[QUOTE=drachillix]
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.
[/QUOTE]
Actually, they were quite safe. They were even quite fast for the time, although one owuld be handily outraced by a modern Segway.
[QUOTE=smiling bandit]
Actually, they were quite safe. They were even quite fast for the time, although one owuld be handily outraced by a modern Segway.
[/QUOTE]
Now I know for sure what I’m going to do when I get my time machine! :devious: 
It fucks Mollers?! I aint afraid of no spoons.
It’s blunt, you idiot. It’ll hurt more.
(Reference, not actual insult)
[QUOTE=Gary Kumquat]
“Now go up…no, your other up”
[/QUOTE]
Damn you Gary Kumquat damn you, I say. I’ll need an address to send the invoice for the screen and keyboard cleaning, no charge for the milk and Cheerios.
not sure why this struck me so funny, either. I need help.
Here is one that you’ll be able to bitch about in a few years.
[QUOTE=Ponder Stibbons]
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 …
[/QUOTE]
Sounds like he needs laxative.
[QUOTE=Jackmannii]
Luddite.
[/QUOTE]
As opposed to the people who try to fly these, known as Thuddites.
Part of it is probably that the silly things do look really cool.
“Ooooh…shiny! Sleek! Pretty! Me turn off already feeble science-fact-checker module of journalistic brain now!”
Perhaps flying cars of some kind will become practical when we develop thermonuclear fusion power. I mean that’s what, 20 years away, right?
Just for fun, here are two other major problems with the Skycar even assuming it did exactly what Moller says it will:
Environmental problems. You think you’re going to commute home in one of them? Just wait until your neighbors get to hear six wankel rotaries screaming at 8,000 RPM spinning a bunch of huge fan blades. And I hope your neighbor ties down his things (and kids), because the prop blast from this thing is going to make a mess. Assuming you don’t crash it into his house first.
No space for them. This one’s the kicker. There will never, ever be a widespread flying replacement for the car. We just don’t have enough space for them. Because cars stick to the ground, we can move them around in high densities. We can jam them bumper-to-bumper on freeways and stack them into multi-level parkades with multiple entrances and exits feeding onto major roads. We can park them right at our destination and drive them right into our homes.
Aircraft require thousands of feet of spacing around them. And not because the pilots are bad, but because velocities are very high, turning ability is poor, and they exist in a roiling, writhing air mass that pitches them to and fro. I don’t care how good your computer control is, you aren’t going to be able to fly them in anywhere near the density of car traffic. And what makes it worse is that many are headed to same destination. My building has probably 4,000 people in it, with a 14 story parkade next to it to store the cars. Imagine 2,000 aircraft arriving at the building at the same time. If it took 10 minutes for each one to land, it would take 333 hours to land them all. If even one person in 100 had one of these things, it would take over 3 hours to get them all landed, and another three to get them in the air again.
Weather: Nothing flies through a thunderstorm. Nothing. They smack airliners out of the sky. So every time there’s a thunderstorm, an entire city of commuters will be stranded wherever they happen to be.
So, to recap: you won’t be able to fly it to your house, but will probably have to land at an airport. You won’t be able to fly it to work. Guess what: We already have perfectly good aircraft today that meet those conditions. Anyone can go out and buy a Cessna 172 used for $40,000 and fly it all over the country. Then probably sell it for more than he paid for it years later. They’re safe, reliable, and easy to fly with just a few hours training. You can even rent them all over the country for fairly reasonable rates.
Wow, that wing, it it works at all, will just nose the damn thing right into the ground.
I swear I saw stuff about the same damn guy in grade school and Popular Science, and I’m pushing 50.
[QUOTE=Lemur866]
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.
[/QUOTE]
Well, a VTOL aircraft (i.e., a helicopter) is certainly more complex. But not ten times. A Cessna 172 goes for close to 200 kilobucks. A Robinson R-22 goes for about 200 kilobucks. Rental on a 172 is about $95/hour. A Robbo will set you back a little over twice that. The R-22 carries half the people at about 70% of the speed. Being rated in both fixed-wings and helicopters, I can say from experience that a helicopter is not ten times as hard to fly as a Cessna. They’re about the same. Just different. It’s true though that the thing you learn first in a helicopter is the hardest thing to do: hover. Once you get past the first few hours, the rest is easy. (I was able to hold a hover – not very well, but I was hovering – at the end of the first two-hour lesson.) Helicoopters fly differently from airplanes, but they’re not ‘harder’ to fly.
As far as danger goes, when I was in training the safest single-engine aircraft in the US was the Bell JetRanger. I’d much rather lose an engine in a helicopter than in an airplane. There are more parking lots and small fields than stretches of smooth, unobstructed areas hundreds of feet long.
[QUOTE=adam yax]
Here is one that you’ll be able to bitch about in a few years.
Scientists: Artificial life likely in 3 to 10 years.
[/QUOTE]
Or ‘space elevator nearly ready (we just need to invent a few impossible things)’
[QUOTE=buttonjockey308]
Damn you Gary Kumquat damn you, I say. I’ll need an address to send the invoice for the screen and keyboard cleaning, no charge for the milk and Cheerios.
not sure why this struck me so funny, either. I need help.
[/QUOTE]
When you get his address send it on to me, we’ll bill him together
[QUOTE=Mangetout]
Or ‘space elevator nearly ready (we just need to invent a few impossible things)’
[/QUOTE]
Or “gene for such-and-such discovered! Cure for $NASTY_DISEASE imminent!” In, oh, sixty years or so, since a bunch of major breakthroughs are required first.
And whatever happened to room-temperature superconductors? Back in 1987, they were all over the news and commercial applications were promised for 1992.
Meet George Jetson! (do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do)
Jane, his wife!
Daughter Judy!
His boy Elroy!
[QUOTE=Omegaman]
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.
[/QUOTE]
I’m imagining Princess Di’s aero-roadable non-aquatic boat crumpled and smoldering at the base of the Eiffel Tower.
[QUOTE=Kalhoun]
Meet George Jetson! (do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do)
Jane, his wife!
Daughter Judy!
His boy Elroy!
[/QUOTE]
You beat me to it. I’m holding out for a flying car that folds into a briefcase (light enough to carry one-handed).
[QUOTE=Lemur866]
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.
[/QUOTE]
I think the phrase “flying car” is used because it connotes what people really want: A Back to the Future* flying machine that is just like a car, that is as easy to operate as an automobile and requires no more training than driver’s ed, no flight plan, no pre-flight equipment check, just hop in and go!
Someday. Maybe. The Moller Skycar ain’t it. A “flying car,” so defined, probably would require an onboard computer with strong AI.
*Actually, what I want is George Jetson’s car. It flies, it floats, it hovers, and it folds up into a two-pound briefcase! 
**
**Tsk. Baldwin beat me to it.
[QUOTE=Johnny L.A.]
Well, a VTOL aircraft (i.e., a helicopter) is certainly more complex. But not ten times. A Cessna 172 goes for close to 200 kilobucks. A Robinson R-22 goes for about 200 kilobucks. Rental on a 172 is about $95/hour. A Robbo will set you back a little over twice that. The R-22 carries half the people at about 70% of the speed. Being rated in both fixed-wings and helicopters, I can say from experience that a helicopter is not ten times as hard to fly as a Cessna. They’re about the same. Just different. It’s true though that the thing you learn first in a helicopter is the hardest thing to do: hover. Once you get past the first few hours, the rest is easy. (I was able to hold a hover – not very well, but I was hovering – at the end of the first two-hour lesson.) Helicoopters fly differently from airplanes, but they’re not ‘harder’ to fly.
As far as danger goes, when I was in training the safest single-engine aircraft in the US was the Bell JetRanger. I’d much rather lose an engine in a helicopter than in an airplane. There are more parking lots and small fields than stretches of smooth, unobstructed areas hundreds of feet long.
[/QUOTE]
DISCLAIMER: Some numbers may have been pulled out of my ass.
Honestly, a helicopter is as close as you’re going to get to a “flying car”. You can land one in your backyard, assuming you’ve a really fucking big backyard. You can land one on the roof of your office building. Point to point from home to work and work to home. Proven technology. I live on Vashon Island right near Seattle, and there’s an rich businessman who commutes to work at his corporate office in Seattle via helicopter. Except to make this work you really need a full time pilot and full time mechanic and a stack of blank checks.
