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
- Videos
All in one place, better quality than those YouTube copies - and these are in English - Press releases
- A spec sheet for the M400
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
- Besides buildings and the ground, each pilot would need to keep track of
- Flying one aircar over a city: simple
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:
- "Flying Cars" (1940s)
Retro Future - "How Flying Cars Will Work"
How Stuff Works - "Airphibian" (1940s)
Tales of Future Past (There's quite a bit more content on this site)
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