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Terrafugia, a "roadable aircraft" developer that emerged out of MIT, has devised a flight simulator for its aircraft (which can be downloaded here). The application runs on top of the X-Plane simulator for Laminar Research.
Potential buyers can also now plunk down $7,400, or 5 percent of the anticipated $148,000 purchase price, for a deposit on a Transition. The planes will come out in late 2009. A fully operational prototype is expected to come out in 2008.
Some third parties have already put deposits down, according to Anna Mracek, COO of Terrafugia. If you put a deposit down today, you would be reserving an airframe number between 20 and 30. (Some early airframes will go to planes sent to government agencies for testing.)
Although the term "flying car" makes for an easily graspable mental image, Terrafugia prefers to call it a roadable aircraft because the Transition will spend most of the time in the air. Owners will, ideally, drive the two-passenger vehicle from their garage to an airport. At that point, the retractable wings will be unfolded and it will turn into a plane.
Terrafugia showed off a 1/5th-scale model at the AirVentures Conference in August in Oshkosh, Wis.
"A few of the older gentlemen I talked to told me that they had been waiting for something like this their whole lives and were so excited that we were making it real while they were still able to fly it," wrote Mracek in an e-mail. "There was naturally some healthy skepticism as well, but even the skeptics were looking forward to us bringing a flying prototype to Oshkosh one of these years."
The model will be shown off again on Sept. 9 at the EAA Sport Pilot Tour at Lawrence Municipal Airport in Lawrence, Mass.
The Transition is designed for jumps of 100 to 500 miles. It will carry two people and luggage on a single tank of premium unleaded gas. It will also come with an electric calculator (to help fine-tune weight distribution), airbags, aerodynamic bumpers and, of course, a navigation unit with a global positioning system.
A couple of budding airlines and light-plane manufacturers say the future of commercial aviation lies in carrying passengers on small planes for relatively short hops. Roads are crowded, getting to the airport remains a chore, and major airlines don't conduct many flights between suburbs or outlying cities that have emerged as regional economic powers in the last two decades. Most of these planes, however, won't get driven to the airport like the Transition but get boarded at the airport.
A couple of other start-ups, some of which are still in stealth mode, are looking at recreational flying vehicles.
Flying cars are technically feasible. Terrafugia co-founder and CEO Carl Dietrich points out that inventor Molt Taylor built prototypes in the 1950s and 1960s--but they haven't been economically practical.
The picture has changed, however, with the development of lighter and stronger construction materials and more-efficient engines.
Dietrich came up with the idea while a student at MIT's Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Earlier this year he won the Lemelson-MIT Student Prize, which recognizes invention and innovation. He also holds a patent for the centrifugal direct injection engine, a low-cost, high-performance rocket propulsion engine. Dietrich conducted his rocket engine research as an undergraduate at MIT.
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who might pay chump change and...
then again, there are those who will bring road rage in to the
airspace too :-)
who might pay chump change and...
Instead of just front-back and side-side now we can worry about above-below. Oh Boy! I can hardly wait for the road-rage dog fights!
Anybody know where I can get a good used 50 cal?
in other words, your objection is silly.
another reason it's silly is economic. this thing costs 3x as much as a porsche 911 and 2x as much as a 911 turbo. it's not terribly expensive as planes go but wildly expensive for a car. road rage with a $150K vehicle? possible but unlikely.
-Declan
(FAA-licensed pilot)
I'm an engineer and a pilot, and I really don't like pouring cold water over such ideas, but this is a case of history repeating itself, if ever there was one. Every once in a while, Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, and similar publications have rolled out this very tired old dog as cover stories (the Wikipedia page above features the cover artwork for several of them, which are pretty neat to look at) in order to goose magazine rack sales, I guess. "Flying cars" have been "just around the corner" for almost 70 years, starting with Waldo Waterman's five Arrowbiles (a sixth was never completed), and continuing with Moulton Taylor's Aerocar, of which six were built and flew, with one still flying (another that isn't even airworthy has reportedly been for sale recently for $3.5 million - get your bids in now!). However, production of the Aerocar never started because no more than half of the 500 initial orders required by the contracted factory (Ling-Temco-Vought) materialized. You're going to see exactly the same thing happen here with the Transition - a full-scale flying prototype will probably be built, but, as inevitable engineering and manufacturability problems are encountered, the production model price tag will climb even higher than its already too-high level for anyone other than rich collectors and pilots with more money than they know what to do with, and the prototype(s) will inevitably make a nice addition to some museum or private collection.
As for the idiots-in-the-sky problem, it already exists, despite the cost of becoming certified and acquiring and operating even the least expensive of aircraft (including building your own). I can't count how many stupid things I've seen other pilots do (including commercial pilots, BTW) on a daily basis, and one only needs to consult the NTSB accident and incident database to find the ample evidence of such stupidity. The number one cause of small aircraft deaths is running out of fuel (and it usually has more to do with the "loose nut" behind the yoke/stick doing things like not taking a headwind into account, than defective gauges). The next most frequent cause of fatal accidents is flying perfectly good aircraft into the ground/water soon after entering clouds/fog in an aircraft not certified for flight in instrument meteorological conditions, by a pilot who usually isn't instrument rated. These causes don't even begin to count all of the hare-brained things (at the risk of insulting any rabbits out there) that happen on a daily basis, like clipping utility wires/poles, trees and other things sticking out of the ground, due to low approaches, making approaches into unfamiliar fields without checking the wind direction during a pass over the field before entering the pattern (much less monitoring and self-announcing on the designated frequencies for fields without towers), etc. It's actually a wonder that more accidents don't happen, and adding people to the air who don't play well with others on the roads isn't going to help things at all. Fortunately, flying cars aren't going to happen anytime soon, so this is essentially a moot point.
The cost of obtaining a pilot's certificate (technically, it's not a license) has recently theoretically dropped from an average of about $6,000 (for a full private pilot's certificate) to somewhat more than half that, with the new Sport Pilot certificate, which requires about half of the flight training hours needed for a private pilot (but, flight is restricted to FAA-certified max two-seat, 135 mph or slower Light Sport Aircraft, and no night flying or flight in controlled airspace, among other limitations, without optional training and endorsement by a certified flight instructor). Plus, only a valid state drivers license is needed for a Sport Pilot certificate, in lieu of an FAA medical certificate (unless you have been denied or had a medical certificate revoked due to a medical condition). The concept is that (ideally, mostly younger) people can get into flying for less money up-front, and then as their skills improve and their desires increase (probably only with improvements in their paycheck) they will transition to full private pilot, and perhaps even commercial pilot certifications. Part of the reason for this effort by the FAA (with lots of help from the Experimental Aircraft Association and small aircraft manufacturers - over 10 years' worth of cajoling and coaxing to make SP/LSA realities) is that the commercial airlines are starting to lose their most senior pilots in increasing numbers due to retirement and medical limitations (a large number started when the Jet Age began in the 1960s - 1970s, and they're now all getting old in a large group). There are plenty of guys sitting in the co-pilots' seats to replace them throughout the major airlines, but the problem is that there is going to be a gap at the entry level, especially for the newer, smaller regional airlines using the next-generation 50 ~ 60 seat jets (e.g., Bombardier Canadairs). Their acquisition and operating costs are much lower than those for aging 737, MD-9x, and early Airbus aircraft the major airlines still need to fully depreciate for years to come. It's much cheaper to operate one of the newer aircraft full-time, and a second as needed for weekend and holiday surge periods.
However, when two of the newer, smaller aircraft are operated for a route that one older aircraft would serve, two crews are needed, and that will make the entry-level pilot shortage worse. It's even worse in the commercial helicopter industry, where only about 12,000 commercial helo pilots remain of the 61,000+ who dominated the industry for the last five decades after the Korean and Vietnam Wars, again due to retirement and medical issues. It's becoming so severe that some off-shore oil well helo pilots are making more than the highest-paid wide-body airline captains (especially as the latter are being battered by union concessions due to airline bankruptcies).
Declan, I don't know where you're buying your Porsche Turbo(s? :) but their price tags are in the ballpark of one of these Transition toys (especially if you add just a single option to the Turbo, like the carbon-fiber gear shift knob! ;) Let me know where you can buy a new Turbo for under $75K (tax, title and other fees not included, of course, which certainly push the cost well into flying car price tag territory).
I would love to own a flying car, too (but, not at $148K for the base model Transition, which will most likely cost a lot more, when the marketing haze finally clears, and in the unlikely event these ever make it into volume production). However, flying even the most efficient general aviation aircraft (which a car/plane certainly never will be due to engineering trade-offs needed for each mode) will always be more expensive than the average coach airline seat, for the same number of miles traveled (especially alone). Driving your airplane the last miles to/from work/home would probably be when you're at the highest risk for injury, death and/or damage to the car/aircraft, since most vehicle accidents happen where you spend most of your time on the road (and where the idiots who haven't made it into the sky still are, along with the idiots who _have_ made it into the air!). Anything more than a fender-bender in a very light car/aircraft is not going to be a lot of fun to experience, and will very likely be fatal at anything more than bumper-to-bumper speeds, not to mention the catastrophic structural damage that would likely render the car/aircraft undriveable, much less unflyable (the insurance companies probably aren't going to want to touch a Transition with a ten-foot pole, either, which will make driving and flying a most financially risky proposition, not to mention illegal on probably any road).
At least I already have X-Plane to run the simulation on, and the Transition definition files are a free beta download. To dream, perchance to fly, someday in the indefinite future.
All the Best,
Joe Blow
Bad idea!!!
What's next, a combination cell phone/peanut butter sandwich?
Reminds me of the car-boat attempts. Not of much use as either.
http://www.moller.com/skycar/
http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=aerocar05m&date=20060905
cdv
The skycar looked much more promising. http://www.moller.com/skycar/ A personal aircraft that has fully controlled vertical take off + landing, and uses lightweight nuclear fuel will get my deposit. Not this stupid foldable thing. Paper plates are foldable, not aircrafts.
Muslim Extremists of the world, get your hot-wiring kits ready! :O
I'm with you, man. this... is stupid.
At first, flying cars would be too expensive for the general (bad driving) public. By the time their price will reach the level of public availability, a road/highway system in the airspace, for personal flying machines, will probably be instituted, along with the safety measures in the flying car technology to correct bad flying-drivers' mistakes.
As for the terrorism issue: a terrorist could fly a light Cessna/Piper plane now - and crash it into a building, with more dire consequences, as the current light airplane is heavier than the future flying car.
I'm sure the flying-car you are talking about is a lot more advance then his ever was. Then again you did say back in the 50's & 6o's they did have them too.
Ernie
- stupid drivers
- by p-air225q September 10, 2006 9:02 PM PDT
- This is a car for pilots not a plane for automobile drivers.
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