Why don’t we have flying cars by now??

[Tuske427]

People today can't drive cars anymore. They're too busy face booking, texting and anything except paying attention to the road. Do you really want them flying around where they can crash into your house, or worse- your garage?

yes, I know vehicles like the Moller Skycar would fly itself, and it has multiple redundancy systems, and you are along for the ride... but I still think if you're going to start flying around you should at least be a pilot, just in case.

[Sparks67]

Originally Posted by Tuske427

yes, I know vehicles like the Moller Skycar would fly itself, and it has multiple redundancy systems, and you are along for the ride... but I still think if you're going to start flying around you should at least be a pilot, just in case.

You need a driver's license to drive, so expect the FAA to enforce you obtain a pilot's license on a flying car. Well, it almost happen almost half a century a go.

http://www.travelchannel.com/video/a...the-flying-car

Jeff

[Tuske427]

Originally Posted by Sparks67

You need a driver's license to drive, so expect the FAA to enforce you obtain a pilot's license on a flying car. Well, it almost happen almost half a century a go.

http://www.travelchannel.com/video/a...the-flying-car

Jeff

That wasn't the first, and it hasn't stopped since, either. There have been numerous attempts of people trying this over the years. My favorite is the flying Pinto



http://weburbanist.com/2010/01/22/dr...f-flying-cars/

[irishlsxer]

Originally Posted by Sparks67

Another one = I remember reading about him in Popular Mechanics back in the middle 1970's.

I wouldn't count out the skycar as long as Paul moller is still around. True, its been a loooong time coming, but SUPER genious guy. This thing is bad to the bone. Seems for decades his biggest hurdle was been funding, until just recently.....

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...m-reality.html

Supposed stats on the m400 were something like 300mph with a 30k ceiling.

[DETON8R]

Remember this from Monster Garage?
http://www.popularmechanics.com/tech...flying/1751557

Fun engineering project by Jesse James, but not practical.

Paul Moller's engineering dream of an affordable flying car based on a rotary engine is a possibility, he's been dreaming about that four decades, however it will be extremely expensive and out of reach to the vast majority of the public. Again making the dream of flying cars a reality for a select few with HUGE bank accounts.

A few years ago Honda announced a plan to enter the airplane market, and their low cost alternative isn't low cost, and really isn't much of an alternative. With a price tag north of $3,000,000, and a maintenance budget that makes Ferrari owners gasp, take a deep breath and pause. There is nothing affordable about it.

The problem is that this country isn't set up to accommodate a flying car, FAA issues aside. There was a belief in the 50's thru the 70's that might become reality, but that dream is just that, a dream. I live in north Santa Cruz County in California, about 30 minutes from the Silicon Valley, and I drive past two airfields every work day in my 18 mile commute that were established in the 50's when innovative Americans thought that people would fly to work to save time and travel efficiently.

One was closed in the early 1980's, in Scotts Valley, as a result of a plane crash by Steve Wozniak of Apple, Inc. and the other is virtually closed in a community called Bonny Doon, because political "Leaders" on Santa Cruz County capitulated to NIMBY's over the last 20 years who didn't like the noise and perceived hazard, and have rendered it nearly useless. It doesn't matter that the airports were there 20 years before the NIMBY's showed up and then went to a City Council meeting to complain about it.

Our political class chokes innovation by capitulating to anyone that has a complaint (NIMBY = Not In My Back Yard whiners), by sending tax money to a class of people who would rather not work and prefer to live off the the gains of others (Rather than investing in innovation, or reducing the tax burden of the innovators), and pushes the innovators to the brink by taxing their profit at 35%. Our legal structure destroys the capital of the innovators by dragging anybody into court and litigating any and all product defects, whether the product is used as intended or designed, or when there is no legitimate reason to blame the product or manufacturer. And our political class in the FAA, OSHA, EPA, DOT, State and Local Government continually demand more safety and a clean environment. In some cases those actions do in fact result in the intended outcome, more safety and a cleaner environment, but again, those decisions chokes across the board innovation to get that result, in favor of "politically correct" innovation. The horsepower levels seen in the early 1970's were not duplicated until the later 1990's, all for a clean environment, good for the trees and green people, not good for the performance car enthusiast.