Uber Hires Veteran NASA Engineer to Develop Flying Cars
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Re: Uber Hires Veteran NASA Engineer to Develop Flying Cars
#2I don't get it, is this hiring like a PR stunt?
I would thinking creating your own maps and autonomous driving platforms is already fairly ambitious, but flying cars?
Re: Uber Hires Veteran NASA Engineer to Develop Flying Cars
#3I feel this is additional evidence for my theory that Uber is in big trouble and is trying to spin a bunch of pixie dust into some kind of dumb money exit for its increasingly angry investors.
Re: Uber Hires Veteran NASA Engineer to Develop Flying Cars
#4When does Uber run out of money? I think the timeline on their R&D projects is longer than their runway, and I'm not sure how many more people would be willing to write Uber a 10 digit check.
Re: Uber Hires Veteran NASA Engineer to Develop Flying Cars
#5This strikes me as pretty pathetic effort by Uber to make itself appear forward looking
Flying is not a valid commute solution and never will be because of physics. All things equal, the energy requirements to change elevation will be too great to justify adoption.
The system only becomes useful/safe if you "stack" vehicles on roadways. What happens when one has a failure and crashes?
This is either market signaling or another thing Uber will bleed money onto.
Re: Uber Hires Veteran NASA Engineer to Develop Flying Cars
#6Flying cars of the 2010s seem striking similar to solar cars for the 1980s. A few expensive prototypes here and there, some great pontificating from leading engineers, but no serious consumer model.
Re: Uber Hires Veteran NASA Engineer to Develop Flying Cars
#7This could have equally been an article on the Onion
Re: Uber Hires Veteran NASA Engineer to Develop Flying Cars
#8I feel this is additional evidence for my theory that Uber is in big trouble and is trying to spin a bunch of pixie dust into some kind of dumb money exit for its increasingly angry investors.
I share your theory. I think Uber was dominant and in a great position financially until it tried to aggressively continue it's expansion into immature markets using subsidies. Their fixed costs have exploded while revenue hasn't grown as quickly.
There's no reason this technology can't/wont work from a science perspective. From an engineering, consumer, political standpoint this concept is such a non-starter. The more money Uber spends on this the quicker they'll bleed-out.
Re: Uber Hires Veteran NASA Engineer to Develop Flying Cars
#9When does Uber run out of money? I think the timeline on their R&D projects is longer than their runway, and I'm not sure how many more people would be willing to write Uber a 10 digit check.
They've raised a lot of money in the last 18 months (likely in anticipation of an evolving financial environment) so I suspect they actually have a couple years left if they're careful.
It's like they're stumbling forward blindly hoping that at some point their books balance.
Re: Uber Hires Veteran NASA Engineer to Develop Flying Cars
#10This strikes me as pretty pathetic effort by Uber to make itself appear forward looking Flying is not a valid commute solution and never will be because of physics. All things equal, the energy requirements to change elevation will be too great to justify adoption. The system only becomes useful/safe if you "stack" vehicles on roadways. What happens when one has a failure and crashes? This is either market signaling…
> Flying is not a valid commute solution and never will be because of physics. All things equal, the energy requirements to change elevation will be too great to justify adoption.
There are lots of technical roadblocks to feasible flying cars but the cost of the potential energy to change elevation is not one of them. The optimal altitude flown would be lower for shorter trips, and when normal cars must change elevation (i.e, drive over hills/mountains), they do not use so much fuel as to make the trips infeasible.
In a flying car, much more energy is used fighting air drag and gravity drag.