DailyDirt: Flying Cars & Other Crazy Stuff

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Considering the number of car accidents each year, it's not exactly surprising that flying cars haven't taken off yet. Most drivers can barely handle looking forward, backward and side to side -- and adding up and down is just going to make things worse. Still, the future promised us flying cars, so people are working on building flying cars. Here are just a few links on the topic of personal flying vehicles and some other ill-advised ideas. If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: aeromobil, drones, flying cars, gary connery, skydiving, unmanned aerial vehicles
Companies: faa, nasa


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  • identicon
    Lawrence D'Oliveiro, 29 Oct 2013 @ 5:45pm

    What’s The Difference Between A Flying Car And An Aeroplane?

    The flying car will be self-driving. So you certainly won’t need a full pilot’s licence to operate one. Perhaps you won’t need any kind of licence at all.

    As for “clogging up the skies” ... given that they’ve got a fairly sizeable third dimension that ground-based roadways lack, I find it difficult to believe that could happen.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 29 Oct 2013 @ 6:37pm

      Re: What’s The Difference Between A Flying Car And An Aeroplane?

      Clogging up the skies probably refers to congestion where these things will land and take off from.... Not that the sky will look crowded anywhere else.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 29 Oct 2013 @ 6:48pm

    aircraft have a much higher standard and requirement for reliability, duel ignition, FSFO design (Fail safe, fail operational), plus cars need to meet the regulations and laws relating to cars, (noise, emissions, crash resistance etc).

    And aircraft/plane would need to be registers as a car with a licensed driver, and would also need to be approved and registers as an aircraft, the person driving/flying would require a valid drivers license and a valid pilots license.

    there is a very good reason why this has never 'taken off' !!!

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 29 Oct 2013 @ 7:19pm

    one other problem

    Aircraft engines are run for a specific number of hours, at certain running hour points different work is done on it, at 100 hours it will REQUIRE a strip down and rebuild and a full rebuilding of the top end, this is not cheap, so why would you want to run up your engines running hours driving your car ??

    That's why planes are planes and cars are cars, again the cost of running an aircraft certified engine is far to restrictive if you are running it to drive a car.
    The work done on the aircraft engine also have to be carried out by specifically certified engineers (LAME, Licensed Aircraft Maintenance Engineers). A huge difference than your local grease monkey.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 29 Oct 2013 @ 9:27pm

      Re: one other problem

      No.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        Anonymous Coward, 29 Oct 2013 @ 10:29pm

        Re: Re: one other problem

        "No" what ??

        Put a lot of thought into that insightful comment ?

        link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      Ninja (profile), 30 Oct 2013 @ 4:09am

      Re: one other problem

      You are thinking with technology available today. Maybe future sky cars won't even use air flow to fly and will be able to handle sky traffic jams. Why not? If you asked a person 20 years ago if we'd have computers 1000s of times more powerful at the palm of our hands and everybody would have one probably you'd get laughed at.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

      • icon
        Richard (profile), 31 Oct 2013 @ 3:01am

        Re: Re: one other problem

        The analogy with computers is incorrect - computers are stil (just about) in the "rapid progress" phase of their development. Aircraft passed through that phase between 1900 and 1970. (Compare the Wright Flyer with Concorde or an F15 and you will see what I mean). The low hanging fruit in aviation progress is all gone. YOur statement " If you asked a person 20 years ago if we'd have computers 1000s of times more powerful at the palm of our hands and everybody would have one probably you'd get laughed at." translates in aviation terms to
        " If you asked a person in 1930 if we'd be flying at twice the speed of sound and ordinary people would be able to fly at 500mph plus to a holiday destination by 1970 probably you'd get laughed at."

        link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Brendon, 31 Oct 2013 @ 7:44pm

      Combustion engine is one other problem

      1)Make the prop electric propelled? this will sort out rebuilds and bring in reliability.
      2) Have a detachable "DRONE" strap-on harness/parachute (also electric motors)

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 29 Oct 2013 @ 9:19pm

    A wing suit BASE jumper by the name of Raphael Dumont just jumped from a mountain top and landed safely in a lake without a parachute. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ttNUwSK0Xw

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    vehicle cleaning products, 2 Nov 2013 @ 11:03pm

    car shampoo

    Yes, we support and want the most wanted flying car with air craft. It's able to save time, money, risk, traffic jam also from accident. So i appreciate to invent the best flying car with long mileage. And encourage to use vehicle cleaning products, car air fresheners, car shampoo, car microfiber clothes to keep gorgeous. So if you wish to use it than just visit my site.http://www.avcsl.com

    link to this | view in chronology ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.