Personal Flying Machines, the norm in a decade?

In My Humble Opinion
21

The day flying cars become the norm is the day I move into a bunker 100 feet underground.

22

You’ll never see it. I never bought into the SoloTrek idea. Maybe the military could use it. Maybe very, very special operations like Search and Rescue or something.

I always thought it was snake oil, because it just seemed to have a lot of really bad engineering decisions. For one thing, the use of a 2-stroke Rotax engine running at high power constantly. Those engines aren’t made for that, and aren’t the most reliable engines anyway.

Also, the thing is simply not safe. It won’t auto-rotate, so you can’t fly it to a controlled landing if the power goes off. Their solution is a ballistic chute, but that’s a pretty crappy solution. I sure as hell don’t wand to float down into random terrain under a parachute with 400 lbs strapped to my back.

But at least the Solotrek could theoretically work. THe Moller Skycar, on the other hand, is pure fantasy. You might get one off the ground, but you’ll never see them flying around. Way too many problems with the concept.

23

That thing runs on a ROTAX??!! HA! You’ll never get me strapped into one!

There ARE strap-on-your-back flying machines that actually work - they’re called powered parasails. Of course, launching requires some prepwork to make sure the parachute (that’s the wing that holds you up) is intact and the lines aren’t tangled or worn, and you want to avoid landing in trees or powerlines (we had one of those oopsies last weekend in my area). It’s not the take-it-out-of-the-box-strap-on-and-go-in five-minutes fantasy folks want. AND if the engine quits you can still have a controlled glide to a safe landing.

Sam, if they mount the 'chute right they could probably arrange for the contraption to hit first. Although not always successful, the ultralights and small homebuilts have learned how to use these emergency 'chutes effectively. But as a general rule of thumb you need a minimum of 100 feet of altitude for the 'chute to have time to open and slow you down, and 200-400 is even better.

I should also point out that with an emergency 'chute, a “success” is where you survive. You may still be injured, possibly seriously.

The “random terrain” thing is a problem. Powerlines, for instance. Lakes and rivers. Freeway with heavy traffic. All sorts of things that can kill you on the ground.

I have no problems with private citizens doing their own, personal flying (since I fall into that category myself) but the idea scadillions of people are going to be zipping through the skies commuting to work is just not feasible. Even if they could make the SoloTrek work reliably it wouldn’t be feasible. Here’s why:

  1. Exposed to the elements: This is essentially and open-cockpit vehicle. If this was a viable solution we’d all be driving motorcycles and covertibles to work. We don’t. Think about why. Aside from the mussed hair and the road grit getting on our work clothes, charging about at 60 mph while exposed to the air is frequently uncomfortable. We’d still need cars and roads for winter (unless we all move to Southern Calfornia, Nevada, Arizona, Texas, etc.) and for rain. Haven’t ridden a motorcycle in the rain, but judging from the expressons I’ve seen on folks who have, it’s not a lot of fun. I have flown open-cockpit in the rain. It’s definitely not fun.

  2. The weather: No, not the matter of comfort I mentioned about, I’m talking about safety. I fly real honest-to-goodness airplanes but I hesistate to take off when the winds are above 20 knots and while I have successfully landed in a 28 knot wind in a small plane I do NOT recommend this - the ride is not fun, even if you’re gonzo about flying. If the winds are gusting as opposed to steady, it’s even worse. As a rule, the smaller and lighter the aircraft, the more it’s affected by wind. I’ll fly the 4-seat airplane in windier conditions than the 2-seat, and I’ll fly the 2-seat in windier weather than I’d fly an ultralight (which is about the same weight range as the SoloTrek. Well, actually, it’s lighter, but let’s not get bogged down in details) The big passenger airliners can handle wind and weather much much worse than anything I’ll ever consider flying a little plane through. The SoloTrek is TINY. So we’d still need cars and road for windy, blustery days. And this is leaving aside all the weather stuff in #1 about rain, snow, sleet, cold, etc.

  3. Fear: If you’re afraid of heights you aren’t going to be interested in the SoloTrek. A lot of folks are afraid of “flying” as a concept. None of these people are going to be buying one. So we’ll still need roads and cars…

  4. Traffic/People Are Idiots: Although the sky appears empty most of the time, the actual fact is that some of the airspace over a major city like Chicago or New York is already as congested and crowded as a freeway. Where are you going to put all those commuters and their SoloTreks? How are you going to keep them away from the airspace used by passenger jets and cargo carriers? You’re going to have accidents - people cutting each other off, collisions, etc - and the inevitable fatalities. While people seem to have a certain tolerance for death-by-car, they totally freak from a death-by-flying-machine.

  5. Regulations: At 400lbs a SoloTrek is too heavy to qualify as an ultralight. Therefore, it must be registered under Part 91 of the Federal Aviation Regulations. Aside from whether that’s even possible from a mechanical/technical standpoint, that means you’ll have to have at least a recreational pilot’s license in order to fly it. That will cost you about $4k right there. Plus, you’ll have to somehow get instruction in the thing (probably a good idea regardless), log your time, etc. You will have to pass an FAA 3rd class physical. There are a LOT of medical problems and medications that will not interfere with your car driving but will ground you as a pilot.

There’s probably other obstacles I haven’t thought of. Yeah, it’s a neat idea, but it’s just not practical. It’s not practical for daily transportation, and aside from a very narrow segment of folks who fly bizarre stuff for fun, has no appeal to those of us who already fly stuff. Maybe there’s a military application, maybe not. So don’t invest your money in this company, and don’t expect anything out of them but more of the same.

24

So Sam do you think humans are destined to ride the windy skies in hang-gliders, parasails etc…etc…?

I tend to think the future holds something else, something more sci-fi. I simply can not submit to thinking people will never have some form of personal flying devices. Maybe not now, but certainly in our lifetime will we see some form of operational PFD.

25

Never Happen. Personal aviation makes all borders too permeable. People will be getting routinely shot down for flying over the White House, or Area 51.

26

Exactly. The reason this idea is coming up again is that most people don’t remember that it is an idea whose time has come and gone. Back in the '80s there were people flying around this area in motorized kites (call them what you like). Couple of accidents and they disappeared. :stuck_out_tongue:

27

If you want a flying machine you can use without any licenseing or medical certification, try the ultra-lights (Exempt from regulation per FAR part 108).

Here’s what you’re looking at:

http://www.quicksilveraircraft.com/sport.htm

The powered parachutes are early-morning toys - they are on the ground before the wind picks up. The ultralights can withstand a light breeze.

28

I’m pretty sure we WILL be travelling by air routinely sooner or later, and probably sooner rather than later. It’s a risk/benefit thing. but it won’t be a matter of just one gizmo. The things we’ll need to make it work is:

  1. Fuel-efficient flight, enough to handle an enclosed cockpit and passengers (or groceries)
  2. Enough power to handle inclement weather
  3. Computer-controlled airways that allow people to safely travel in narrow corridors

We don’t have the means to do this yet with current technology, but none of it seems all that difficult – we’re not talking FTL drives or anything here.

The huge benefit of allowing vast numbers of people to travel quickly and easily from one place to another will drive us to come up with solutions for all these problems. Frex, imagine an air traffic corridor ten lanes high and ten lanes wide. That’s a 100-lane highway, folks.

29

I wanna see downtown Manhatten at 08:00 when all the workers arrive by air. :smiley:

30

Flying cars are not a new thing. Here’s one that was invented nearly 45 years ago. It was designed so you could land at an airport, remove the wings and tailpiece and drive on into work. Looks cool too. And though it was very successful at flying and driving, it never got approved by the governmental powers that be.

That’s a shame. I would love to fly around like that. I just don’t want drunks and other idiots to be able to as well.
http://www.museumofflight.org/collections/craftdisplay.html?ID=3

31

There are many reasons why we’ll never see huge masses of private aircraft in the air:

  1. Density. You can’t put anywhere NEAR the number of aircraft into the air as you can put cars on the ground. Because cars are predictable - they stick to roads, they don’t get blown around by wind and turbulence, and they can be guided very precisely. There’s a very good reason why airplanes are separated by 1000’ vertically and half a mile horizontally, and it’s not just because of navigation errors. It’s just very easy to be blown hundreds of feet to the sides of a course by crosswinds, or to be moved hundreds of feet up and down by turbulence. Here in Edmonton, probably 50,000 cars hit the streets every day. If you tried to put that many airplanes in the sky over the city, it’d be raining metal. You couldn’t put 1/10 that many airplanes in the sky.

  2. Weather. I don’t care how sophisticated your personal flying machine is - it’s staying on the ground in a thunderstorm. Can you imagine a city with 50,000 flying machines sitting at offices, and the weather turns bad? That’s a lot of stranded people.

  3. Safety. When cars crash, they crash on roads. They don’t crash into schools, hospitals, high-rise towers, etc. When airplanes crash over cities, they do a lot of damage. It would only take a handful of spectacular crashes where personal machines ram into a skyscraper or land in a schoolyard at recess killing some kids, and they’d be banned.

  4. Training. Many people have a hard enough time just passing driver’s exams. Even a simplified pilots license requires an order of magnitude more study than a driving license. Even if you computer controlled everything, Pilots would still have to be taught meteorology and other difficult subjects.

  5. Maintenance. How often do you see a car stalled on the road? If they were airplanes, every one of those stalls would be a crash. Airplanes need to have impeccable maintenance. That makes them very expensive to own. That guy down the street with the car blowing blue smoke because it needs a ring job, with the bad wheel alignment and bald tires? Give him an airplane, and he’ll kill himself, and take a few innocent bystanders with him.

  6. Regulation. It cost Porsche millions to certify an airplane engine based on their car engines. And yet, people like Moller think they’ll be able to certify a radical machine with six new engines, six custom-designed ducted fans, and a computer guidance system? Give me a call in 50 years after you’ve spent half a billion dollars, and I might believe it. Maybe.

32

There probably will be a market for some flying cars. They would be useful for military and rescue operations. They could possibly replace helicopters. But that won’t happen anytime soon. We need better fuel sources and time for the cars to be built cheaper. I would never trust people to drive flying cars around. The only way it would work is if AI’s run the cars and are all hooked up to a giant network. With about 800 backup networks just in case some go down.

33

Actually, some of us are already routinely traveling by air… in fact, I plan to wander down to an airport in about an hour and rent a “flying machine” just to do some routine put-putting around my neighborhood.

Funny, though - it’s those of us who are “traveling by air routinely” who are saying the Moller “Skycar” just won’t work and the SoloTrek, however appealing and possible, has some major major safety issues. Maybe that should tell folks something?

Well, the C150 I fly is a mere 100 hp engine and gallon-for-gallon covers as many miles as my 1999 Ford pickup truck. Has enclosed cockpit and room for 1 passenger and some groceries (not six months worth). There are Cubs, Champs, and other small planes that run on even smaller engines (and, in general, smaller engines consume less gas). Europe has developed a diesel engine for small planes, it has been flight tested, which will get even more bang for the buck once the approval process is done. SMALL airplanes can be more fuel-efficient than many SUV’s, the big difference being that gas for my car is about $1.45 this week and gas for the airplane is $2.35 a gallon.

Power alone will not aid you in “inclement weather”. That’s why there are days when everything is parked at O’Hare airport while I’m still driving my car down the road.

Until you’ve been tossed like a leaf while sitting in a couple of tons of aluminum you may not get this. One reason we built bigger airplanes was to handle nasty weather. There is a limit to what a 4 seat airplane can handle and it’s a lot lower than most people think. I’m a licensed pilot. I’ve been flying over seven years. Truthfully, flying in winds stronger than 25mph is a scary, scary thought. But that’s not a lot of wind, now is it? When I visit my relatives in Tennessee I have a choice of a 4-5 hour flight or a 12 hour drive. Which sounds more appealing? Yeah, I’d like a 5 hour transit time - but mostly I drive my car. Because there are so many days it’s not safe to fly a small plane over and through the Appalacians.

And that’s just considering wind. You start talking about hail, sleet, freezing rain, ice, and thunderstorms… NOBODY volunteers to fly through a thunderstorm full of sleet, hail, and howling winds regardless of size of aircraft and power, but even a stupid Yugo can handle that on the road.

Define “narrow”. Define “safe”.

There are already traffic lanes in the sky - you just can’t see 'em and you’re not aware of 'em. And, by the way, they stack up higher than just 10 levels.

Here’s another problem - ALTITUDE. The air gets thinner as you go up, remember? Most people start to notice the effects somewhere around 10,000 feet - but they are affected lower than that. Night vision can be impacted by thinning air as low as 5,000 feet. Smokers are more affected than non-smokers. One of the effects is impaired judgement. Given the evidence of impaired judgement I see on the road everyday, this could become a major problem.

Then there’s the whole problem of “instrument meterological conditions” (weather AGAIN!). You know those massive accident pile-ups that happen when visibility on the road drops to zero in heavy fog? OK, THAT’s the kind of conditions we’re talking about. In the air. With other hard, fast objects all around to run into. If you think it smarts slamming into a semi at 60-70 mph try bug-splatting on the windshield of a 300,000 airliner going 280 mph a mile above the ground. It will really ruin your day.

Yes, it is possible to fly on instruments - with training. Lots of training. I’ve seen people in training for this (I might even be one of them soon). Most of the time you just get eyestrain and headaches. I’ve also seen people puking from airsickness generated by this, and intelligent, brave, self-confident grown men crying with frustration over the learning process. Right now, the group who do this are self-selected and highly self-motivated to learn. Is the average “road warrior” going to submit to this?

And there’s the “pull-over” factor. If your car quits working you can slow down and pull over to the side of the road. If your airplane quits working you have to fly it all the way down to a landing. It can be done - I have performed an emergency landing into a farm field - but it’s a LOT harder than pulling your car over. Mind you, my little off-field landing was considered extraordinarially good - I didn’t get hurt and the plane didn’t get damaged. The landing still blew the seat cushions off the co-pilot’s seat and everything loose wound up either on top of the instrument panel or tangled up with the rudder pedals under it. That’s a BEST CASE SCENARIO. That’s how you “pull over” in an airplane.

There are some fundamental differences between driving a ground vehicle and flying a vehicle that will never go away. While the average person is capable of learning to manipulate the controls of a flying machine most do not want to, the motivation isn’t there. And it will always be the case that there is weather ground vehicles can handle that air vehicles can’t.

34

And plus there are just basic infrastructural issues, like, where are you going to PARK the damn things? Moller has this vision of people rolling the skycar out of their garage, and flying to their rooftop pad at the office. Sounds great. Until you think about the racket that 1200HP worth of engines tied to high RPM fans will make, and that lifting off will blow crap all over the neighborhood. Then it doesn’t sound so appealing. Every morning in the neighborhood would be a cacaphony of earsplitting noise and flying trash cans and newspapers.

Then, where do you put them all once you get to work? I work in a relatively small high-rise, 28 stories tall. To support it, we have a 12 level car parkade beside it, and four levels of underground parking below. Are you going to tear down the parkades and put in new ones with aircraft elevators like a carrier? Who pays for it?

And then there’s that traffic density problem - even if you spread everyone nicely en-route, they’re still all going to the same destination. So you get congestion at the terminus of the flights. My downtown business district has over 100,000 workers, and they all arrive at roughly the same hour of the day. Even if only one person in ten had a personal airplane, that would be 10,000 aicraft trying to arrive in the same 10-block radius at the same time. Sounds like fun, huh? Even if only 1 person 1000 had a personal airplane, that would be 100 planes coming into the same small zone, making it as busy as a large airport. Every morning and afternoon.

Maybe one day energy will be cheap, and society will be spread out across the country in an immense sprawl rather than being concentrated in cities. Maybe that day, when alternative transportation is available for grounded planes, and technology can make them far more reliable and easy to use, THEN we’ll see a rapid expansion in private air transportation. Maybe that will happen in 200 years. Maybe never.