I debated putting this in General Questions but its a little too silly for that forum although I would appreciate genuine answers as to why I’m barking up the wrong tree.
We’re heard about flying-cars for a long time now and for various reasons they haven’t worked out, however I was thinking, how about more emphasis on the ‘flying’ and less on the ‘car’?
We already have a proven reliable and working design, the Harrier Jump Jet, what would be the problems with taking this forty year old design, updating it and mass-producing it for the civilian market? Take out all the weapon functions and it couldn’t be that expensive to build one, with modern electronics you could probably automate and simplify most of the avionics and controls. Fuel economy would be a problem but surely that can also be improved?
I fully realise this is an unfeasible idea but it is kind of fun to think about and you have admit it would certainly make the commute to work more fun, especially if you could arm them.
And no, I don’t want to hear about helicopters, silly whirly things, casually turning up at the office in a VTOL Harrier jet would just be so much cooler.
Man, if you think traffic and accidents are bad now during the routine daily commute…!
Smallest, simplest manned aircraft these days are price at around $100,000k brand new. A jump-jet is going to cost bunches more than than. Yes, computer automation will make them easier to fly, but people then insist on doing things like texting while flying or trimming their toenails while flying or otherwise acting like idiots.
Fuel economy? Ha! VTOL capability is a fuel hog. Always.
Didn’t I read somewhere that in “hover” mode the Harrier uses up a lot of water in cooling which limits it to only a few minutes hover time? Carrying water around might be a problem.
Harriers pretty much sum up all the problems with “flying cars” and the extreme unlikelihood they will ever exist, much less become commercially viable. There are four or five problems that each make the notion unworkable; only one (computer-controlled flight) has been solved with the passage of time and developments in technology, and that was foreseeable.
I thought I also heard that doing a vertical take-off sucks up some horrific amount of fuel more than doing a regular take-off. I could be wrong, though.
You simply lack the imagination, nay vision, to see how my idea can be implemented. I dream of the day when travelling by incredible expensive and difficult to fly ex-military jets is considered as commonplace and unnoteworthy as popping down to the shops for a paper in your small family hatchback is today.
But then the path to greatness is always strewn with obstacles placed by lesser men.
I share your vision. If you’re willing to start with another platform besides the Harrier, that is. The Harriers have all been retired and prior to that, the whole fleet spent a significant amount of the time ground for one problem or another.
But, all of the other problems, they’re nothing that a few million lines of software and an anti-matter engine won’t cure. I’ll do the software if you’ll work on the engine.
Yes, indeed. I once interviewed the only civilian owner of a Harrier (he flew them in the Marines and later bought one after becoming successful in business). He talked about how a number of techniques needed for the Harrier are the opposite of what you’re taught in fixed-wing flight.
According to him, washing out in training was not the black mark on your record that it normally would be for other aircraft. He said some pilots could do it, some couldn’t, and the powers that were understood that.
I’m a professional pilot myself, but when I sat in the Harrier I found the most complex cockpit layout I’ve ever seen. He challenged me to find the landing gear actuator and I couldn’t (turns out it’s a button, not a handle or switch as in virtually every other aircraft in the world). And he asked me to count how many gauges in the cockpit could be hidden by a quarter. Answer: a lot, spread all over the place, and every damn one of them is really important.
So the OP had damned well better find a way to simplify the controls.
To be fair - and understand I am writing from the viewpoint of someone who never wants to hear about Paul Moller and his almost-ready AirCar ever again - the needs of a simple civilian transport craft would be vastly simpler and lend the problem to automated control much more easily than an immensely powerful multi-mode warbird. Such control is the only one of the four or five enormous problems that’s been solved by sitting around wishing for 40+ years.
The others are not soluble within any reasonable sense of the term.
Actually, I think I’ll take the contrarian position on this one. I think people are overstating the difficulties and issues in using the basic principal here. The Harrier is obviously a war plane, so it uses a lot of fuel because it weighs a lot. It’s also older technology. The F-35 has automated a lot of the process of landing and take-off from what I recall, so it wouldn’t be as difficult for a civilian to fly, especially if you take out all of the weight and electronics that are part of the war fighting aspects (and stealth) and made something much lighter for the civilian industry.
The main issue I’d guess would be cost (the thing would still cost the world to produce), fuel efficiency (it wouldn’t have any :p), and, from a practical perspective, the blast from the jet engine during take off and landing, which would be pretty extreme if you had thousands of people doing it in a city. Other than that though it COULD work, in theory at least.
Human travel moved from 2 dimensions to 3 dimensions will not happen without major computer control.
Just think about it. No roads or signs, mental decisions to make, no place to pull over, & on & on & on…
Just look at your own family, no roads to follow, flight at night or in bad weather, the ability to pay attention, & on & on & on…
Look at the cost in lives in just 2 dimensions…
You really do not want to open up flight to everyone? Really? At what cost?
Fun to think about but just ask pilots with 200 hrs or more what they think it will be like? Go take 10 hours of instruction, look at your 70 year old mom & think about them being up there with them being in control of their own flying machine…
IMO, it is going to be a while before human will be able to do this transportation without much, much outside control.
If you are not in control, how much fun would that be?
Almost any accident will be fatal for most involved.
Or:::::
Maybe this is the answer to population control… Hummmmmmm