by Telemann · · Score: 5

    I suspect that traffic would not immediately become a problem even if the vehicles were affordable for a few reasons. People wouldn't trust the things. They would be intimidated by the "rigorous training" required and the fact that you die if you screw up. (Even if this isn't true it is a misconception that solotrek will have to overcome for the device to become popular.)

    As I don't expect that the air traffic would reach the volume it has on the ground I suspect that one easy way to avoid stupid collisions is to designate the vehicles "VFR only" or "visual flight regs only." If you can't see, say, more than a mile, (smog, clouds, fog, whatever) then you can't go up. I live in Alaska where small planes are very very common. In my home town, pop 307, there are usually at least 25 planes at the airport (a .25 mile strip of flat dirt with no terminal at all.) Alaskan citizens log more flight hours on average than citizens in any other place in the world (though that is an old statistic.) Most of these small planes are VFR and can not fly when it's foggy, but that's about the only law that the bush pilots up here have to deal with (unless they are approaching an airport.)

    As for safety, unless those things are heavier than they look I suspect that some of the safety tech developed for ultra-lights and small aircraft could be used. Nifty toys such as CO2 deployed parachutes have been in use in these areas for quite a while now. Make it a standard feature and hook it to the altimeter.

    I sure as hell want one.

    -Telemann