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DailyDirt: Flying Cars & Other Crazy Stuff

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Tue, Oct 29th 2013 5:00pm — Michael Ho

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.

A flying car from Slovakia recently made a test flight after about 20 years of development. The Aeromobil 2.5 isn't the only flying car design out there, but it actually looks like an almost normal car from the front (though its side-view profile looks like a crazy transformer). [url]
Maybe there shouldn't be flying cars clogging up the sky, but NASA is helping to develop new rules for how to share the air with drones. In 2015, the FAA plans to open up US airspace to unmanned aerial vehicles above 18,000 feet -- but the skies probably won't be fully open to drones until after 2020. [url]
If more people are going to be flying around in all kinds of crazy contraptions, it might make sense to develop ways to skydive without a parachute. Gary Connery jumped 2,400 feet from a helicopter in a special wingsuit without a parachute, and he fell for almost a minute before crashing into a landing strip made of about 18,600 cardboard boxes. [url]

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

11 Comments

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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.
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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.
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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' !!!
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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.
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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
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Anonymous Coward, 29 Oct 2013 @ 9:27pm

Re: one other problem
No.
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Anonymous Coward, 29 Oct 2013 @ 10:29pm

Re: Re: one other problem
"No" what ??

Put a lot of thought into that insightful comment ?
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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.
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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."
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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)
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vehicle cleaning products, 2 Nov 2013 @ 11:03pm

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