This is more a rant about the credulousness of our supposed “news” suppliers, but it’s this specific example that set me off today. To wit:
Why is the fucking Moller Skycar on the front page of BBC News today (and News 24, and hourly bulletins…), for what must be the three hundredth time? This fundamentally stupid bit of pointless arcana has been in development since the bleeding 1960s, and in all that time it has managed solely to hover a matter of feet from the ground, to which it was fucking tied. Moller has repeatedly overstated its capabilities, lied about its performance, and has even been prosecuted by the SEC for civil fraud relating to said claims.
So what’s “new”? Oh, that’s right, it’s going “on sale” soon. Right. This despite the fact that it’s not even certified, and Moller freely admits he doesn’t even know who will certify the deathtrap. Of course, he casts this as arising from the craft’s unique nature (“Is it a car? Is it a plane?”) rather than admitting that it’s simply because he has repeatedly failed to obtain FAA certification. Do the BBC make any attempt to investigate this? Is there even an ounce of scepticism at this man’s repeated outlandish claims? Is there bollocks. Lest anyone scoff at my scepticism (you filthy alliterants, you), here is a Moller brochure from 1974. Notice the similarites - and what’s this? Full-scale production to begin in 1976? Well I never.
I realise that our esteemed news organs feel obliged to spoon feed us this wacky science bullshit on a regular basis, presumably as the emulsifier for the insipid slurry of celebrity “news” we’re otherwise expected to devour, but is it too much to ask that they see if they’re just giving yet more publicity to some deluded schmuck whose sole talents lie in astounding morons? Is it really beyond the investigative powers of my beloved BBC to check that they’re not slavishly advertising some dickhead with a desk fan on a rope?
Apparently so.
See also: Kevin Warwick (also known as Captain Cyborg)
Oh, and if any fucker makes an “it fucks Mollers!?” joke, I will end you. With a spoon.
Thing is, the whole concept of “flying car” is fucking stupid. There’s no such thing as a flying car. What there can be is a roadable aircraft. But that’s a whole different connotation, isn’t it? A roadable airplane doesn’t sound like much. But a flying car sound cool. But once you leave the ground, everything connoted by “car” ceases to apply. Flying an aircraft is completely different from flying a ground vehicle. There’s, you know, crashing into the ground. Navigation. Weather. And on and on. Flying a small plane that is optimized for flight and doesn’t include roadable capabilies is dangerous enough. A roadable airplane is going to be less capable as an airplane, therefore more dangerous. If you don’t have a pilot’s license to fly a regular small plane, how can you expect to fly a roadable plane? The whole concept is insanity. You’re much better off with two cars and a plane than you are with a roadable plane.
I’ve been bitching about the media’s slavish attention to Moller for years. Whoever his PR person is must have sold his soul to the devil or something, because he’s got amazing svengali powers.
I’ve got an article here that’s almost 20 years old, in which the very same skycar is described as being ‘ready to enter full flight test in a couple of months’. Months, decades, tomato, tomahto… Who’s counting, really? Apparently, not the media.
For the record, this thing will never fly the way it’s supposed to. If it did, it wouldn’t have the range he claims, or go nearly as fast as he claims. It’s a deathtrap with numerous failure modes that would end in disaster, and would never be certified by the FAA. If it were somehow certified, it would cost millions of dollars, not the $100,000 that Moller claims. A Cessna 172 costs twice that, and it’s basically a 1930’s era 4 cylinder engine with an aluminum frame around it. Moller’s contraption is hellishly complex, and full of moving parts like rotating nacelle vanes and feathering ducted fans (or rather, they should be feathering to do what he claims they’ll do, but he hasn’t gotten around to figuring out how to do that, yet).
It always seems that there’s nothing that will show how ignorant the typical reporter is than an aviation story. They always get them wrong.
Piss poor terminology, yes. But the whole concept being stupid, are you mad? If I could have a single vehicle that could actually perform what Moller is aiming for…dude, that is practically the definition of cool.
Thank about this for a second, how unreliable and dangerous were the first automobiles? Granted a flat tire did not subject you to the tender mercies of gravity, but we do have better engineering, and the ability to compensate for many of the risks involved with present day solutions.
I also full well realize it may never happen in my lifetime but Moller has made a working flyer, just not up to the specs hes promising. I do also realize he has been in plenty of hot water for some of his more overzealous “forward looking statements”
I feel you man. Most people can’t drive a car without risking life and limb. I can’t wait to see what your average human being would do with something capable of providing death and destruction in 3D. Can you imagine Paris Hilton driving one of these, talking one her cell phone after some cocktails, fondling her dog, with paparazzi on her ass? If it was actually to hit the air.
I remember in the late 1960’s, early '70’s (when I was an avid fan of Sunday newspaper supplements) reading about little helicopters you could build at home, needing only an ordinary backyard for a landing/takeoff field. They’d eventually be as affordable as cars, and everybody would have one. I really hate to think of helicopters in the hands of most of the drivers I have to share the road with on a daily basis. (But at least helicopters actually work.)
My dad is convinced these things are going to happen someday soon, although he has mellowed a bit over the years and admits that maybe it’ll be a few decades …
Sam, you’ve done a great job in addressing the engineering impracticalities of the thing. But even if – somehow – you could make the things 100% physically safe (I dunno, with antigravity or something), you still have the problem of people actually driving them. Think about all the idiotic yahoos you share the road with who barely grasp two dimensions and then stick them into three dimensions, with no roads at all! I tell you, if the entire city of Dallas was suddenly flying their cars all over the place, I’d cower in a tornado shelter somewhere until most of them managed to kill one another off.
But suppose the Moller flyer actually could do what he imagines it could do.
Would that be a flying car, or a VTOL light aircraft with roadable capabilities?
It would HAVE to be primarily an aircraft, roadability would have to be secondary. This isn’t like an amphibious jeep where you mostly drive the thing and occasionally have to cross a stream or pond while rolling towards Berlin. If you’re flying this thing, you’re flying it. That makes it, not a car, but an aircraft. And aircraft are always going to be dangerous.
We’ve had reliable airplanes for almost 100 years. The designs haven’t changed that much. You can get an inexpensive light plane fairly cheaply. That’s your flying car, right there! Only difference is no VTOL, and you can’t drive it on the street. Except, VTOL aircraft are 10 times more complex and 10 times harder to fly and 10 times more expensive and 10 times more dangerous than your plain old tried and true light aircraft design that hasn’t changed in 50 years. There’s a reason that design hasn’t changed radically in 50 years. Oh, maybe somebody adds a canard, improves the output of the engine, improves the electronics, and so forth, but the concept of a rotating propeller and fixed wings isn’t going to be easy to improve on.
The military has poured untold billions into VTOL aircraft over the years, and they haven’t come close to the claims for the Moller skycar. Even if he could produce one that works like they’re supposed to work, it would still be hugely expensive, dangerous, and would require extensive pilot training to operate.
At least with the Segway they actually produced the things, and they actually can do what they were claimed to do. The trouble is that no one can figure out how to use one except as a toy. A “flying car” would be the same thing. An expensive toy used by a few testosterone-addled thrill seekers.
The company’s small but tenacious marketing machine is at work again. It wakes up every few years to make a bit of noice. This time around they are probably trying to leverage the wide coverage VLJs (very light jets) are receiving.
The BBC has been duped into thinking this is something newsworthy.
Absolutely not. The idea is, as you say, “cool”. But that doesn’t mean it’s not also completely stupid; witness 80s hair and wearing shades indoors.
I had a big long post planned but Sam Stone and others have pretty much dealt with every flaw of this thing (and they are legion). Yeah, an idealised flying car which doesn’t have a plummetty death as its main mode of failure, which had computerised anti-collision technology that never failed, which was capable of achieving miles per gallon instead of gallons per mile, and which was drivable by the average pleb without causing an aerial massacre of epic proportions, would indeed be pretty cool. But it’s not going to happen, and it’s most especially not going to be made by this crank. He has not solved a single one of the major problems posed by a flying car. He has made a glorified helicopter, and inexplicably gotten 40 years of major media coverage for it.
Honestly, I think it extends to pretty much all science and technology reporting (and maybe I think it only goes that far because those are, broadly speaking, my fields). The media’s perception of scientists and engineers seems to be utterly divorced from any sort of rational consideration, which is annoying since open, intellectual evaluation of ideas is the very foundation of those professions. As far as the media appear to be concerned, if you’ve got a man in the right white coat saying something, it’s gold. Gah.
I saw the story about the skycar this morning. A story that came on a few minutes later though is the one that made me say, out loud, “WTF?”
Some researcher somewhere has come to the conclusion that chimps use hand gestures. No shit sherlock. With the world’s news from the last 24 hours at their fingertips, some editor somewhere decided that this tidbit was the most worthy of reporting? Putz.