"Flying Car (Almost...)" Topic

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More of a "drivable VTOL transport" than anything else, but it's a step forward from the same company's previously announced "driveable plane." And this one at least looks reasonably cool, rather than the bastard child of a monoplane and a Toyota Yaris.

Still just vaporware, of course. But maybe we're getting closer to the real thing?

Heck, the Transition is a pretty cool idea all by itself. It's also the ONLY case that I've heard of the FAA granting a type waiver for being overweight. The Transition was 600lbs too heavy to be in the Light Sport Aircraft class due to all the safety gear required for road operation (which explains why you can't find a car weighing less than 3000lbs these days).

I assume that the FAA granted the waiver strictly because all that weight was required under a different set of regs, because the Transition without the road safety gear would have been light enough for the Light Sport class.

how about Flying Car (actual) link

Last I checked they had plans to put it into production as a sport vehicle and for industrial uses.

Okay, that Maverick would be fun to drive and fly, though it's not what I think of in a "flying car". More of a cross between an off-road vehicle and a parafoil ultralight. Still, if I had a spare $80 USDK…

What I really want is a "car" version of this:

But, they lack the classic lines of the Waterman Aerobile:

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Ron

Doing my best to avoid a rant.

Only two options IMHO:

A. You make all aircraft entirely autopilot controlled. No exceptions and thereby fewer chances of error. In this way, remove the moron who will attempt to impress his girlfriend with *cough* advanced *cough* flight maneuvers in (I'm a Big Boy mode) manual after getting his cereal box pilot's license….

B. If not autopiloted as mandatory, we, as a nation, must go an entire year without a single traffic violation, thereby proving we are able to handle the responsiblity of flying anything more than remote control toys.

I'm bias. I fly aircraft and it is bad enough I am almost killed on a daily basis driving to the airport by some idiot in an SUV attempting to fix their make-up or babbling on the phone. Not everyone was born to fly. It sucks but that is the way it is. And these guys want to put flying within reach of the completely uncoordinated? Not good. I am becoming very tired of people who continue to think of flying as being a simplistic video game. If it were, most people would achieve a license, much less IFR or some further rating. The minute you lose focus and perspective or respect, it kills you, your passengers and potentially people below. This cash'n'go attitude is just plain wrong.

We've got too many idiots in the air right now. We don't need anymore.

I not even going to get into this NextGen nonsense. Flying is supposed to be hard. Hard stuff makes the soft stuff go away and gives you a sharp, alert flyer who isn't some unskilled joyrider looking for kicks.

I feel the same way. There is no way you can trust "Joe Average" with a flying machine unless it is autopiloted from takeoff to landing – my daily driving experiences with morons who can't pay attention continue to prove this. This is in part why the predictions of the past saying that there will be a flying machine in every garage haven't panned out as of yet and are unlikely to in the near future…

Ok, I would totally buy the Maverick before a Transition.

But it's still not really a flying car, Jetson's style.

And I totally agree about the proliferation of weapons grade stupid keeping manually-controlled flying cars unobtainable. Then again, Schlock Merc had a law called Manual Operation Under the Influence. The penalty for that was generally DEATH.

The flying schools around here say anyone can learn to fly (almost). Then again we probably don't have so many truly stupid clowns:
1. interested in pastimes other than getting as brain-damagingly drunk as possible, faster than everyone else in the bar;
2. with 16 grand or so to spare on the training and testing…
Plus they are talking about light fixed-wing aircraft taking off from an airfield, not trying to land a helicopter in Suburbia.
James May's Big Ideas showed us what happens with the current generation of airborne cars- carrying all the modular parts to make it a plane makes it too long to be a car, and so on until you need a whole wallet full of licences and medical certificates to get it moving.

Also, a car that turns into a plane is not going to fly without enough runway, which isn't going to happen at too many places on any road, even ones where the roadbed is an old runway from WW2 which was joined up as part of the highway after the war.

The only way a flying car would be viable is if it performed like a helicopter, but with the footprint of a car, which is going to take some advancements in energy. This design has been drawn up without even knowing how big and heavy the powerpack is going to be, the way Ford once proved arrogant enough to design a road vehicle (even if only a concept) to take a then-nonexistant sort of nuclear battery which noone proved psycho enough to produce for it.

Hey! No raining on my childhood daydreams!
Clearly you did not notice that this is the Science Fiction Discussion board.

(I jest. Yeah, non-autonomic flying cars would probably be a Really Bad Idea™. But I still would love to hop on my hover bike and zip over traffic to my FLGS, etc.)