You know what is scarier than teenagers driving on the freeway? When they fly over your house.
and as others here have noted, and flying car solution would be very very loud.
No Longer a Dream: Silicon Valley Takes on the Flying Car
21–30 of 58 posts
Re: No Longer a Dream: Silicon Valley Takes on the Flying Car
#22Another nonsense marketing piece. The image in the article is not even remotely close to a flying car. It is a ducted fan ground effect craft, no different than what NASA and USAF have worked on since the 1950's. Sure you could sort out the stability and flight automation problems with modern software. But the underlying problem to solve is one of energy storage, not aerospace engineering. This company will run into…
Why do you say ducted fan?
Or ground effect? Rotor craft have a nasty ground effect, not a nice one, IIRC.
It looks like a big multi-rotor with a saddle and pontoons. These are so simple that they'll probably work well enough.
Battery life is an issue that's not going away quickly.
Re: No Longer a Dream: Silicon Valley Takes on the Flying Car
#23Another nonsense marketing piece. The image in the article is not even remotely close to a flying car. It is a ducted fan ground effect craft, no different than what NASA and USAF have worked on since the 1950's. Sure you could sort out the stability and flight automation problems with modern software. But the underlying problem to solve is one of energy storage, not aerospace engineering. This company will run into…
> It is a ducted fan ground effect craft, no different than what NASA and USAF have worked on since the 1950's.
No, it's not. It's a modern multi-rotor, which have only been possible recently with computer control. No ducts, no (useful) ground effect. Ground effect craft have wings:
Re: No Longer a Dream: Silicon Valley Takes on the Flying Car
#24You know what is scarier than teenagers driving on the freeway? When they fly over your house. and as others here have noted, and flying car solution would be very very loud.
Run many small fan motors out of phase.
Re: No Longer a Dream: Silicon Valley Takes on the Flying Car
#25Bad article, but meanwhile in Munich/Germany: http://www.theverge.com/2017/4/20/15369850/lilium-jet-flying...
Re: No Longer a Dream: Silicon Valley Takes on the Flying Car
#26No mention of Lilium, unfortunately, though they aren't in SV. https://lilium.com/
Here are a few players in this market (location:firm:product): * Germany: E-volo: Volocopter * Germany: Lilium Aviation: Lilium Jet * Slovakia: AeroMobil 3.0 * EU/Silicon Valley: Airbus Urban Mobility: Vahana * Israel: Urban Aeronautics: Cormorant * China: eHang: eHang 184 * USA: zee.aero * USA: Joby Aviation: S2 * USA: Kitty Hawk * USA: Terrafugium (“legacy”): TF-X * USA: Icon (“legacy”) * USA: PAL-V (actual flying…
Nice list! You really should consider merging yours with the ones mentioned in the NYT article and contributing it to Wikipedia [0].
Re: No Longer a Dream: Silicon Valley Takes on the Flying Car
#27I wonder how they plan on managing traffic in 3D.
Re: No Longer a Dream: Silicon Valley Takes on the Flying Car
#28No mention of Lilium, unfortunately, though they aren't in SV. https://lilium.com/
Here are a few players in this market (location:firm:product): * Germany: E-volo: Volocopter * Germany: Lilium Aviation: Lilium Jet * Slovakia: AeroMobil 3.0 * EU/Silicon Valley: Airbus Urban Mobility: Vahana * Israel: Urban Aeronautics: Cormorant * China: eHang: eHang 184 * USA: zee.aero * USA: Joby Aviation: S2 * USA: Kitty Hawk * USA: Terrafugium (“legacy”): TF-X * USA: Icon (“legacy”) * USA: PAL-V (actual flying…
PAL-V is not American if I looked it up correctly.
Re: No Longer a Dream: Silicon Valley Takes on the Flying Car
#29Many of the 1950s small VTOL craft ended up in the Hiller Museum in San Carlos, CA. Stop by there and see the Hiller Flying Platform, the Rotorcycle, and the VXT-8 Coleopter. All flew successfully. None could fly very far.
Lilium's VTOL, which takes off vertically and then transitions to aircraft mode, is a variation on an old idea, the convertiplane. It's a compelling idea, because winged aircraft are far more efficient than VTOL craft. It's hard to make it work well. The idea was tried twice in the 1950s, and prototypes were flown, but never worked very well. The V-22 Osprey is the only successful convertiplane, and it's not considered a big success.
Re: No Longer a Dream: Silicon Valley Takes on the Flying Car
#30Every x months since the early nineties there will be an article about someone developing a flying car, and the inventor/ceo painting a jetsons future where riding in a flying car is but a casual experience of the future.
I'm not complaining, I just find it a truly fascinating phenomenon. In 20 years we'll be reading this same article written by someone else for the 16 thousand time.But hopefully that article will end end with "to go on sale this later this year"