
Flying Car Crashes In British Columbia - Lightning
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2013/05/10/bc-flying-car-crash.html
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po
Every time I've ever seen an article or report about some new flying car
concept, I have pretty much zero interest in it. The flying car will only be a
reality _after_ the self-driving car. The reason is that although, I would
personally love to have a flying car, I would under no circumstances want all
of my neighbors to have one.

You can do a lot of damage with a regular car which is why we put fences and
guardrails between our streets and buildings, but just imagine how much damage
you can do if you add a 3rd dimension. It would be like visiting Flatland. No
way the FAA is going to allow flying cars for the masses until they are
basically self-piloting.

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mikeash
There are two completely unrelated kinds of flying car.

First is the Jetsons version of the flying car. This is the aviating
equivalent of the personal automobile. You get in, you fly it to work from
your driveway, land it on the roof of your office building, and walk in.

Second is what this was: a machine that's both a road car and an airplane.

The first one is at least conceptually very neat. If it worked, it could
completely eliminate traffic jams, eliminate pedestrian-vehicle accidents, and
vastly improve the efficiency of local transport. There's been little attempt
to build such a thing. It basically demands VTOL operation, which _vastly_
restricts its range and increases its cost and noise. The Moller Skycar is the
only real-world attempt at this one that I can think of, and it didn't get
very far.

The second one is _completely pointless_. The "flying car" as it actually
(barely) exists, as in this example, is just a car that is also an airplane.
You drive it to an airport, reconfigure it to be an airplane, fly it to
another airport, land, reconfigure it to be a car, and drive off.

The problem is that design tradeoffs mean that such a "flying car" is both a
bad car and a bad airplane. They have inherently different needs for things
like wheels, engines, drivetrains, etc. Putting both into the same machine
means it's not going to do either one well.

For every "flying car" out there, you can take the same money and buy a better
car, a better airplane, a _second_ better car to keep at your most frequently
used destination airport, and have enough money left over to rent cars at
other airports for years and years. This is unlikely ever to change.

The Jetsons idea is interesting, but roughly nobody is working on anything at
all applicable to it.

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Wingman4l7
The most workable concept at the moment is basically a powered
parachute/paraglider trike beefed up to be like a dune buggy. I always felt
this was cheating though, because when I hear "airplane" I think of a fixed
wing design.

EDIT: ... which is exactly the design that crashed. AFAIK these don't require
a pilot's license, but that doesn't mean they're easy to fly.

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mikeash
It does seem less awful than other concepts, but still... why? It's a worse
dune buggy and a worse airplane than you could build if you took the same
resources and built the two separately.

As for being hard to fly, I believe the rationale behind not requiring
licenses is simply that you're unlikely to kill anyone _else_ when you crash,
so do what you will. At least in the US, licensing requirements for different
kinds of aviation scale fairly directly with the number of innocent civilians
you can take out if you screw up too badly. Not 100% the case, but a decent
approximation.

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Wingman4l7
Oh, I'm not disagreeing with you, just commenting on flying car design.

AFAIK licensing requirements scale with aircraft size and complexity -- which
does correlate nicely with its danger to bystanders.

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mikeash
Yep, I was just elaborating a bit.

You're right that licensing requirements go up with size and complexity, but
it's a bit beyond that as well. For example, carrying people in exchange for
money has stricter licensing than carrying people for fun, because the idea is
that 1) you'll do it more often and 2) people paying you for services are less
aware of the risk they're taking.

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gtani
I would call that an enclosed motorized paraglider. They've been around for a
long time in that format(since late 90's or so(?) I'd have to check with
friends). Once upon a time I was going to take lessons to learn how to
paramotor, but the instructor had a fatal accident.

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Wingman4l7
Badly designed, too. I cannot believe it has no propeller cage, that's asking
for an accident.

I always felt that calling this design a flying car was cheating this was
cheating -- when I hear "airplane" I think of a fixed wing design.

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rquantz
Is it bad that this article still makes me want to have one of these?

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jerrya
I think it's a pretty neat device (based on the last time I checked out their
website, a year or so ago.) Generally safe since it's a dune buggy under a
parachute, and entirely appropriate or so it seems for their mission, flying a
few supplies in and out of Africa and other places with no roads.

And even readily field reparable.

(I am a bit shocked by the $100K price tag.)

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jimzvz
> _...flying a few supplies in and out of Africa and other places with no
> roads._

Maybe you should re-word that.

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jimzvz
Re: downvotes

Haha, I guess whatever the hell I drove on today is not a road because I am in
Africa and Africa has no roads.

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mikeash
Yeah, but I bet there was a no-road _right next to_ that road.

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coldcode
I think the Back To The Future flying car highway appears in 2015.

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anshargal
At least we have such headline in 2013

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Dylan16807
I suppose, but in my mind a true "flying car" is VTOL. Anything else is neat
but doesn't fit the vision.

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Wingman4l7
parasail != paraglider/parachute

Sad because they mention the name of the actual vehicle, which has "powered
parachute" in it.

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bliker
Where are all the Harry Potter references?

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mrtksn
before reading the article: Yay! we are in the future, finally.

after reading the article: oh, it's just a steerable parachute powered by a
propeller attached to a something like a car.

I guess this is how sensationalist headlines work.

