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People have tried to make flying cars since the 60's and yet there has never been a successful product in the niche. What people seem to overlook is that makin
by mixmax 16y ago
People have tried to make flying cars since the 60's and yet there has never been a successful product in the niche.
What people seem to overlook is that making a flying car is easy. Making it so that the FCC will allow my mom to fly it and land it in her garage is next to impossible.
If only accredited pilots can buy one the production price won't come down, and if you can only land and take off from an airport as a pilot in an expensive flying device, well then you've invented.... a plane... Congratulations you're competing with Boeing, Gulfstream and Learjet on their own turf - a highly political arena where money and conections count more than anything else.
Here's a link to a company that's beeen claiming that their flying car will go into production next year for the last ten years: http://moller.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=49&Itemid=57 http://moller.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=arti...
- InclinedPlane 16y agoSans magical technology (nanotech perhaps) planes will always be significantly more expensive than automobiles. Consider two scenarios. In scenario 1 I buy a beater car and don't maintain it. What's the worst common scenario that can happen? I end up broken down on the side of the road. In scenario 2 I buy a beater hover car and don't maintain it. What's the worst common scenario that can happen? It falls out of the sky killing all the passengers and possibly people on the ground. This is why used planes keep their value so well, because every single one of them must be kept up quite well in order to be flight worthy.
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- elai 16y agoActually when the engine fails you tend to glide down. The harder part about landing is bleeding speed/altitude/energy (mostly interchangeable in flying, even when the motor is cut off) so you can land slow enough. A friend of a friend of mine's plane motor died and he did an emergency landing/gliding into the airport. The plane was otherwise just fine and undamaged. Unless the airplane wings or body break catastrophically airplanes can handle failures, have failsafes and those kinds of failures in cars often cause fatal expensive accidents too. Imagine if a car splits in two while driving down a busy highway, it's not going to be pretty.
- SpacemanSpiff 16y agoCheck out the Terrafugia: http://www.terrafugia.com/aircraft.html http://www.terrafugia.com/aircraft.html I am skeptical as you are about the possibility of a practical flying car, but I've been watching this one for a couple of years and it seems on the right track. It'll be an LSA (Light Sport Aircraft) which makes pilot certification and maintenance simpler and cheaper. It would still have to be landed at an airport, but I think it's pretty neat nevertheless.
- jordanlev 16y agoIf you watch the video, it specifically addresses these two concerns -- it is an ultra-light aircraft so a pilot's license isn't necessary, and it's VTOL so you don't need a runway or airport. Not saying it will work, but these specific objections aren't relevant to this particular whirlygig.
- anthonyb 16y agoYou still won't be able to land it in your front yard though.
- spc476 16y agoI live about 2500 feet from an airport (in fact, my home is pretty much in the landing flight plan); I'm not sure how the airport authority would feel about this much less an ultralight. In fact, thinking about it, I'm not sure how much time a flying car would save me. Even though I'm half a mile from an airport, and work is only four miles from an airport, the two airports are 12 miles apart. Right now, it takes around 35 minutes to drive. With a flying car, it might take, what? 20 minutes? I suspect any time I saved might be taken up with flight clearance.