Will there ever be a working/practical flying car- ala "Blade Runner"? It's like the concept of the personal jet backpack- neat idea- but getting one to fly is another thing!!! ...and if the thing fails - you die

Couldn't tell you, but I'm quite satisfied driving on terra firma.

I am not so sure it's a good idea, just think about the terrorists....Anyone could qualify to get one, and thats bad.

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Never mind the terrorists! Judging from the way many people drive, do you REALLY want to give them a third dimension to mess up in?


That, and not some gubmint conspiracy, is why we don't all have flying cars a la Popular Mechanics circa 1955.

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Microsoft is over if you want it.

The bar has been lowered for the promotion of ATM ideas; the bar for the acceptance of ATM ideas must remain high.

Not quite. Quite frankly, I would not trust people to fly a car (which involves 3-dimensional knowledge of travel) without heavy identification (I.E., getting a permit to fly the vehicle). However, when the time finally comes for vehicles like this to be common-place (if they are possible and eventually will become cheap, that's a perfectly legitimate theory), then knowledge of such vehicles will be second-nature to the majority of people that use flying cars; including police officers and military personnel. This will mean that they are more likely to be able to prevent a terrorist attack by air.

Furthermore, what's necessarily so bad about terrorists driving a car in the air? It's not like you can bring down a skyscraper without crashing LOTS of cars into a building; and that amount of traffic in a single location would be very questionable.

Overall, I find the idea rather fictitious purely on the principle that it would be pretty dang expensive; basically pretty much as costly as helicoptors. the "dangerous" part will probably be overlooked if there are incredible advantages to air cars (Hence, they might become work vehicles, but not used for normal civilian use unless the buyer is that rich). I dunno, though; it depends, I guess.

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There are few left who
Stare at the skies with wonder
Wishing to know more;
The clouds still drift by above
But the eyes below are blind.
--Laura Lundberg

Check out my writing, maybe.

There already is one: Skycar. Course its not an antigrav-driven flyer.

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All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct.~ Carl Sagan ~

Humanity must rise above the Earth, to the top of the atmosphere and beyond, for only then will we fully understand the world in which we live.~Socrates, 500 B.C. ~

Let every man judge according to his own standards, by what he has himself read, not by what others tell him. ~Albert Einstein~

I'm in love. (with the car, not you)

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There are few left who
Stare at the skies with wonder
Wishing to know more;
The clouds still drift by above
But the eyes below are blind.
--Laura Lundberg

Check out my writing, maybe.

Aww...

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All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct.~ Carl Sagan ~

Humanity must rise above the Earth, to the top of the atmosphere and beyond, for only then will we fully understand the world in which we live.~Socrates, 500 B.C. ~

Let every man judge according to his own standards, by what he has himself read, not by what others tell him. ~Albert Einstein~

It's ok Duane, I love you....

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Only when software is available which can fly it without ever crashing. And only licensed pilots will be allowed to fly it manually.

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Fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint.

The first series will sell for $995,000. Shoot.

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Join the Illuminati

Hum,
A while ago there was a bit of a flurry on the internet when a flying car was captured on Google Earth..

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/01/23/flying_car/

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`Irony` actually does mean `metal like`...

that's hilarious. It almost tricked me until I noticed the difference in the tree shadows.

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"What you think you thought you saw you did not see." Agent J, MiB - Manhatten Bureau

Well with NASA's Skyway becomes standard then virtually anyone will be able to fly.

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Howling from the Shadows

It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. --- JayUtah

You can't reason an irrational person out of an irrational belief. --- Noclevername

Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

I'd say the threat from terrorists in flying cars wouldn't be a large scale threat like attacking a whole building, it would be in getting over the roadblocks and other ground level defenses that prevent car bombs now. What would the response time be for a flying car that "jumped" the barrier and crashed into Congerss or Paliamnet with a full load of C4 packed in a garbage can coated with 1 inch steel ball bearings, or Serin gas, from the time it left the approved flight path?

How about one that passed by the 23rd floor of the FBI building?

Then you have the issue of a large bomb going off IN a rush hour situation and having several cars rain down on whatever is below.

I think that uses like this could be a significant concern if the flying cars end up more wide spread.

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I'm not evil.
An evil person would do the things I think up.

By the time there are flying cars computers will be the drivers.

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What brings us together is stronger than what pulls us apart

I don't think there will ever be a flying car.

One scientist on a TV show (now forgotten, unfortunately) brought up the best reason why flying cars will never work: because they fly. A car that breaks down on the road can be brought to a halt, or two cars that get into an accident will stop themselves. Imagine now, a car crash in mid-air compounded with a 100 foot fall. That's just one more potentially lethal element to add to the mix. Think how much more expensive a flying car would be as well, with proportionally higher costs to repair and maintain as well.

For flying cars to work, they need to be:

1.) Cheap enough lots of people to buy them. This doesn't mean dirt-cheap--Hummers are expensive, but there are plenty of them on the road--but still affordable by large numbers of people.

2.) Have a proven safety record--which unfortunately, would require extensive driving experience, leaving us in a kind of catch-22.

3.) Have benefits that exceed those of regular cars enough to justify their use. The Concorde could do many things that a 707 couldn't do, but the latter totally outclassed the former in cost-benefit analysis.

I just don't see these factors coming together any time in the next generation--especially not when we have a multi-billion dollar highway system, and the inertia of 100+ years of cars-on-the-ground experience. Still fun to think about, though.

For my part, I think that if flying cars ever take off (so to speak), they will be ground-hugging models, more like the "hoverboards" in Back to the Future, Part II than actual flying cars.

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"Call me old-fashioned, but I think fire is magic. And it scares me a lot."

--The State

I don't think it would ever be practical. Imagine, mid-air collision, debris, falling onto cars, pedestrians, houses, buildings below. I would not want to know how these would affect insurance rates, across the board.

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" The universe is running away
I heard it on the news just the other day
There's this new stuff called dark energy
We can't measure and we can't see..." - from Jimmy Buffett's What if the hokey pokey is all it really is about?

The Moller Skycar has been "almost finished" for probably the last 10 years. I know I read about it in Popular Mechanics about 8 years ago, where the guy was saying it was almost done. According to their website it has been in development since the 1960's. Now they still haven't even made a transition from horizontal to vertical flight or made any untethered flights (according to their website). There is a lot of hype, yet no matter how long it is in development and how many times they promise it is "almost finished" no one ever seems to get suspicious about whether it will actually be sold. I am seriously doubting whether it will ever really be finished.

Before I put down my deposit I need them to actually get the thing to fly level, make the thing transition, get the navigation system working, get FAA approval, work out insurance rates, work out how it will get fuel (ethanol is not sold at many gas stations), and make it so I am not limited to taking off and landing from an airport (which completely defeats the purpose of having a flying car in the first place). They just make a lot of promises about what they will do and what will happen and what features it will have, but I see little now, and little in their history, that convinces me they will actually pull it off. Look at their FAQ, it is little more than promises of things that will happen in the future. With all the stuff they have to do still, there is no way they can get this thing working in 3 years, not to mention on the market in 4. I would be surpised if a fully working, consumer-level model is complete in 10 years (that is actually built and working, not approved by the FAA and insurers and sold to consumers, which would probably take another few years). I may be eating my words, but I have just heard too many promises from Moller for too many years.

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I met this wonderful girl at Macy's. She was buying clothes and I was putting Slinkies on the escalator.
-Steven Wright



My Website: The Black Cat's Web Page

Traffic should be a real nightmare, as well.

Arthur C. Clarke discusses this and other futurist ideas in Profiles of the Future.

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"A witty saying proves nothing" Voltaire.
"All your bias are belong to us" Ara Pacis.

I agree with all the comments about technical obstacles. But if that is not enough, there are the bureaucratic obstacles.

At least in the US, highways and vehicles that travel them are mostly governed by the individual states, with some oversight and funding from the US Department of Transportation. Aircraft are, as far as I can tell, completely governed by the FAA; I presume this is because aircraft, more often than not, travel interstate. Can you imagine the FAA licensing millions of car "pilots" and flying cars? I also suspect that the record keeping and inspection requirements for aircraft are much more extensive than they are for automobiles.

Since such problems are purely human created ones (as opposed to physics) they are solvable. But take the example of the internet - it seems that the laws involving the use of this "new" technology are barely keeping up with the changes in that technology. I suspect that flying cars would be a huge challenge for governments.

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

You just re-stated what I posted earlier. The only way flying cars can "take off" is if human beings are not actually in control.

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Fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint.

Yep, I've been reading about Moller for much longer than 10 years. I'm not holding my breath.

I don't really care that much about flying cars. I want to see automated driving. That is something that is technically possible, would reduce accidents and fuel use, and substantially increase the traffic that roads could carry practically. It annoys me how incredibly little work is being done on it given the huge potential payoff. There's a little here, a little there, but no real push.

Give me that, then I'll consider computer controlled flying cars.

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

I remeber reading about the Moller in PS or PM in either '85 or '86.

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I'm not evil.
An evil person would do the things I think up.

Just imagine your air-car at C-Check every 1 1/2 year. Gone for two weaks...
I dont want to pay the bill.
Especially not for D-Check....

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"Who does not know anything, must believe everything."
Baroness Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach 1830-1916
our animal welfare board and organisation

Years ago, I took flying lessons in Plymouth,Mass. During that time...spring 81-82..I regularly read Flying magazine. Their story. Commercial flight to LA. Night. Passenger looking out the window thinks he just saw the coast of California under the plane, and draws the stewardess's attention to it. She goes to the cockpit. (Pilots take the plane off. Pilots land the plane. Once airborne, the computers fly the plane to save on fuel. ) She opens the door. Both of them asleep. They turn the plane around over the Pacific and land with little fuel....and were fired. But for that guy, a lot of funerals would have happened. Trust your computer not.

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A third rate theory forbids.
A second rate theory explains after the fact.
A first rate theory predicts.
A. Lomonosov

Frankly, alot of the objections to flying cars listed here are almost identical to the objections raised in the late 19th early 20th century regarding a new invention that was creating some excitment--a horseless carriage.

Unfortunantly, Van Rijn & Tog are right about Moller. Frankly I was pretty disappointed when I linked to their website, as I haven't looked into thier progress in a couple of years. Seems there isn't much

__________________
All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct.~ Carl Sagan ~

Humanity must rise above the Earth, to the top of the atmosphere and beyond, for only then will we fully understand the world in which we live.~Socrates, 500 B.C. ~

Let every man judge according to his own standards, by what he has himself read, not by what others tell him. ~Albert Einstein~

That's why you program them and design the system properly. That was some time ago, I doubt autopilots were as sophisticated as they are today. But it isn't clear that was in any way the autopilot's fault - was it capable of determining the jet's position? Did the pilots set it correctly? And so on.

People get in car accidents all the time. Even slightly imperfect automation could reduce that dramatically.

__________________
I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

"It's the year 2000, but where are the flying cars? I was promised flying cars. I don't see any flying cars? Why? Why? Why?"
-- Avery Brooks, IBM Ad

That's the lead off of a nice little Daniel Keys Moran rant about
flying cars, future shock, and the net:
http://www.kithrup.com/dkm/dkmnonfic...ndless_Sea.mp3

Enjoy!


Jamie

Now's your chance!