Flying cars? They’re just around the corner according to Moller International. Yep, just get a few bugs worked out, and in a few years, we’ll be seeing them all over the place.
Heck, here’s a demo. It’s impressive. I like the comment: “It’s a two seater: One to ride around in the car, and one to operate the crane.”
I think futurists sometimes concentrate on the cool factor and not enough on practicality. Take video phones for example. Most depictions of the future featured people always talking to someone on a screen in lieu of speaking over the phone. Almost everyone has access to this technology today, but the vast majority of the time people are content to just do audio only. Heck, people rarely even bother with that anymore, they text each other now.
Even if flying cars come out soon, who will drive them? The current batch of idiot drivers? These people can’t drive in two dimensions, you want to add a third? It’s bad enough that I have to constantly be looking left, right, and back. If I had to look up to I’d just give up. I guess it would be fine if only auto-pilot was allowed unless someone proved they had skills and sense enough to use one of them responsibly. What we do now, where licenses are nearly universal, won’t be acceptable in a future with flying cars.
What RiverRunner said is important too. Flying is so safe because the maintenance checks are so thorough and so regular. If everyone has their own little aerial vehicle, they WILL skimp on the checklists and cars falling out of the sky will be a daily occurrence.
To me, the coolest science fiction prediction that came true was Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It’s basically a Kindle with a wikipedia app. Let’s hope Adams was wrong about aliens being as screwed up as we are only with more destructive technologies.
Anyone remember Walter Cronkite’s The 21st Century on CBS?
Cecil went with the wrong meaning of “flying car.” The one he writes about, and others like it, are cars that can fly (or airplanes that can drive on roads, depending on your perspective, probably the latter according to the FAA); the “flying car” of the '50s is more Jetsons/Fifth Element/Moller, i.e., a personal VTOL runabout, it’s only metaphorically a car, it only travels in the air.
If Moller’s not currently in jail, he’ll probably take your deposit for one, when he gets all the bugs worked out.
Debut today:
Opener’s Blackfly.
Such is life: