Sunday, July 20, 2008

Flying Cars May Get Off the Ground This Time

Yesterday I posted about an amphibious car ("Amphibious Sports Car: Gibbs' Aquada Comes to America " (July 19, 2008)).

The Moller International M400 Skycar is "the first and only feasible, personally affordable, personal vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) vehicle the world has ever seen...." According to the people at Moller, at least.

It's an impressive vehicle, with a lot of potential. Moller does a good job of promoting the M400 Skycar on their website, with content that includes Flying cars date back about 90 years, to the Curtis Autoplane - which never quite got off the ground. Flying cars that actually flew took off in the 1940s and 50s, but didn't make it commercially.

Which is probably just as well.

There are two issues that have to be dealt with before we can get into our flying cars and hop into town.
  • Stability
    • Automobiles rotate around one axis
    • Flying cars rotate around three
  • Traffic control
    • Flying one aircar over a city: simple
      • Don't hit the buildings
      • Don't hit the ground
    • Flying a thousand aircars over a city: not so simple
      • Besides buildings and the ground, each pilot would need to keep track of
        • Where hundreds of other aircars are
        • Which direction each is going
Moller says that the first issue is taken care of: the M400 is a smart vehicle. The Skycar takes care of staying stable pretty much on its own.

Traffic control is something else. My guess is that we won't see many flying cars, until an automated and very reliable dispatch system gets designed. Punching in your destination and letting the car take you there won't have the romance and charm of swooping through the skies like George Jetson - but you won't have to worry about inattentive or crazy drivers, either.

More, about flying cars:

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