Flying car

Flying cars have been a mostly pie-in-the-sky goal of mechanically inclined tinkerers for as long as there have been cars and plane. But some people are taking the designs more seriously these days. A start-up called Terrafugia won the Lemelson-MIT Student Prize last year for its flying car design, and NASA is backing the Personal Air Vehicle Centennial Challenge and will have its maiden flight in August.

Kissell and Porter, a retired Texas Instruments engineer, plan to enter the NASA challenge next year, the Morning News said.

At left is a closer look at the flying-car illustration shown off by Porter and Kissell.

April 4, 2007 7:09 AM PDT

Photo by: Rex C. Curry/Dallas Morning News/MCT