All thorough my childhood and adolescence I was a keen fan of all sorts of science magazines including Scientific American (the Amateur Scientist was my favorite SciAm column because it showed how to build things), a subscription magazine from NASA’s Science Service, Asimov’s sci-fi journal, and yes even Popular Science and occasionally Popular Mechanics since my dad liked it.
I lost track of how many times the world has been promised a flying car in those magazines. It seemed like we’d all have a “chicken in every pot” and a flying car in every garage. I’ve been waiting for years decades and there have been lots of false starts and outright frauds. Where the heck is my flying car?
So it was with some amusement that I read this article in the London Time Online. It appears one is being readied for market, we’ll see. I wonder if the ELT on it automatically dials a selection of liability claims attorneys? Even if I had $200k to blow on it, given how regulated we are now, the only place you can fly it “off the road” is Alaska.
World’s first flying car prepares for take-off
Mark Harris
Is it a car? Is it a plane? Actually it’s both. The first flying automobile, equally at home in the sky or on the road, is scheduled to take to the air next month.
If it survives its first test flight, the Terrafugia Transition, which can transform itself from a two-seater road car to a plane in 15 seconds, is expected to land in showrooms in about 18 months’ time.
Its manufacturer says it is easy to keep and run since it uses normal unleaded fuel and will fit into a garage.
Carl Dietrich, who runs the Massachusetts-based Terrafugia, said: “This is the first really integrated design where the wings fold up automatically and all the parts are in one vehicle.”
The Transition, developed by former Nasa engineers, is powered by the same 100bhp engine on the ground and in the air.
Terrafugia claims it will be able to fly up to 500 miles on a single tank of petrol at a cruising speed of 115mph. Up to now, however, it has been tested only on roads at up to 90mph.
Dietrich said he had already received 40 orders, despite an expected retail price of $200,000 (£132,000).
“For an airplane that’s very reasonable, but for a car that’s very much at the high end,” he conceded.
There are still one or two drawbacks. Getting insurance may be a little tricky and finding somewhere to take off may not be straightforward: the only place in the US in which it is legal to take off from a road is Alaska.
Dietrich is optimistic. He said: “In the long term we have the potential to make air travel practical for individuals at a price that would meet or beat driving, with huge time savings.”
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Not possible. America has no industry left to make ACs.
About stall speed and Canard wings. My old pilot friend pointed out that: Yes, the canard runs out of lift first and the nose drops and you pick up speed. Works great at 5,000 feet. Not so great at 50 feet.
Flying cars and domestic robots have been just around the corner for a long time. Bit like global warming tipping points then, tomorrow never comes. The only way flying cars could be a mass market product is if they were computer controlled, if they were flown by people then they would be too complicated and too many accidents. But don’t forget to call them eco flying cars and keep saying you are working on a hydrogen version.
wattsupwiththat (19:38:15) :
I predict we will see this car in whatever James Bond film comes out in 2012.
Maybe that will be the one where the plot has the evil mad scientist conspiring to release huge amounts of CO2 form his secret volcanic lair in the tropical Pacific Ocean in an attempt to disrupt the world economy so he can clean up in the carbon trading market.
Are you suggesting that Al Gore will be staring as the next Bond Villian? 😀
This flying car looks potentially cheaper to buy and run.
http://www.skycarexpedition.com/about_skycar.php
Looks like a lotus 7 with a parawing. Nifty.
120mph on road, 70mph airbourne.
Runs on biofuel, so you can wave to the enviro-mentalists as you cruise overhead too.
About stall speeds.
Deltas are good having progressive stall characteristics.
An exception to this was the Gloster Javelin which had a propensity for tip stalls in the ground effect on approach. It would flip quite rapidly & land upside down. OUCH!
Dave.
You need not worry about one of these things falling on your head. With those tiny wheels, the vehicle will disappear into the first pothole it encounters.
Ironic that I saw this video just before: http://www.theonion.com/content/video/mean_automakers_dash_nations_hope
I’m a jetpack kind of guy myself.
I used to have an old IH Scout that I’d get airborne every time I went over a certain railroad crossing near my house. The tracks were rough and the launch angle (steep!) was perfect to get all four wheels off the ground going over the tracks. At a speed of just under 45 miles per hour, it made for a perfect landing on the other side of the tracks. (“Those were the days, my friends.”)
Wow! It only goes to prove there is A SUCKER BORN EVERY MINUTE.
A dent on an automobile is a cosmetic problem.
A dent on an aircraft is a STRUCTURAL PROBLEM.
Let’s put a 3″ deep dent in the side of a Cessna 182. Cost to repair?
Certified A&P, probably about 1 week to do the job. And about $5000.
Cost to have inspected and recertified, another $1500.
Total cost: $6500. Likelyhood of a dent: 1 per year. Insurance rate? Probably $600 a month.
Cool!
I’m sure John Travolta will love his.
Mark from MN
Ron de Haan (15:43:56) :
This is the website of the PALV-V based on the Carver.
These guys solved all the legislative and technical obstacles.
It will be fun to drive and fun to fly at a reasonable price.
http://www.pal-v.com/
Um, harvesting a minor nit… This has 3 wheels, so it’s a motorcycle, and a rotor, so it’s a gyrocopter. It is not a flying car. It is not a roadable airplane.
The rules for motorcycles are, IMHO “Willing to die in it? OK, you’re certified.” – BTW, I own 4 motorcycles, 2 of which are working… so I’m not coming at this from some uninformed position. I’ve been riding for 40+ years now. That I’ve lived through it is luck, paranoia, and a couple of helmets with good ‘leathers’. “a few” of my motorcycles did not…
AFAIK, the rules for gyrocopters have not significantly advanced since the autogyro days, but that’s uninformed bigotry on my part. (I have seen one article claiming this, but don’t know to which country they were referring…)
Also, any licensing under the ‘experimental’ rules forbids operation in urban areas, congested air space, etc. etc. You don’t just head to the SFO TCA for lunch on Market Street… It’s for rural use, not commuting to work downtown. (I’ve piloted a glider in another time, long ago, and I’ve flown a hot air balloon – inside hanger 1 at Moffett NAS where they used to park blimps. It’s a lot bigger in there than it looks!)
Given those qualifiers: Heck, I’d love to have one of these at a reasonable price!
ACK: I know they were airships and not blimps… please don’t bother to correct that…
wattsupwiththat (19:38:15) :
I predict we will see this car in whatever James Bond film comes out in 2012.
Didn’t one of the bond films already have a flying car in it?
google google …
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_with_the_Golden_Gun_(film)
Attempting to place a homing device, she is locked into Scaramanga’s car, an AMC Matador, as he drives away. Bond follows him in an AMC Hornet ‘X’ with Sheriff J.W. Pepper at his side — whom he encounters when acquiring the vehicle — and a car chase across Bangkok ensues, concluding at a barn in the countryside outside the city with Scaramanga’s car transforming into a plane and flying away to his island in the Yellow Sea near China.
http://www.jamesbondmm.co.uk/vehicles/flying-amc-matador
I was well aquainted with Molt Taylor of Aerocar fame.He was a self taught Engineer, and his Aerocar was a passable airplane,but as a car,I wouldn’t want to hard corner one.His main idea was something to get to and from the airport with
but not take the car part on long cross-countires-unless it was flying.
Molt was an interesting,opinionated guy,and I spent may hours listening to his ideas on Aerodynamics and design.He predicted the failure of the Beech Starship, for instance,as an example…
The first succesfull flying car was built in 1947 by Robert Fulton Jr. who died in 2004 in Connecticut. I was good friend of his son Bob Fulton, a terrific pilot that made several beautiful aerial documentaries filming from his Cessna-180 all over South America for the BBC. He died in a plane crash in his Cessna during a terrible storm when flying to his home in Conn.
I have seen pictures of Bob when he was a boy flying the car with his father, disassembling it, driving it in the roads, etc. ee here the news about Robert Fulton’s death at the age of 96. Or Google him.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19307-2004May11.html
http://www.vortechonline.com/g1/
Not a flying car…ultralight helicopter, and it requires no pilot license.
It wouldn’t surprise me. Renaissances mean increased interest in Cultural Arts and Science. They happen about every 60 years (The last was the hippy movement). The next renaissance is called the awakening and will happen in 2020. When this occurs scientist believe that humans will enter the next stage of evolution where we will begin using the more of our brains. They say we could become so advanced that we could advance beyond destroying the environment and live in harmony with nature instead…aka…sustainable development. Also in 20212 the Roman/Christian Age ends and we enter the Age of Aquarius which is a space age called galactic diaspora. This new age will last until the 4000’s A.D.
Seems plausible to me…The Mayans do say that the current age will end in 2012.
Unfortunately no cargo space, and extemely dangerous. Anything with open spinning rotors like that will always be too dangerous for everyday use by the average person. Not just because of the danger of someone getting too close, but of hitting obstructions.
There’s still the single element of failure that will cause one to plummet to their deaths. Acutally multiple single elements (engine failure, loss of fuel, main rotor damage/failure, tail rotor damage/failure)
Jeff, no doubt 🙂 could you imagine flying one of those things at the maximum altitude? 10k feet!
Jeff & Steve: I like the jet version at the bottom of the page. 12,500 ft max altitude, 12+ GPH fuel consumption and about a 5 gal tank (eyeballed)… so I wonder if after climbing to 12kft you get to autorotate back down as you run out of fuel? 12000 / 30 = 400 ft/min climb … and that is generous…
i dont know why people dont believe they can make this happen i mean just like 80 yrs ago we didnt even have a radio and now we have palm size devices that can hold like 10,000 songs if they can do all that im sure we wont have any problem making a flying car…its kinda like a game system like the ps1 is sucked really bad then the ps2 it was pretty good with graphics and also a dvd player now we have the ps3 with 40g and 60 and even 80 g thats a lot of memory plus it has internet and everything..