Manage updates with the Download App
February 15, 2006 12:41 PM PST
Flying car ready for takeoff?
- Related Stories
-
Aerial taxis preparing for takeoff
April 25, 2005 -
Get ready for the AirScooter
April 15, 2005 -
Gates a big investor in aircraft start-up
March 23, 2005 -
Inventor of swarming robots wins prize
February 26, 2003
Terrafugia, a start-up created by Lemelson-MIT Student Prize winner Carl Dietrich and colleagues at MIT's Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, is aiming to show off what it calls the Transition "personal air vehicle," a vehicle resembling an SUV with retractable wings, to the EAA AirVenture Conference in Oshkosh, Wis., at the end of July.
The Transition is designed for 100- to 500-mile jumps. 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 GPS (Global Positioning System) navigation unit.
The company hopes to eventually have the vehicle classified so that it can be piloted with a light sport aircraft license.
No complete prototype exists yet, but the company has a one-fifth scale wind tunnel model (along with computer simulations) and will use the $30,000 from the Lemelson prize to build something to show off at the Oshkosh show. A fully operational prototype is expected to come out in 2008 or earlier, according to the company, while Transition vehicles are expected to hit the road, and the sky, by 2009 or 2010.
"We have a lot of confidence that if the interest is there, we can deliver this product," Dietrich said. "There is a huge amount of general interest, but the question is, is there a market for it?"
Building retractable wings won't be the major challenge: F-18s and even some World War II era planes have folding wings. Instead, one of the biggest challenges will be creating enough cargo room to satisfy customers. The planes, which will cruise up to 12,000 feet, will probably use an off-the-shelf engine, he added.
Carl Dietrich
In the past few years, the skies have become a new frontier for entrepreneurs and academics. The chase for the X Prize led entrepreneur Richard Branson and others to begin to contemplate space tourism. PayPal founder Elon Musk, meanwhile, has started SpaceX, a private company that hopes to launch rockets for satellite deployment, similar to the more heavily funded Sea Launch venture. Stanford University professors teach a course on do-it-yourself satellites.
Short-range aircraft and flight start-ups have sprung up as well. Citrix founder Ed Iacobucci has launched DayJet, which plans on buying a fleet of Eclipse planes for on-demand travel between regional hubs. People Airlines founder has a similar company based on the small, lightweight Eclipse. (Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates is an investor in Eclipse.)
And for backyard adventurers, Elwood "Woody" Norris has the AirScooter, a personal helicopter. Graduate students at Stanford also have hatched a secretive start-up geared at recreational flyers, according to sources familiar with their plans.
Flying cars are technically feasible; Terrafugia points out that inventor Molt Taylor built prototypes in the 1950s and 1960s--but they haven't been practical from an economic perspective.
See more CNET content tagged:
graduate student, founder, vehicle, entrepreneur, SUV
109 comments
Join the conversation! Add your comment
"roadable" and plastered it all over...
<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.brsparachutes.com/Default.aspx?tabId=2" target="_newWindow">http://www.brsparachutes.com/Default.aspx?tabId=2</a>
That is just ignorant. As a pilot you are required by FAA regulations to perform a preflight check before every single flight. Another point i should make is that this is not a terribly high performance aircraft (nothing like an F-22). you could chop the end of the wingtip off and it would still be flyable. a small bump won't make it unairworthy without it being caught by a preflight check.
socks off you twice a day. No one pays any attention to traffics
laws. And the word is that the local police don't enforce traffic laws
because any traffic fine money goes to the state not the city.
whatever the reason why, the laws aren't enforced.
Now you want to let these same idiots get airborne?
>get airborne?
Too true. Can you imagine what it will be like while they're flying, mucking with the GPS system, and trying to talk on their cell phones?
It's worse than you suggest. To have traffic in the air, people have to think three dimensionally. As you say, people have a hard enough time managing safely in two dimensions.
The only ways I can imagine for safe air commuting are an automated system or ferrying. We know that automating airline baggage systems can prove troublesome, so imagine the difficulty of automating air commuting.
Ferrying, on the other hand, could provide the ability to fly your vehicle, along with others no doubt, between points. Thus, you'd drive to a ferrying point, ride the ferry some distance, and then drive on to your final destination. That, of course, can constrain your schedule and autonomy.
In all seriousness, pilots will be certified, the flying car will be certified, and you will be just as safe as you are right now. Congestion might begin to be a problem for your great-grandkids, but let's not let paranoia strangle some forward thinking.
who already fly are the market for flying cars, not wannabies who
focus on why they can't.
The idea of ferrying is a good one, people already do the 9am and 5pm shuffle in congested areas so ferrying might be a solution to that. On the other end, maybe there should just be some limits on who can fly these vehicles, aside from the obvious pilot's license - if the sector takes off, then a lot of people will want to fly these things.
It's a hotrod single place turbine engined helicopter. The kit and
engine cost $32,500. It's too much fun not to seriously want, at
least for me.
I have a nice design for a roadable aircraft, which I always wanted
because airports are often a long walk from where I was actually
going. If I ever finish it, you'll see it at Oshkosh, b'gosh.
On another note, look at the kids doctoral paper, its no good. He is writing it on fusion for space propulsion? The Russians have been researching this for almost a decade. Pick something original, will ya?
Let alone obvious problems of takeoff, landing, and fuel consumption, and all the required infrastructure. Flying cars will NEVER be economically viable unless someone invents magic anti-gravity.
The flying car is such an absurd non-starter I'm always amazed people take it seriously outside of The Jetsons. You want ot build a very small airplane for competent pilots to keep at the local airport, fine. But call it a "flying car" and you're in fantasy land and will still be in fantasy land 1,000 years from now.
Ignorance again. The FAA already has certified flying cars. Take a look at the W-5 Arrowbile or the Aerocar. Both were certified airworthy and were flying and driving.
The limitations of the sport pilot license negates the usefulness of the car/aircraft in many major cities where your faced with airspace in which a sport pilots license forbids you to enter (without a 'logbook entry'), and flying at night (to name a few restrictions). Those two alone kill the use of the car as a commuter in 'aircraft mode'. If you live outside a major city, you might be okay.
You could weave your way through the airspace, but try explaining to your boss that you have to leave early because you can't fly home after dusk. Night, defined by the FAA is "One hour after evening civil twilight and one hour before morning civil twilight", so it can still be light outside but still illegal to fly.
to add to that, most airports (all the ones I've visited) are protected by some kind of gate/fence to limit access. Utually access is granted via a key card. Can't just go up and drive on the field to take off...
It will be interesting to see what happens.
so many things they'll need to rethink, but they are thinking
towards a solution we may all like. Their web site is better than
their actual design, but their next version will likely be better.
They fly regular airplanes. That helps them keep their dreaming
grounded in reality. Everyone says you can't do stuff until you
do. Stephen Pitcairn made a good functional roadable autogyro
in 1937 and landed it on the White House lawn, the day Hitler
invaded Czechoslovakia. It didn't make the news that day. I saw
it in the Washington Air and Space Museum. If I could buy one
today, I would. Hey you Terra folks, check it out! It really
worked much bettewr than Molt Taylor's Aerocar, which I saw fly.
It was a hopeless flyer, barely able to climb out of ground effect.
It had front wheel drive and with the wings as a trailer, could not
be driven uphill. You find stuff like that out After you build your
dream. Lessons abound. Learn them, and make us our Flying
Car! Thanks.
going. He's got the "SkyCar" now, which appears to be ready for
production (and has for quite some time now). Vertical takeoff and
landing eliminates the need for a runway, it's got three wheels so it
can be registered with the DMV as a motorcycle. If I had the money
I'd buy one!
Micheal Jackson and Jerry Garcia each gave him $300,000. It can
never work. Modern GPS tech lets some of Moller's no-input
piloting concept be possible, but the laws of propeller physics
mean his performance claims are outlandish and impossible. Keep
trying, folks, and don't waste your money on this loser.
The author might have meant F-14 or F-111 which both have "variable geometery" wings as the biz call so-called "folding" wings.
models have folding wings. People love to try to save money on
hangars by trailering their aircraft. Only trouble is, you have to
assemble it right every time, which gets old. Most folding wing
planes I ever saw were kept in hangars fully assembled all the time
anyway. Folding wings is the right approach for a roadable, I would
think.
Folding wings have been in use since WW2 in order to concerve space on aircraft carriers. F18 wings DO fold as this photo demonstrates: <a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/images/AIR_F-18C_Folded_Wings_lg.jpg" target="_newWindow">http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/images/AIR_F-18C_Folded_Wings_lg.jpg</a>
"Any F-18 pilot would be very concerned if their plane's wings folded as they are not supposed to do that. The pilot would be ejecting right quickly is my guess."
Do some research before you make your comments. The F-18 and many military aircraft before that have folding wings to save space on aircraft carriers.
Show me something that looks more like a car, takes off and lands vertically, carry a better pay load than this sport plane, then I can call it a flying car. Until then, it's a PLANE.
I think that most of us were banking on that to be the standard for personal flying vehicles.
I believe that if flying cars are to become a true standard for transportation its roots will have to originate from outside the US.
I don't believe the FAA will support personal flying vehicles this without major pressure from consumers.
Thats just the way I see it.
Having some idea of what it takes to learn to fly, and how easy it can be in some areas to get a sport aircraft license.. well, I sincerely hope *that* process doesn't get simplified. There are plenty of people on the roads who can barely drive within the limits of traffic laws, for instance - I hope to doG they're kept out of the air.
Also, sport aircraft tend to be purely mechanical. Cars these days tend to be more electronic/microcontrolled and power-assisted; will they build the redundancy systems into these that fly-by-wire aircraft have, or will there be a return to purely mechanical driving, or a hybrid of power-assisted [steering and brakes] for example while driving with mechanical control of flight surfaces? Safety in the air is vastly different from safety on the ground, and what happens if, say, the dashboard computer suddenly gacks [as happens with modern vehicles] because of humidity, cold/hot extremes, &c.? I have actually seen recently-built vehicles' "crash", i.e. the entire dashboard suddenly dies because the computer quit, meaning there is no speedometer, odometer, tachometer, or even for that matter turn signal indicators or working radio.
Lastly, can anyone say "consumer cruise missile"?
sets of double runways once each had their own radio frequency,
and you'd be like Number 12 Downwind for Landing, every time.
Now, 30 years later, the skies are empty. I never have to wait for
the fuel truck and that's nice, but I wonder why none of you seem
to want to aviate, like I always did.
'Bout time. High cost is (obviously) killing GA.
You'll see more people in the air as these things come on-line.
Final word: "Experimental". You dig?
========
*personal or commercial, non-military flying
Signed
Elroy and his hot sister Judy
And could you imagine one of these things being stolen? The cops might be chasing the driver down I-95 and then... take-off time! Now the guy's up in the air flying over the trees! It would give "took off in a stolen car" literal meaning.
tell it you want to go. Modern planes can pretty much do that
today too; you have to know how to program your autopilot. But
hey, the smallest thing goes wrong, and all of a sudden you get
to see if you have The Right Stuff.
Mostly there are too many variables to keep aware of. If a gauge
reads anomolously and you fail to notice, you could be dead and
take lots of people with you. Pilot licenses are hard to get for
very good reason.
Those of you who are born to fly, will persist and prevail. The
sky is ours. They can fight over the ground but the sky belongs
to us.
And I'm a pilot. I can't see the technology replacing the critical take-off and landing phases for this flying car. Sure, it works now on Boeings and Airbuses, but look at the infrastructure required! It's already straining, too, just with the load of *pro* pilots.
As with most aviation reporting, it's sloppy and uninformed.
in the effluvia of the unwashed masses, perhaps they will read this
and take my suggestion and go see the Pitcairn AC-37 Roadable
Gyrocopter in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum at Langley,
Virginia, anyway.
won't.
If you're like me, you already do.
Technology for about a decade or more now.
Flying Car is possible. But one has to define
the problem carefully and approach from basics. I just applied for a couple of provisional
patent in India in December 2005.
If one looks carefully into aerospace technologies, there is a MISSING LINK in relevance of such tehnologies to automobile.
Once we solve this, Flying Car does become a
reality. It is closer to reality than one can
think of. One must detach from looking at this
'problem' from aircraft point of view and take
a viwpoint from 'automobile' side instead.
Sure, existing solutions are not convincing
enough....
holds their annual fly-in. I know you know of it, good sir, and I
thought to let these other readers be aware of it too.
If you like things that fly, there's a lot of that at Oshkosh.
Everything new and most everything that's old and still flies is well
represented. Oshkosh is a party, like a week-long New Year's if
you have plane tastes.
It scares me to think they may be flying over head!
Yikes!
<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.aerocar.com/" target="_newWindow">http://www.aerocar.com/</a>
click your way to video's