[Graeme]

Flying car set to take off

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ')A flying car is to go into commercial production after manufacturers were given a special exemption by US aviation officials.

The Terrafugia Transition is designed as a 'light sport' aircraft, the smallest kind of private aeroplane under FAA classification.

But manufacturers found it impossible to keep under the 1,320lb weight limit, once they had added safety features - such as airbags, crumple zones and roll cage - required for road vehicles.

Uniquely, however, the FAA has granted the Transition an exemption - allowing it to be classified as a light sport aircraft despite being 120lb over limit, reports the Daily Telegraph.

Light sport aircraft licences require just 20 hours' flying time, making them much easier to obtain than full private licences.

The two-seater Transition can use its front-wheel drive on roads at ordinary highway speeds, with wings folded, at a respectable 30mpg.

Once it has arrived at a suitable take-off spot - an airport, or adequately sized piece of flat private land - it can fold down the wings, engage its rear-facing propellor, and take off.

[timmac]

Now if China can just mass produce these and sell them for around $25,000 than I might just buy one..

[efarmer]

And i can see her
blue hair shining in the sun
she got her license back
sunglasses on baby


Hey timmac, my old Aunt Crash lives in Vegas my friend.
You like gambling for high stakes? Living dangerous?

Wait until you are behind her on the lot at Safeway.
And she puts her old mug out the driver's window with
you behind her in line and hollers:

"Clear prop!"

[Wiltshire_rules]

If there are ten or twenty in the visible airspace at any one time, great. Noisy, but fun.

Then it goes into mass production.

If there are hundreds in the visible airspace at a time, who decides who goes where? No lanes, no traffic lights, and no-one can stop and wait.

Crunch.

[dolanbaker]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Wiltshire_rules', 'I')f there are ten or twenty in the visible airspace at any one time, great. Noisy, but fun.

Then it goes into mass production.

If there are hundreds in the visible airspace at a time, who decides who goes where? No lanes, no traffic lights, and no-one can stop and wait.

Crunch.

[eXpat]

July 1957

[dissident]

I wonder if anyone bothers to collect detailed statistics on small aircraft. They are prone to serious disruption by boundary layer eddies. Something that a large aircraft would feel like bump can flip these toys often killing the pilot as a result.

Flying cars and the Star Trek utopia are going to have to wait for the discovery of antigravity.

[Lore]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dissident', 'F')lying cars and the Star Trek utopia are going to have to wait for the discovery of antigravity.

[cynthia]

The Jetson's had the air car travel patterns down: http://www.televisiontunes.com/Jetsons_%28The%29.html
cynthia

But seriously, I would wither on the vine if car-like air traffic were to hover my way.

[Lore]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('cynthia', 'T')he Jetson's had the air car travel patterns down: http://www.televisiontunes.com/Jetsons_%28The%29.html
cynthia

But seriously, I would wither on the vine if car-like air traffic were to hover my way.

[Windmills]

The satellite navigation system required to safely control large numbers of flying cars does not yet exist. It's been one of the greatest impediments to their implemention since their inception.

Cost, however, will have the final say. Notice how there was no mention of the fuel economy while in flight. If people will be suffering under the high price of gasoline in the future, then there's no possibility that they will shift to a more expensive means of travel. Once China permanently pulls the slack out of the oil market, there'll be a long-term trend in the opposite direction of flying cars. This is, and always will be, just another rich man's toy.

[eastbay]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Lore', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dissident', 'F')lying cars and the Star Trek utopia are going to have to wait for the discovery of antigravity.

[dolanbaker]

I expect there to be still some commercial flights, just that you'll need to be rich to use them (or have saved up for a long time). Those cheap flights for a weekend in Paris or somewhere an hour or so away will be history, it'll only be long haul flights that will remain popular, as the alternatives use more fuel or take an age to get there.

[efarmer]

The flying car is very common and widespread right now. Unfortunately, it only flies once, usually from a crane into a hopper that squashes it and feeds it into a hammer mill to grind up into little chunks of flying car to get sorted by metal type. I think we will have more flying cars of this type than new ones from here on out.

I would settle for a hovering, anti-gravity, wheelbarrow with a module on it that grunts every time it starts to deviate from it's present location. I would also like two grunts, a low roughneck one for working with the guys, and a breathy, sexy, lady grunt when I am trying to get motivated to do stuff around the house. I little spritzer that shoots you when it is moving so you look like you are sweating would be nice, but I wouldn't pay very much extra for it.

[ian807]

Flying cars. Declining oil supplies. Sure, how could there ever be a problem with that?

[AdamB]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')At a time when EVs and driverless technology are all the rage, Chinese drone maker EHANG has posted footage of the latest test flights of its EHANG 184 passenger-carrying all-electric autonomous aerial vehicle. According to the Chinese company that was created in 2014, the EHANG 184 series is “the world’s first passenger drone capable of carrying a single person at up to 130 km/h and in force 7 typhoon conditions.” The autonomous aerial vehicle achieved a series of manned flight tests carrying one and two passengers, including the company’s chief executive officer and all executives, as well as many Guangzhou government officials, EHANG said this week. “Performing manned test flights enables us to demonstrate the safety and stability of our vehicles,” EHANG founder and chief executive Huazhi Hu said in a company statement. “What we’re doing isn’t an extreme sport, so the safety of .

[MD]

Flying cars have been proposed/dreamed about since the 1940s.

Today they might finally be close to reality. A single seat drone flyer, in a pentagram format is possible -now-. (so is a triangle format, but a single motor failure= crash and burn. With a Pentagram format the control systems have a chance of staying stable long enough through a single rotor failure to manage a safe landing)

The engineering gets quite busy. The more rotors you have in the circle, the more able the craft can withstand single failures, but the weight to lift ratios decline with each added rotor, and the motor controls become more complex. My sense tells me that five is just about perfect. A single rotor failure can be dealt with. The pilot may need to lean a bit one way though

Many efforts are being made now. The motion control software today is robust, open source, and reliable. If only I were twenty years old instead of sixty I would be all over it.

I truly am a "subject matter expert" in this area. I started tuning motor control feedback loops back in the late 70s. It's one of the few topics where I could run a stand-up lecture, on the fly, no prep, dump data to the audience, and answer every question effortlessly. Anyone want to talk PID loops? ... no, I though not.

what you all probably don't understand is that motion control systems are -everywhere-. twenty years ago I was programming cameras to control a robot arm that could pick ping-pong balls out of a random bounce in mid air. Last one I did was a high speed spooling system that took large spools of a fiber and delivered them to smaller spools. The trickly part was spinning the big spool up to speed, feed the fiber into a smaller spool, cut the end on-the-fly, dump the small spool, insert another, and start over, without stopping. Why do you think toilet paper is so cheap? It's not a bunch of chinese cheap labor wrapping those rolls for you... Chip manufacturing is -stuffed- with high speed motion control. It's everywhere, but almost completely unnoticed except for the geek patrol that puts it all together.

I'm done with all that now, but it was a very very fun ride

[asg70]

I'm also sure part of the motion control software is responsible for enabling Flacon 9s to stay upright during landing.

[dolanbaker]

[rockdoc123]

It's about damned time....I've been promised one of them there flying cars since I was a young pup