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Flying Car Crashes In British Columbia
- anshargal 13y agoAt least we have such headline in 2013
- Dylan16807 13y agoI suppose, but in my mind a true "flying car" is VTOL. Anything else is neat but doesn't fit the vision.
- rquantz 13y agoIs it bad that this article still makes me want to have one of these?
- jerrya 13y agoI think it's a pretty neat device (based on the last time I checked out their website, a year or so ago.) Generally safe since it's a dune buggy under a parachute, and entirely appropriate or so it seems for their mission, flying a few supplies in and out of Africa and other places with no roads. And even readily field reparable. (I am a bit shocked by the $100K price tag.)
- jimzvz 13y ago>...flying a few supplies in and out of Africa and other places with no roads. Maybe you should re-word that.
- sp332 13y agoI thought it was mostly South American jungles. I know of a missionary group that used planes to reach isolated tribes, and the natives switched to cheap(er) paragliders to reach neighboring tribes. https://www.facebook.com/pages/ITEC-Steve-Saint/41142728065 https://www.facebook.com/pages/ITEC-Steve-Saint/41142728065 The group has been working with the Maverick company for years now.
- jerrya 13y agoI thought it was missionaries in Africa, but it's been a year since I looked at their page. I had thought they had a demonstration mission flying from Europe into Africa, but perhaps it was a different "para-car" solution.
- Wingman4l7 13y agoYeah, that's horribly overpriced. You can get a nice powered paraglider with a fancy trike for well under that.
- mbrameld 13y agoYou can get more modest powered paragliders for <$10k. Paratoys and Fresh Breeze are a couple of the more popular brands.
- mrtksn 13y agobefore reading the article: Yay! we are in the future, finally. after reading the article: oh, it's just a steerable parachute powered by a propeller attached to a something like a car. I guess this is how sensationalist headlines work.
- po 13y agoEvery time I've ever seen an article or report about some new flying car concept, I have pretty much zero interest in it. The flying car will only be a reality after the self-driving car. The reason is that although, I would personally love to have a flying car, I would under no circumstances want all of my neighbors to have one. You can do a lot of damage with a regular car which is why we put fences and guardrails between our streets and buildings, but just imagine how much damage you can do if you add a 3rd dimension. It would be like visiting Flatland. No way the FAA is going to allow flying cars for the masses until they are basically self-piloting.
- kunai 13y agoEven self-piloting flying cars would be a disaster. They'd be limited in speed, and the traffic collision avoidance systems would eat up too much time due to the constant slowdowns and changes in direction. Not to mention that it's impossible to simply stop in the air. I doubt flying cars will ever be a reality. What will be reality are sustainable, electric, self-driving vehicles. Not the pipe dream of 20th-century futurists.
- ericd 13y agoWhere would these slowdowns be coming from? The only part I can think of would be landing zones, otherwise you have so much more space to fly in than you do with roads that it's inconceivable that there would be jams, unless you artificially limited flight paths to very narrow "roads" in the sky. And it's trivial to widen those in the case of congestion, in any case.
- alberich 13y ago>> Not to mention that it's impossible to simply stop in the air. What if they invent one that flies like helicopters? Who knows what will come in the future...
- sp332 13y agoIf you cut the power in a car suddenly, you can probably avoid serious damage or killing anyone on your way to a stop. Not so much in a helicopter.
- gtani 13y agoI would call that an enclosed motorized paraglider. They've been around for a long time in that format(since late 90's or so(?) I'd have to check with friends). Once upon a time I was going to take lessons to learn how to paramotor, but the instructor had a fatal accident.
- Wingman4l7 13y agoBadly designed, too. I cannot believe it has no propeller cage, that's asking for an accident. I always felt that calling this design a flying car was cheating this was cheating -- when I hear "airplane" I think of a fixed wing design.
- bliker 13y agoWhere are all the Harry Potter references?
- coldcode 13y agoI think the Back To The Future flying car highway appears in 2015.
- Wingman4l7 13y agoparasail != paraglider/parachute Sad because they mention the name of the actual vehicle, which has "powered parachute" in it.