Flying Car Blog

Carnival of Tomorrow

This week's Carnival of Tomorrow is up at The Speculist.

Commuting to Silicon Valley... by Gyroplane

Mercury News colleague Nicole Wong has a notable story about the growing number of people commuting to Silicon Valley in private planes. Worth reading, and checking out this graphic for examples.But a reader named Sean Cooper just contacted us, saying he's built something called a gyroplane (picture inset).We'd like to hear what folk think about his radical idea. Basically Cooper says he commuted to work yesterday (50 miles one way) with this gyroplane. Sure it flies, but it drives too. So he drove it from home to the airport, flew it to his destination airport, and then drove it the rest of the way to work.He says he finished building the gyro about a month ago and that after heated negotiations with the Department of Motor Vehicles to let him register it as both a vehicle and a gyroplane, they have agreed that it can drive on the streets and highways of California.

The Convaircar Flying Car

Retro Future:

On paper, the ConvAIRCAR was truly the stuff of commuters' fantasies. It had "all the advantages of a Cadillac" according to its manufacturer. So what happened? The same thing that happens to all flying cars--the dream crashed and burned before it could take off...this time literally.

...

On November 17, 1947, the New York Times announced the news: a prototype of the ConvAIRCAR had circled San Diego for one hour and 18 minutes. These trials confirmed the best hopes of Consolidate Vultee. But success was short-lived. A few days after the test flight, a pilot crash-landed the ConvAIRCAR in the desert (it was later discovered a gas gauge had accidentally been shut off) and the only prototype in existence was demolished beyond repair.

Transportation Futuristics

Jay Oatway wrote: "Here's another link to stuff that I think might suit your flying car blog. Some neat retro-future pictures at any rate."

Wow, what can I say? He's right. Check it out.

U.S. Bureaucrats Block Space Biz

Sploid: "U.S. technology-export regulators are screwing up Virgin Galactic's plans to launch commercial space-tour flights using Bert Rutan's SpaceShipOne technology."

Why Flying Cars Won't Take Off

News.com:

We featured them in an article last Friday, and CBS News' 60 Minutes did the same over the weekend.

The concept of flying cars has been around since the Jetsons, of course: ideally, we'll be able to take off vertically, cruise at 200+ miles per hour, and be safe no matter what the weather is like.

Now consider why flying cars aren't likely to become a reality anytime soon:

Cost

Regulations

Automation

Weather

Safety

XPrize First Flight

"XPrize First Flight #5", originally uploaded by JasonDeFillippo.

Jason DeFillippo helped cover the first flight of SpaceShip One for NPR. He has posted some great photos of the event.

Nano Flying Cars?

Nano Goes to Washington:

The next presenter -- he just finished, and I'm falling behind -- was J. Storrs Hall, who gave a very far-out talk about how nanotech might be used to build things like, say, flying cars. (Homepage here, abstract here.) Hall is actually known for far-out thinking; he was the guy who first dreamed up the notion of "utility fog" -- that is, a nanobot swarm that could "simulate the physical existence of almost any object."

The flying car Hall mentioned, by the way, would have "a hundred quadrillion parts" (that's 100,000,000,000,000,000 parts), and building it would require a database "that's thousands of millions of times larger than any in the world today." (If you're skeptical about whether that's the right way to go, I suspect you're not alone. Even if, as one expert has suggested to me, the problem of using nanotech to build a flying car wouldn't be as complex as Hall says, I can't help but think that using more conventional materials would be easier. Hey, it worked for Alberto Santos-Dumont!)

Spaceports Boom Across The West!

Sploid:

Mojave Spaceport is home to the world-famous X-Prize winner, but New Mexico and Texas are rushing to get in on the business.

Paul Allen bankrolled Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne, soon to be transformed into a passenger line run by Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic.

And the biggest names in tech, from Amazon's Jeff Bezos to PayPal's Elon Musk, are building their own private spacelines.

Meanwhile, Florida is gearing up as a Space Tourist State, with several private spaceship companies considering operations there. Other states planning commercial spaceports include Oklahoma, Kansas and Nevada.

The space-tourism market is expected to be a "$1 billion annual business, with more than 15,000 passengers by 2021."

Small Aircraft Transportation System Research Ending

NASA: "The Small Aircraft Transportation System (SATS) research project reaches its conclusion with a proof-of-concept demonstration in June 2005. The proof-of-concept demonstration will be the culmination of the five-year public/private project and will occur in Danville, Virginia on June 5, 6, and 7, 2005."

The AirScooter II personal flying vehicle

Engadget:

Inventor Elwood "Woody" Norris first developed high-end stereo speakers, an alarm that signals when a hip replacement has worn out, and now — the next logical creation — the AirScooter II, a personal aircraft that can hover or fly at speeds up to 55 knots. The aircraft weighs around 300 pounds and does not require a pilot's license to operate. It operates on two rotors in a fashion similar to most helicopters, but is apparently easier to fly. The flight controls live in the motorbike-style handlebars and there are no foot pedals whatsoever, meaning the craft could be piloted by those without the use of their legs. Pricing hasn't been officially set, but the Nevada-based company, AirScooter (what's with these cryptic names?), expects to release the product this year for less than $50,000. A bit rich for our blood, but damn if it wouldn't make a fine Engadget-mobile. We wouldn't mind showing up at the next trade show in this. Peep the video of The AirScooter II in action below.

Video: AirScooter II in flight [Quicktime]

via Portension

Government Killed the Flying Car in the 1950s

A couple paragraph's in the Wikipedia's article about "flying cars" really highlight how government intervention stifled the development of a flying car:

In the 1950s, Ford Motor Company performed a serious feasibility study for a flying car product. They concluded that such a product was technically feasible, economically manufacturable, and had significant realistic markets. The markets explored included ambulance services, police and emergency services, military uses, and initially, luxury transportation. Some of these markets are now served by light helicopters, proving the accuracy of Ford's marketing. However, the flying car explored by Ford would be at least fifty-fold less expensive.

When Ford approached the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration about regulatory issues, the critical problem was that the (then) known forms of air traffic control were inadequate for the volume of traffic Ford proposed. At the time, air traffic control consisted of flight numbers, altitudes and headings written on little slips of paper and placed in a case. Quite possibly computerized traffic control, or some form of directional allocation by altitude could resolve the problems.

SpaceShipOne Inventor: Space in Reach Now

Associated Press:

The inventor of the first private spaceship predicted Wednesday that commercial manned space flight would move quickly from joyrides for millionaires to the general public and spawn advances not yet imagined — much as early computers opened the way for the Internet.

Wearing a black leather jacket and 19th-century mutton-chop sideburns in his first appearance before a congressional committee, Burt Rutan sketched a futuristic vision for the space tourism industry that was invigorated by last fall's flights of his SpaceShipOne over California's Mojave Desert to capture a $10 million prize.

POGO

Jay Oatway, Blogger-in-Chief of Portension.com wrote in an email:

Came across this company called POGO They want to revolutionize air travel, reducing the cost to as little as US$1 per mile. Not a flying car, but perhaps taxis services have always preceded car culture.

Excellent find, Jay, and you're right. As companies like Pogo work to work to develop the technology to deliver inexpensive and personalized air travel they are actually hastening the day that they're no longer needed.

A Flying Leap for Cars

Business Week:

A flying car is suddenly less of a pipe dream or the stuff of cartoons. Giants including carmakers Honda (HMC ) and Toyota (TM ) are developing prototypes of small flying devices. Helped by advances in nanotechnology, microelectronics, and robotics, researchers from the likes of NASA, Carnegie Mellon University, and University of Florida are developing new flight-related technologies, designed to make piloting an aircraft easier than driving a car.

Even Tim Draper, founder of fabled Silicon Valley venture-capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson, which launched the online advertising company Overture.com and others, has recently asked for proposals from outfits developing flying cars. Indeed, while an airborne vehicle may still be 10 to 20 years away, it's already making some VCs see green.

In theory, as everyone begins flying to work, these contraptions could dwarf today's $850 billion auto industry. The devices -- ranging from air taxis to personal flying machines -- could breathe life into aerospace companies' growth or create a whole new generation of startups. Best of all, some versions of this vision could start to come true within several years.