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The most workable concept at the moment is basically a powered parachute/paraglider trike beefed up to be like a dune buggy. I always felt this was cheating th
by Wingman4l7 13y ago
The most workable concept at the moment is basically a powered parachute/paraglider trike beefed up to be like a dune buggy. I always felt this was cheating though, because when I hear "airplane" I think of a fixed wing design.
EDIT: ... which is exactly the design that crashed. AFAIK these don't require a pilot's license, but that doesn't mean they're easy to fly.
- mikeash 13y agoIt does seem less awful than other concepts, but still... why? It's a worse dune buggy and a worse airplane than you could build if you took the same resources and built the two separately. As for being hard to fly, I believe the rationale behind not requiring licenses is simply that you're unlikely to kill anyone else when you crash, so do what you will. At least in the US, licensing requirements for different kinds of aviation scale fairly directly with the number of innocent civilians you can take out if you screw up too badly. Not 100% the case, but a decent approximation.
- Wingman4l7 13y agoOh, I'm not disagreeing with you, just commenting on flying car design. AFAIK licensing requirements scale with aircraft size and complexity -- which does correlate nicely with its danger to bystanders.
- mikeash 13y agoYep, I was just elaborating a bit. You're right that licensing requirements go up with size and complexity, but it's a bit beyond that as well. For example, carrying people in exchange for money has stricter licensing than carrying people for fun, because the idea is that 1) you'll do it more often and 2) people paying you for services are less aware of the risk they're taking.