The future is now

[chuckro]

Where's my flying car?

At a quarter-mil price tag, I don't think there's going to be a huge market for them, but we're getting there. What we really need is someone to design the "Model T" of flying cars--automobiles were once considered an overpriced "plaything of the rich", too.

Comments

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

What we need even more than that would be a near-perfect autopilot that made driving a light airplane as simple and safe as driving a car. Though I guess if airplanes became commonplace, it only takes 20 hours of flight time to get certified...

At 5 gph, 105 mph, that's about a 21 mpg flight fuel efficiency, which isn't that bad. But it's only slightly advantageous over a car at its speed, ignoring the "fun" of flying. It turns a 5 hour Cleveland-Cincinatti trip into a 4 hour Cleveland-Cincinatti trip, except that it's a little more inconvenient (no easy roadside pitstops). Plus, you've got to build more small airports to take advantage of them. Even if you drop the price to $50K, it still looks like it's just a hobbyist's plane.

[chuckro.livejournal.com]

The 5-hour trip assumes no traffic, though. Imagine if you could use it on the Sunday afternoon of a holiday weekend.

But yes, it still has a long way to go.

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

And they're hiring.

I kind of wish I were still an engineer.

[maydove.livejournal.com]

Whoa. Maybe I'll write to Prof. Stengel and tell him that he needs to add this to his Aircraft Dynamics lecture slides on flying cars: http://www.princeton.edu/~stengel/UnusualAircraft.pdf Apparently, they have a long history.

[firynze.livejournal.com]

The problem with flying cars is that we really need safety standards for such things. Unskilled pilots = major crashes. Of course, it was similar in the early days of motoring, but that doesn't mean we can't learn from our mistakes there.

[chuckro.livejournal.com]

Well, it does require a pilot's license and 20 hours of flight time to get certified, which is a good start. That, and the fact you'd need to go through an airfield to take off means there's a checkpoint before people can fly drunk, try to load the carplane with weapons, etc.

[chuckro.livejournal.com]

Do it!

[firynze.livejournal.com]

I'm more concerned about filing flight plans and possible collisions. The sky is more open than the roads, which can be both good and bad in this case...

[chuckro.livejournal.com]

We have the technology to prevent that, though. Central monitoring of large numbers of vehicles is possible on a scale unprecedented a couple of decades ago. Hell, just build a GPS into every one of these things that can warn them if anyone else gets close or if they get too close to a stationary object.

[firynze.livejournal.com]

Exactly - we can make this safe, but we need to think about it in advance, instead of reacting later.

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