Agreed, flying cars is dumb. Electric airplanes, though, that’s got potential!
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Management is not responsible for any damage caused by run away shopping carts.
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What he actually said was, “Hh, mhn, well, th-… it’s, hm, no.”
This is what I want. Forget driver-less cars, or flying cars… we need transporters that can get you anywhere in the blink of an eye.
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Precisely. As I’ve argued for decades… the issue isn’t actually cost or driver ability, it’s the simple fact that if your car breaks down mid-drive, you (for the most part) coast down to an inconvenient stop and are temporarily marooned. If your flying car breaks down you drop out of the sky and (for the most part) die.
If you look at how much time is required to verify the flight readiness of commercial and private jets, then look at how often the average driver doesn’t even check simple things like their tire pressure or oil level before each drive (I don’t either)… you can only imagine how quickly flying planes would fail and (in almost every case) involve fatalities.
Sorry, but people are barely responsible car drivers/owners/maintainers as things stand now… no way they can be trusted to take on the exponential responsibilities associated with adding a 3rd dimension to the path.
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If only you can work out how to violate Newton’s laws and solve the latitude issue of what to do with all that extra rotational energy when going from locations close to 0 degrees lat to those closer to 90/-90 degrees you’ll have it made!
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Oh woe is me, the physical limitations of our stupid universe has foiled me again…
You live in the 19th century with your railroads, I’ll live in the 22nd century with flying cars. In our own way, we’re both deluded.
My favorite:
Autogyro with a pre-rotator?
All of them vapor ware from decades previous. Moller’s been hawking his flying car for almost 50 years! Aeromobil has been trying since the 90s at least.
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This is just an extension of the erroneous belief that “more roads equals less congestion.” It seems like they would, but in real life more roads mean more people driving. L.A. has no shortage of roads but it does have plenty of traffic congestion. If you really want to make a difference you have to find ways to get people around without so many cars. (Though I understand why a car manufacturer wouldn’t be a big proponent of that idea.)
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The term is induced demand, for people wanting to read up on it a bit more.
The trick is not only getting people around with fewer cars, but making it so they don’t have to get around so much. Unfortunately the US has a funny attitude towards urbanism and building more densely, and especially toward public transportation.
Sprawl begets sprawl; cars pretty much are the best transportation for low density suburbs but cars need parking lots; parking lots space everything apart further, meaning more roads, meaning more cars, more parking lots…
Which, as you point out, is great if you’re hawking electric cars!
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God, do people still take Moller seriously? He’s the unsinkable rubber ducky of flying cars…no matter how many times he’s sued and no matter how many times he missed deadlines, I still see breathless stories every year or two about how he’s “months away” from FCC certification tests.
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I think Musk is right. He’s a techie, and you know he grew up watching the Jetsons and such…if flying cars were realistic, he’d be working on them. The infrastructure would be paid for by everyone, but the only people who could afford them would be the same people who use executive jets. I think self-driving cars that allow far more cars to safely share the roads are far more doable.
For what it is worth I believe it will be possible to make autonomous human carrying aircraft which address Elon’s objections. I think it will happen when it is possible to build battery powered, ducted fan vehicles sufficiently large to carry a useful load. Redundant fans, power supplies and control systems will reduce the failure rate, while automatic controls deal with hazards and noise issues.
But it won’t be a flying car. It won’t have a a steering wheel. You will talk to it and say where to go.
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