An article in USAToday inspired me to create this topic.
Questions for Debate:
Do you think that the convenience and benefits is worth the mass use of personal flying vehicles?
Do you think society can handle the responsibility?

i'm not sure why these people are bothering to develop something like that. they are attempting to fill a hole that doesn't need filling. in the late 40s and through the 50s, the helicopter was going to be the sky car. unfortunately, this thing doesn't appear to be any easier to fly than a helo and is a lot more unsafe because it just hasn't had the time for trial and error that the helo has. even if they were to get this thing to work safely and economically, it would still be too expensive for average people to buy, learn to operate, and maintain. soooo,, lets work on the development of mass transit and forget this "flight" of fancy. it looks cool on paper but its still a waste.

Well it not just this man with his hundred million dollar machine, Microlites are about the same as a luxury vehicle. Mass production will also bring down the cost of each unit. I agree about safety though, most people have trouble concentrating on two dimensions to drive, the three dimensions required for flight will be too much for some people.

Not necessarily, have you ever been stuck on the FDR in NYC for three hours to go two miles? It will help with congestion and and maybe pollution since we could cut down on distance by going in straight lines.

Didn’t vote because it could have been all of the options. I love this type of stuff, thanks for sharing Rev.

Don’t know if there’s a need for everyone to have one (I like the transportaion in The Minority Report), but I think it has it’s place, emergency response comes to mind. Make it a 10 seater and you could ‘car pool’ commuters into congested areas.

I do enjoy ingenuity at work.

Yes. We spend billions on roads and highways. Now having to worry about such an expense would mean we can spend more on education and other things that are needed. Also, having vehicles that can fly would be easier in big cities because it would make rush hour like the one in New York City much less congested because there would be more freedom of movement.

The safety issue is going to be a biggie here. Particularly with your last comment, Rev.

I think you'd be hard pressed to travel in straight line-of-sight from one place to another, especially in big cities, without running afoul of FAA regulations, due to how high you'd have to fly.

In addition, there would have to be regulations in place as to "flight patterns" or such, simply to keep multiple collisions from occurring when everyone wants to fly off in any direction, at any altitude, they so choose. Could you imagine the mid-air pileups if that were allowed to happen?

This vehicle might be good for low-level flights, following existing roadways, but I see near anarchy, and a large number of deaths otherwise.

Besides, I'm waiting for them to develop the transporter

Fun little project, completely unfeasible, but fun nonetheless. The video of that thing hovering looked a lot like some of the old footage of the first tests that Igor Sikorsky did with his helicopter prototypes. From an aerodynamic standpoint, I suppose you might be able to make this thing actually work with modern day computers, but the single point failure modes would be a nightmare, especially if you had thousands of them flying next to each other and I am highly skeptical of the fuel mileage claims of 20 mpg. I don't see it as much more than a rich man's curiosity quite frankly, certainly not a solution to mass transit.

Still though, it was a fun link.

Sorry I was referring to travel over long distances over rural areas like the mid west. Cities would definitely need to be restrictive, just because the amount of obstacles that would need to be avoided. I'm pretty sure we could come up with some type of solution though, since it just yielding right of way. Once we have rules that dictates right of way I think that it would be as safe as driving with regards to obstacles. Maybe anchored ballons could mark no fly zones and they could be stringed together so that a set of them could support the weight of one of the vehicles should it become ensnared.
I think the part to overcome would be that of malfunctions. I would hate to own a house that has been crashed into because some pilot thought he could get a little bit further on that last gallon of gas. Reserve tanks could be a possible solution, but there will always be a moron that would try to get the last bit out of that too.
Another problem is if one of the computers fails and you have to give it the three fingered salute in mid flight. Of course manual controls could probably still get you where you are going.
That leaves the final obstacle, mechanical malfunctions. The only thing I can think of is a parachute. Although this might present a problem because you are now gliding uncontrolled, possibly through traffic.

As a person who has his private pilot license i'm think that flying is great. The problem is that you have to go through a whole new avenue of learning to learn how to fly. The common house wife does not have the time to get her licence to fly. The flying car idea is great, but most people wouldn't use it because of the advanced learning of the new stage of transportation and the fact that they would be about 2000 feet up in the air. What if they are flying this car and they have their 4 screaming kids in the back. So they turn around to yell at them and make them stop and the person flying pushes the flight yolk down the the car goes into a screaming spin to the ground. Could the person recover, does the person have the proper skills to recover. Think about that. So, in the end i guess i'm for the car idea but they should come up with higher standards for obtaining the licence.

I too have a pilot's license and if you think flying could ease the congestion in Los Angeles, think again. The skies around here are all ready pretty full with just the current aircraft flying around. In a more rural area, it might work, but I'm not sure that traffic congestion is a problem in rural areas. As far as learning to "drive" one of these things, it should be relatively straightforward to build a robust flight control system that would basically make it "drive" like a car so I don't see that would really be a problem although I do admit that some people even have trouble controlling a car.

I voted for unsafe -- accidents in the sky have a lot more potential for damage and death than accidents on the ground. Accidents you can walk away from your car with on the road would be sure killers in the sky. And then you have to worry about homes, buildings and people that are in the flight crash paths.

I would also like to see an option on the poll for pollution.

Noise pollution: Imagine never being able to go anywhere quiet ever again.

Air pollution: flying vehicles would spread this stuff everywhere, rather than just having heavy pollution in the big cities with heavy car use.

I would like to say that I opened this topic being against it at first, but after sitting down and debating about the drawbacks I'm slowly going to the other side.

Accidents could be as fatal as the ones on the ground because of the velocity involved, but if we control the decent I think we can overcome this obstacle. For one thing parachutes could reduce the velocity of the disabled vehicles, and exterior airbags can serve to reduce the impact when colliding with the ground or where ever they land. It could also serve as flotation devices in case they need to ditch over water. If we can parachute buggies out of C130s I don't see why it could work here.



Aren't these guys required to follow a flight path? We can mark it off with more ballons with an extra mile or so to be sure. If these flying vehicles a embraced I think the commercial airlines would take a large hit, depending on the speed of these vehicles though.

Wellll... Kinda yes and kinda no. There are all kinds of different types of airspace, some of it controlled, some not. The closest thing to what you're describing was something we used to have in Los Angeles called the "VFR Corridor" that ran right over LAX. It allowed airplanes flying under visual flight rules (VFR) to transit from the North part of LA to the South Part and vice-versa without going around the LAX Terminal Control Area which would be about a hundred mile diversion. That corridor was about 5 miles wide running from the coast west of LAX to the 405 freeway east of LAX and between the altitudes of 2,500 - 5000 feet. I gotta tell ya, flying through that thing on a weekend was a thrill a minute. You had to have your neck on a swivel.

Depending on the distance travelled, I think there may be a market for aircraft. I don't see them replacing the average family car, however.

#1 I believe that as energy becomes more expensive, you'll see a major effort to make our cities more liveable. The 1-2h commute will become even more ridiculous than it is now.

#2 For intra-city trips I like the idea of Personal Rapit Transit (PRT). Sort of like the Minority Report pods, except completely confined to the track. I can't imagine a much more pleasant way to commute: <1/2 mile walk to the station, <1/4 mile walk to work downtown, zipped along non-stop, with no transfers, and no parking hassle, in the privacy of my own pod. I'm not sure my liver could handle the idea of an ever-present DD, though.

#3 I think flying could beat out Mag-Lev for Intercity routes. As of now, it's almost always cheaper to fly from Washington, DC to NYC than it is to take the high-spees Acela train. Mag-Lev will NOT be cheaper. Standing passengers cannot tolerate the acceleration and deceleration required to reach 300+ mph between Washington, DC and Baltimore, MD. With Stops in Phila, NJ, NYC, CT, etc., the train would hardly ever be running at design speed. Non-stop is the only way to go, but then you have the problem of trying to fill a train with very specific passengers. Flying, especially in smaller passenger aircraft, allows for non-stop direct flights between relatively minor cities, or frequent service between major cities.

One advantage to taking the train from city to city is that your door-to-door time is often very competitive with planes inside 300 or so miles: the train takes you downtown to downtown. The plane takes you suburb to suburb with often a lengthy commute or two to get where you're going. The best of both worlds would be to fly downtown-to-downtown, but this typically requires either a runway, which is unlikely in high-rent downtown areas, or helicopters, which are incredibly expensive everywhere. A possible solution would be a vertical take off gyroplane.

Another development in the aviation field is the ideo of an air taxi, at jet speeds. Several manufacturers are developing sub-$2M jet aircraft capable of carrying 4-6 passengers at speeds of up to 380 mph. While substantially slower than the big jets, door to door times can be faster...you'll always fly a direct route to your destination, without having to stop and/or deplane at a hub to get to your final destination. Example trip: me and my sweetheart decide to fly to Savannah for the weekend to check on the aftermath of St. Patricks day.
Priceline: $844 round-trip for two, total one-way trip time door-to-door 5h29.
EclipseJet AirTaxi: estimate (3xDOC) $2,190 round-trip for two, total trip time door-to-door 2h08.
You can guess which one I'd pick, but you could see where someone with more money and less time would pick the other. Additionally, I live an area served by three major airports, and can generally fly fairly cheaply, especially to a destination city like Savannah. Were I to live in Elkins, WV, it might be different.

#4 as for the safety of our ever denser air traffic, this is a high priority for NASA these days. Future pilots will probably 'fly' their aircraft down a virtual road shown on a HUD or in-cockpit LCD screen. A blurb here.

it might cost as much as a luxury car for the vehicle itself. however, the cost of learning how to fly it, license it, and maintain it would be way more than you would ever pay for a luxury car.

...So what happens when you run out of fuel? or your computer crashes? or your engines fail?



This thing is a menace. First off, look at the size of it! It uses four engines to move one person? And it still has to land right? Where is it going to land? in the street?

And can you imagine whats going to happen if they build millions of these things? They'll never build enough to ease congestion any way so all they'll really be doing is foulling the air above the already polluted city.

Filling it like flea's above a festering corpse.

Sometimes I wonder if even the automobile should be legal for all but very, very highly trained drivers:

Highway Fatalities Rise

Note that this is not because people are driving less safely, but just because there is more automobile traffic:



And consider this:



If we still can't get people to use seat belts, and avoid drinking before driving, how to we expect the average person to operate a flying machine?

Like many of you, my initial emotional reaction to this gizmo is "Cool!" In reality, I wouldn't drive the darn thing. It's probably fine for experienced pilots, but will have no impact whatsoever on commuting.

The PRT may seem a little nerdy, like the Peoplemover at Disneyland, but I would love to use it.

I voted unsafe.
I first read about this about 40 years ago, in my father's Popular Science. A better title might be Popular Science Fiction. Like Victoria Silverwolf says, we already have too many problems with drivers, such as drunks, speeders, wrong way drivers, owners who won't maintain their vehicles, and on and on. Do we want to move this problem into the air?
Aircraft will never be as fuel efficient as cars, so it just means more pollution. Please don't bring up battery powered aircraft!
BTW, I know 2 people who have pilot's license, and both have invited me into the air with them. I consider both a bit 'drifty', and I won't even ride in a car with either of them driving.

I could see this being the wave of the future, but our society wouldn't allow it. With today's society and if a car hadn't been invented, if someone suggested that your average moron should be able to make something weighing over 3000 lbs go 65 miles per hour a foot apart from others doing the same, with only the honor system keeping us on the correct side of the road, they would have committed him for being insane.

But all the things people would worry about aren't really issues at all. People may appropriately complain about the injury that does result from driving, but I've never heard anyone not drive because of it. In other words, it's a problem somebody else has to deal with because I need to drive.

In my opinion, this idea is only as bad as your mind is narrow.

So, because we tolerate deaths on the road, we ought to also tolerate death from above as well...

People need to get to work, school, shopping, etc. but they don't need to get there in style, or luxury, or in some 'fun' way. We accept the risks of traveling by car because it is the best method that we have that satisfies the needs of the populace. If some of us want to use a method that is even more dangerous than the presently accepted methods, it makes sense to restrict the new method to those who are capable of doing it safely, while holding them accountable for the potential consequences of their not doing it safely. We don't let just anyone fly planes, and we don't let licensed pilots fly anywhere they want, or anytime they want. And it isn't likely that the FCC will suddenly change their attititude about these issues.
This is not a Luddite response, or a narrow mind issue. It is simply telling the self centered types of this world that common sense, good judgement, and the safety of the rest of us will prevail over your individual wants and desires.

Just wait until the FAA steps in and regulates it. The cost of aircraft parts is in the order of ten times the cost of a similar "non-aviation" item because of the stringent testing requirements and manufacturing specifications. Unless the thing was fully automated in flight mode, you can bet that there will be hot dogs out there crashing into people's houses. Liability insurance, I don't even want to think about it. If the FAA steps in they could very well require that licensed Airframe and Powerplant technicians are the only ones permitted to work on them. You think $75/hr at the dealership is high, wait until the mechanic is required to be federally licensed, I ain't workin' for no $18/hr on those things with my butt on the line if they go down. In addition to the cost of schooling to get licensed, A&P tech are held liable if there is a crash. I wouldn't put my freedom on the line knowing that some schmuck could have tinkered with this thing at home right after I got finished signing for it.

According to USA's page, the thing has 2 engines in each nacelle, along with 2 fans. I would think that the fans are shafted together for redundant safety, but I certainly wouldn't want to have different lift components during take-off or landing. Now the thing has 8 engines, FAA requires 2 independent ignition systems on aircraft engines, that means 2 magnetos, 2 sets of plugs and 2 sets of plug wires for each engine. Assuming at the very least, each engine is 2 cylinders, that means it would have 32 spark plugs under FAA regulations. A spark plug for a reciprocating aircraft engine is some where in the $35 each price range last time I checked, that is over $1000 just to change spark plugs. Well it doesn't appear to be in the price range of the masses.

Interesting topic, but we're a long way from where we would need to be on this kind of thing.

QUOTE

Do you think that the convenience and benefits are worth the mass use of personal flying vehicles?

Not in the present form, with the present technology.

This is way too complex a topic for me to really sink my teeth into, but this is just a rehash of old technology, not a new paradigm -- which is what we will need before the Jetson vehicle becomes a reality. As two people have already mentioned, separately:

1. This concept has been discussed since the 40's and 50's in Popular (if not always) Science, and

2. Helicopters are already technologically superior to what you're seeing here -- the Benson gyrocopter actually worked (works?) but some technical details were never worked out to the point of safety. Not even to the point of "safety" comparable to our ill-thought-out and retrograde automotive technology.

"Hard-headed realists" [sic] should stop reading here.

We need to develop anti-gravity and cold fusion (or reasonable analogues). This would be an effort that, under the current economic malaise, would just not be feasible. And the current economic malaise is indeed a product of the old competition/aggression/politics paradigm.



This is not a meaningful question. When we have the appropriate technology society will still probably be about as good, or bad, at handling it as it is now. We already have the technology to detect and warn of impending midair collisions -- what is needed is the anti-gravity tech to be able to make a Jetson vehicle totally maneuverable and eliminate all that messy pressure differential "stability" (as used in all current means of air transport). We have the computer power to make tiny embedded controllers that could allow individual Jetson vehicles to "raft up" into air trains. The only things that are missing, as I said, are those two crucial technological foundations.

Until we have those it's all just cartoons and Popular Science.