Ooh, and I hadn’t even seen this gem:
(As malden said, emphasis mine.)
:dubious:
Shouldn’t that be a ‘drug addiction incapacity’?
Actually, there’s not a lot of room in the sky. In fact, there is very little, when we’re talking about commuting. Airports become congested when there are only a few airplanes in the sky at once. Yes, there is a lot of sky out in the boonies, but when everyone is heading for the same subdivision or downtown, it will get real crowded, real fast.
The main reason the sky isn’t so big is because aircraft need a lot of separation. They wander all over the sky. Air currents rise and fall, winds gust, pilots aren’t that steady… That’s why aircraft need thousands of feet of separation between them.
This is the major problem with ‘cars in the sky for everyone’. If even a tiny fraction of the population of a big city had flying cars, it would be raining metal as they run into each other. Either that, or there would be so many delays that no one would get anywhere.
The road in front of my office building probably moves more cars in an hour than the entire city could move airplanes in a week.
Aircraft also suffer the same problem as mass transit - you can’t pick up milk on the way home, or pick the kids up from school or drop them off at the baseball field.
The thing is, ‘commuter aircraft’ are here today. Have been for decades. You could buy a personal helicopter from Rotorway in the 1970s’. There are ultralights that will take off in 100’, fly at 30mph, and land in 100ft. There’s even a sport pilot rating you can get for local flying that doesn’t take that much effort or really cost that much (compared to the cost of a ‘flying car’).
The reason they aren’t in widespread use is exactly what I said: they need too much space to allow them to be packed into congested areas, so you have to drive miles out to the airport or a field. You can’t rely on them for commuting, because high winds, rain, fog, snow, and ice can ground them for days or even weeks at a time. They burn more gas than a car, they’re more dangerous, you tend to get your office clothes dirty doing a walk-around, and in general they make very little sense as commuter vehicles, except for the rare person who needs the particular qualities an airplane can give him.
Adding hover capability to an airplane does nothing to relieve these liabilities. All it does is remove the need for about 1000’ of flat ground.
There are. Every major city is sitting under a TCA, and there ain’t no way you’re going to get permission to tool around a congested area in controlled airspace in your puddle jumper. Ask all the millionaires who have multi-acre estates and would just love to land their Bell Jetrangers there, but are forced to use the airport instead.
Why would they want to do that? They already have helicopters.
And flying cars don’t run into wires and light standards? If cops start landing these things like patrol cars on freeways, there will be a lot of cop funerals.
Flying cars are the dream that never dies. They’ve been ‘right around the corner’ for the past 50 years. There’s even been a certified roadable airplane with removable wings (The Taylor Skycar). But the problems aren’t just technical - they’re systemic.
If the propellers are variable-pitch and have a clutch, and if they have enough mass, then it would theoretically be possible to auto-rotate to a safe landing from certain parts of the flight envelope, but probably not all. Don’t count on it in this thing. Very light helicopters have issues around this. The Mini 500 is a death trap in part because it’s extremely difficult to land if the power fails. I believe the Robinson R-22 had some problems in this area as well. Maybe Johnnie L.A. will be along to add to this, since he flies fling-wings.
Cheap personal rotorcraft are not new. Rotorway has been making them for a long time, and they used to be quite cheap. The Bensen Gyrocopter has been around since the 1950’s, and you used to be able to buy them for just a few thousand bucks. They’re not a true helicopter, but with a pre-rotator driven by the engine, they could take off in something like 25 feet and land in about the same space.
A miracle. Moller’s numbers don’t add up. His fuel consumption figures are nuts. His top speed estimate is crazy. The front engine nacelles are perfect for picking up FOD (crap on the ground) and blowing it through the fans in the back, taking out one whole side of the aircraft. He claims that it can fly with a nacelle failed, except he hasn’t made full-feathering fans. The thing looks unstable under power, and would probably need active computer stability.
Do you know what kind of regulatory hurdles he’d have to go through to certify that thing? Porsche spent tens of millions certifying their engine alone, and it was just an evolutionary adaptation of their car engines. The Moller Skycar’s LEAST radical feature is the fact that it uses a whole array of Wankel rotary engines driving ducted fans. It’s a pipe-dream.
To answer your question seriously, I think his skycar would force a new regulatory category.
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- (sigh) Not this again.
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- (sigh) Not this again.
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- The problem with the concept of selling personal flyng machines like cars is that product liability lawsuits are what killed the US light aircraft industry/market during the 1970’s and '80’s, not lack of desire. In the US, private light aircraft ownership is down to something like less than 10% of what it was in 1955. The sad fact is that as it stands, anyone who buys an airplane and then has an accident in it can drag the manufacturer into court no matter how untrained they were, how poorly or improperly the aircraft was maintained or how bad the weather was they tried to go flying in. I recall an article that said one major company got sued 204 times between 1982 and 1986–and in every case either they won or it was dismissed–but each case cost the company an average of $550,000. As aircraft companies closed down, parts for their existing planes couldn’t be obtained, and those planes had to be junked because they couldn’t be maintained properly. Consumer advocates please take note: the US light aircraft industry has almost been sued totally out of existence.
- The products of what few light-aircraft companies are now left are ALL fantastically overpriced, in order for companies to budget for huge liability warchests and still turn a profit. At $50K, is the Aircar cheap? No. It is about equivalent in engine type and weight to a motorcycle, and motorcycles sell for a lot less than $50,000.
- And finally, Moller hasn’t produced anything. He has been “seeking investors” and selling “information packets” for literally decades now, at least since the 1960’s. He does not sell aircraft, he sells “information packets”.
~
Does anyone remember the SoloTrek? This thing generated just tons of breathless hype a couple of years ago. The guy who operates the company, one Moshier, has been creating great looking graphics and models of futuristic vehicles that were in ‘final development’ for decades now. And you too can buy the info-kit for $30, the video of the ‘flying prototype’ for $50, the T-shirt for $20, reserve a spot on the waiting list for $100, etc. ad nauseum. As soon as the hype dies down, the vehicle runs into ‘unanticipated delays’, and nothing more is heard until everyone forgets about it. Soon enough, another new miracle vehicle appears…
People never learn. The sad thing is that there are a lot of great companies out there like Van’s Aircraft making affordable aircraft with spectacular performance, but the mainstream media doesn’t care about guys like that because the aircraft isn’t futuristic enough. Never mind that he’s sold thousands of his kits, and they could easily become one of the most numerous aircraft in the sky over time. But most people have never heard of them.
To be fair to Moller, he does do real engineering. He has built hovering aircraft that do fly, he builds engines, and there’s some good engineering in some of his stuff from what I can tell. I believe he’s a professor of engineering, and does know his stuff. I think he’s also sincere about wanting to get the Skycar flying.
That’s what makes it doubly difficult to figure him out. I put him in the ‘crazy inventor’ category, like those guys who spend their entire lives working on exotic, rube-goldberg cars, strange houses, etc. He’s so close to the hardware that he’s lost the ability to step back and see the big picture or something.
But you know, a lot of the pioneers in various fields are slightly batty, and a lot of them work on things that are horribly impractical in their time.
Nah. I fly Robi-22’s, and they autorotate to landing just fine. Maybe back in the 80’s when they were first made? Don’t think so tho.
Wasn’t there a handling issue with R-22’s not that long ago? I seem to recall the FAA looking at them because of high fatality rates. What was that about?
I almost bought a Piper Warrior last year for $41,000. It’s a flying machine. Better yet, it’s a flying machine that actually flies, right now.
Piper Warriors and C-172’s - basic, four-seat airplanes - can both be obtained for under $50,000. C-150’s - a two-seater - for under $30,000. Granted, those are the prices of used aircraft but I’m talking about aircraft that have been adequately maintained and are in good condition, aircraft that you could safely fly home in after handing over your money and being given the keys. Financing is obtainable from any number of places.
Of course, you can pay more than that for a newer one, or one with the latest panel-mounted GPS units (those can cost tens of thousands of dollars in and of themselves).
But you can get a flying machine right now for your $50,000 or under.
>sigh< So many people have made statements like this for so long that my only reply is now “Uh, yeah - I’ll believe it when I see it”
Yes, but it’s probably because you’re not a pilot.
Frankly, the whole tone of the article you linked to was a tad insulting to those of us who are already flying and somehow, even without the gee-whiz technology, manage to avoid banging into each other. This isn’t rocket science. Oh, wait, maybe jets are… well, I fly piston-powered craft and those definitely aren’t rocket science.
Learning how to fly safely is what ground school and flight training are for. Now, the dirty little secret is that MOST humans beings are capable of learning to do this… but most are not motivated to do so.
The whole “highway in the sky” concept has been in development for a few years. And it holds great promise. It is also an example of technology-worship of the worst sort.
As an example, last Sunday I rode shotgun in a Mooney airplane equipped with a Garmin 400 panel display with GPS and all sorts of other pretty technology. If you saw the X-man movie with their airplane and the neat-o color panel display… THAT’s more or less what I’m talking about. Very, very nice. Draws a line in the sky and you follow it. Only one problem: our GPS failed.
Yes, they DO fail sometimes. In this case, it didn’t fail entirely, just in a couple features, but think about that – if the panel goes dark you KNOW there’s a problem. If only one or two things are wrong… would you know? WE knew because, out of long habit, we double-check everything and noticed the discrepancy. If our hypothetical Joe Six-Pack was in the same situation, would he notice, and if he did, would he have the capability to determine what is right and what is wrong with this picture?
To add further insult to injury, we were very close to a TFR (temporary flight restriction) zone. The US government accepts no excuse for trespass in these cases, they WILL send a “sky cop” after you. Which isn’t that different from being pulled over by a state trooper, except state troopers don’t have a machine gun mounted on their cars, nor to they carry heat-seeking missiles. Sky cops do.
Now, being fully competant citizens of the air, we were able to revert to paper maps and the old Mark I eyeball to prevent infractions of the law and safely reach our destination. If we had not, however, our GPS would have carried us right across the heart of the Forbidden Zone.
The moral here? Technology doesn’t alway work. No matter how modern and up-to-date.
Why do accidents happen? Three reasons:
- Things break
- People make mistakes
- Only God controls the weather
In pilot training you are taught to avoid bad situations, and compensate (when possible) when they happen anyway. Even if the government didn’t require “full” private pilot licenses to operate a “flying car”, if they come into mass use there will HAVE TO be some sort of licensing, just as we have with cars and motorcycles to keep the carnage anywhere near acceptable.
I’d like to go through the linked article, but that may have to wait since I do have to show up to work today - something about them paying me to be there on time and on a regular basis. 
Anyhow, I’d also like to address a few other points brought up, which I’ll probably do in bits and pieces, so bear with me. My life interferring with my hobbies again and all that 
Oh, Tuck, do please come flying with me in my neighborhood on some sunny summer Sunday… there is not so much room as you think. The skies over Chicago can look like the freeway at rush hour - except everything is moving faster and can’t slow down.
Airplanes require greater separation space than cars do.
Uh, yeah - that explains the very few SUV’s you see on the road… hey, wait –
Nope - there’s a market for $50,000 vehicles. Definitely. Which is why you see 'em on the road frequently.
Airplanes have radar? OK, some do - but not the ones I fly, and probably not these “flying cars” either. There are also issues with use and maintenance of radar, which can (and sometimes have) caused injury to ground personnel when activated during maintenance. Which can add a whole new wrinkle.
That said - someone IS working on a system to provide affordable terrain warnings to small aircraft, and even provide a mechanism to turn the aircraft away from obstacles. Of course, an override is necessary so you can land the aircraft at the end of the trip.
Indeed. When I get to dissecting the article I’ll even mention some of the existing rules and how I think they’d apply to the various aircraft.
Like this?
When we have massed flying banks of x-ray guns in the sky, think of the road rage!
I would be in line to buy a flying car, as long as Mr Spacely agreed to give me a raise.
Probably meant, “drug interdiction”
Honestly, Broomstick, I wouldn’t waste your time doing a line-by-line dissection of the article or anything. You and I have been around here long enough to know how many times this topic has come up that you could probably just link to one of the earlier threads.
It’s been awhile since I looked into the annual costs of maintenance, fees, etc. for the sort of airplanes I fly (as a renter I don’t pay these directly) but last I checked, assuming no major problems, you’re looking at, very roughly 3,000 a year. Some years, of course, the cost will be greater but other years are lower (when you have almost no problems). Keep in mind that I fly airplanes 20-40 years old - presumably a newer machine would require fewer replacement parts and less maintenance for the same reliability.
Many maintenance items can be done by the pilot/owner and don’t require a professional mechanic, such as oil changes.
The new Sport Pilot category will offer the opportunity for the pilot/owner to become certified to make his/her own repairs on an aircraft. If you build an airplane under the Experimental category you can likewise make your own repairs and conduct your own inspections as well on the aircraft you’ve built. So there are opportunities for the do-it-yourself types to get properly educated on the skills needed and reduce their costs that way.
Although the cost will remain higher than a car it will most likely be within the range of someone who can afford to plunk down $50,000 for a vehicle. We’re not discussing multi-million dollar jets here.
Well… not really. I once had a major electrical failure in an airplane and barely noticed (I did notice the drained battery when I tried to start it again). Even if the engine quits, if you keep your head there is a high probability of making a safe landing. Things do go wrong on aircraft and usually, after a few very tense minutes, everyone walks away intact.
That’s with the aircraft we currently have - airplanes and helicopter pilots are both trained in emergency procedures including emergency landings (I even had to make use of those skills once). One of the problems, as I (and many other pilots) see it is that these are aimed at people who have NOT received such training. Another problem - arguably even more serious) - is that not all of these aircraft are capable of making a power-out landing. The Moeller Skycar, for instance, is going to glide just about as well as a brick. Sure, sure, he says there’s redundancy and you’ll never have total failure… well, no one ever thought a Boeing 757 would run completely out of gas mid-flight until the Gimli Glider incident. Oops. (By the way - in the Gimli incident the pilots managed to land without injury to anyone and only minor damage to the airplane despite a complete lack of engine power). It happened to an Airbus over the Atlantic a few years later, although for different reasons. (They landed safely in the Canary Islands). Now, neither of those two occurances were a good thing, but they illustrate a certain safety that exists when you match well trained pilots and well designed aircraft. With some of these flying cars the intention seems to be an untrained non-pilot and… well, how well designed are these things? What sort of backup systems do they have?
They are actually developing those. In airplanes and helicopters the airbag is actually mounted in the shoulder strap of the restraint harness rather than the control yoke (the thing in front of the pilot that looks like a steering wheel). Still rather new in this application, they are quite rare at this point but they are available for those who wish to install such systems.
And, just because somebody is going to bring it up at some point, yes, we have parachutes for small airplanes, too. One company - Cirrus - actually installs them as standard equipment on all new planes they produce.
An uncontrolled crash from 20 feet up is more than enough to kill you.
You wouldn’t be flying it at 20 feet anyway - too much stuff to run into. Buildings, bridges, freeway overpasses…
You wouldn’t fly it at 50 feet - even if you didn’t have local skyscrapers, trees grow that high and running into them will do more than ruin the paint job.
At 100 feet you’re still worrying about powerlines.
Cellphone towers - which are proliferating like mushrooms on manure - are built up to 200 feet.
Um… under 300 is safer?
In flying, as a general rule the higher you are the safer you are. For one thing, there’s a whole lot less stuff to run into. Also, if something does go wrong altitude gives you more time to fix the problem before you’re slapped by a planet.
“Ultralight”
Other regulations pertaining to ultralights (to be found under Federal Aviation Regulation Part 103) include no more than one seat, no more than five gallons of fuel, no faster than 55kts/63 mph (I may be slightly off on that), and no more than 254 lbs (minus pilot). Most do, indeed, run on unleaded premium auto gas, frequently mixed with two-stroke oil for lubrication. Avoid gasahol, it does Bad Things to various bits of the engine/fuel system.
Ultralights in the US actually (if you can believe this) require NO licensing and NO training to operate legally (provided you follow rules like staying away from cities). I must point out, however, that the accident/fatality rate is considerably higher among those who fly without training than among those who have enrolled in a training program (available from three different organizations) and successfully completed it.
The utility of a 254 lbs flying machine is quite limited. In a legal ultralight weight is enormously important and all excess parts must be eliminated - excess parts like windshields, doors, and floors. Not many people want to sit perched on a lawnchair at 5,000 feet (I do - but then, you already knew I was strange). In many areas, such as the upper Midwest, it’s too damn cold to fly those things much of the year - not because the machine cares but because a hypothermic pilot and flying is a bad combination. The machines are lightweight and thus are tossed about by very light breezes - I never liked flying ultralights in anything over about a 10 mph wind, and 15 mph can be downright frightening. At that weight they just don’t have a lot of power - I’m only 145 lbs and on a hot summer day I could barely get off the ground. A 200 lbs man will not be able to leave the runway when it’s 90 degrees and 100% humidity out in a legal ultralight.
Which brings me to a point about flying in general - the weather is a much greater factor than it ever is in driving a car. As a general rule, once it’s warmed up my car will accelerate just as fast in January as in June, and go as fast regardless of the season. It’s not like that with aircraft. Air temperature and humidity can have an enormous effect. In January in Chicago a Cessna 150 carrying full fuel, me, and a passenger can climb at 800 feet per minute, maybe even more (that would probably require sub-zero temperatures). I flew one on a hot July day in the Tennessee mountains, just me and only half a tank of fuel, and barely rose at 200 feet per minute despite being significantly lighter. In winter, I can cruise in a C150 around 100 mph. In summer in the mountains it’s more like 80-90 mph EVERY aircraft is affected by these sorts of factors, no matter how big or how small. Sure, a bigger engine will mitigate this to some extent - but increase the engine size and most likely you won’t have an ultralight anymore.
At which I’m going to mention that there are damn few genuine legal ultralights out there anymore.
Yep. Under current regs a Moeller Skycar would be an airplane.
There is no way it could qualify as either an ultralight or a sport aircraft.
Why? Too heavy, too fast, and too many engines - although there are no limts on the number of engines for an ultralight (and there were a few multi-engine experiments) sport aircraft are explicitly limited to one and only one engine. And why is that? Paradoxically, the casualty rates for lightweight multi-engine aircraft are significantly higher (once you adjust for different numbers of aircraft of each type) than for single engine light aircraft. Multiple engines theoretically offer more safety, but it’s offset by a greater complexity that can and does kill people in some circumstances.
In large passenger jets a combination of training and technology makes flight minus one (or sometimes more than one) engine a reasonably safe endeavor. But small aircraft pilots typically do not have as extensive training, and even when they do, many light twins can not maintain altitude on just one engine, it merely slows the inevitable descent to landing.
That actually sounds like the Sport Pilot ceiling - so it might be a regulatory limit and not a matter of physical limits.
If he’s talking about ultralights - they are allowed flight above 10,000 feet when, if I recall correctly (I never flew 'em in the Rockies so it wasn’t much of a concern to me) you are within 2,000 feet of the ground. So you could hug mountain terrain while flying over it.
Mainly, the intention was to keep ultralights out of commercial flight lanes.
Although at a certain point the air does thin out so much that the aircraft can no longer generate sufficient lift to gain altitude. Where, exactly, that point occurs various from aircraft to aircraft. This physical limitation kicks in sooner for rotorcraft than fixed wing, though (all other things being equal)
Assuming we’re still talking potential ultralights, assuming a maximum legal fuel load of 5 gallons you’re looking at a fuel burn of 2 to 2.5 gallons per hour (I don’t know if he’s considering an emergency reserve or not - he’s not required to do so in an ultralgiht) or, under ideal conditions, 22 miles per gallon.
However, your fuel efficiency will decrease markedly while in a climb, and you must climb to an adequate altitude for safety. Unless you have the skill to catch and ride a thermal up into the sky (which is possible to do) if you climb to 10,000 you’re going to get really lousy mileage.
And no, you can’t really pull a small aircraft - even an ultralight - into a gas station. Particulary not a gas station with an awning over it, the wings/rotors are too wide to fit underneath, or rather, between the supports. You fill gas cans (“approved fuel containers”) and haul the gas out to the aircraft. Some ultralights have fuel tanks you can easily pull off the aircraft, take directly to the pump, and fill there. Back when I was doing this, however, a lot of gas stations wouldn’t sell to you if they knew you were going to put the gas into anything like a flying machine - liability concerns, you know? So yes, fueling these things can be a pain in the butt.
I should also point out the true ultralight helicopters have an evil reputation among both ultralighters and homebuilders. They have killed a significant number of people. I am not a rotorcraft expert, but I gather that it is extremely difficult to build an ultralight helicopter that meets the weight limits under the regulations. Ultralight gyrocopters are a different matter - those do exist.
Let’s see, the prototype goes fifty miles an hour, uses four rotary engines (not noted for their fuel efficiency), and can fly for two hours. Color me underwhelmed.