Fairly Realistic Flying Car Offered for 2009 Delivery

An anonymous reader writes to tell us about yet another promise of a flying car. The Register is reporting on the latest from Terrafugia Inc called the "Transition" which is a combination car and airplane that runs on unleaded gas. The idea is that it's a car that you can drive to the nearest airstrip and, with the touch of a button, convert to an airplane, fly to an airstrip close to your goal, then convert back to a car to reach your ultimate destination. Of course, how many times have we been promised flying cars only to suffer in perpetual disappointment.

I'll Believe That...

[InvisibleSoul]

...when cars fly.

It's a datsun

[goombah99]

Plus it's a converted Datsun, comes with a golden gun/cigarette lighter, and a midget bartender.

Cmdr. Sisko wants to know --

[SpiffyMarc]

Where are the flying cars?

It's the year 2000.

Where are the flying cars?!

Masks!

[PolyDwarf]

Can I get my own cool Spectrum mask?

Re:Cmdr. Sisko wants to know --

[techpawn]

What if a German scientist said to you "I have invented the flying car and I'll give it to you under one condition"?

Phew

[niceone]

Phew, being "fairly realistic" is pretty high up my list of desirable features for any air transportation I use.

Re:Masks!

[gardyloo]

Sure, but the goggles... they do nothing!

Consistency please?

[BlackPignouf]

Submitters, please either bring us crapload of algae/hybrid/electrical/fuel cell/ethanol/biodiesel/thyme-powered car stories, OR X-wing/SUV/flying-car ones, but not both. It justs doesn't make sense to prone energy-efficiency on one hand and use barrels worth of oil for stupid stuff on the other. Thank you.

Most important thing to know

[MiniMike]

Will it come with OnStar?

Look out below!

Security Checks?

[yogibaer]

Just imagine, driving a car from the street onto an airstrip, with several gallons of liquids in the tank and a trunk big enough to house a thermonuclear device. Why do you need a button for transfoming it into an airplane? Airport security will dismantle it anyway before allowing it onto the runway and I am sure for a couple of dollars extra, they'll reassemble your car as an airplane. Saves a lot in production cost, if you do not need all the fancy pneumatics, hydraulics and transforming gizmos...

What are the odds...?

[butterwise]

If the average person is 60 times more likely to die in a car crash than plane crash, what are the odds of dying in a flying car crash?

The chase...

[tunafreedolphin]

I can't wait to watch that high speed chase.

Ah, yes, terrafugia

[jollyreaper]

From the latin, "terra" meaning "ground" and "fugia" meaning "flight into."

Re:Realistic?

[Scaba]

you were eplanning on bringing a little luggage?

Dude, that is sooo 1999. We now call it iPlanning

Re:alternately

[Anonymous Coward]

I would love to drive one of those ... right up to the point when some soccer mom squashes me like a bug with her Excursion.

"honey ... what was that bump?"

Re:More interesting are the Honda plug-ins

[modecx]

Gorilla influenced plug in hybrid SUV?

Alright, so long as it doesn't climb to the top of the Empire State Building to tap power off of that big light bulb up there.

Re:Phew

[spun]

Funny, I only use unrealistic air transport. Dragons, flying carpets, reindeer sleighs, that sort of thing.

Re:Cmdr. Sisko wants to know --

[Ted Stevens]

and i'm sure he did a bit of a 'rug dance' in front of his CO on Monday morning

I'm not sure what that means, but I'm assuming it has something to do with "don't ask, don't tell?"

You'd do what for a flying car?!?

[cain]

Let's get this out of the way: flying car [youtube.com].

Re:This will go nowhere.

[Scaba]

And what about stupid teenagers that run out of gas in the middle of the atlantic?

That'd be like so embarrassing. Stuck three thousand feet in the air, waiting around until dad gets there with a gas can.

Re:Cmdr. Sisko wants to know --

[Anonymous Coward]

"Don't ask, don't tell" is an American thing. I believe the British equivalent is "don't ask, join the Royal Navy".

Re:Ah, yes, terrafugia

[jollyreaper]

Actually, my Latin is a bit rusty, but "Fugia" means "to flee" or "to escape". As in, "to escape the ground".

Not particularly clever, but hey, they don't seem to mind the name...

"Flight" can also mean escape. Using that word made more sense when talking about an airplane. I also wanted to avoid the obvious Bush Administration reference with "terra" and "flight" because then we'd be talking about extraordinary rendition and there's nothing funny about that.

Re:Everyone is a criminal, everything is a weapon.

[Dogtanian]

Swarthy_faces + flying_cars = 9/11_repeat.

Too small to be dangerous. They'd be more of an annoyance- large buildings would each require a King Kong to hold on to the side and swat rogue cars away.

Re:I'll Believe That...

[no1nose]

I'll Believe That...

      when Duke Nukem Forever comes out.

Terraforming

[StikyPad]

The nearest approach offered by current technology is the helicopter. Whirlybirds are noisy, dangerous, expensive and difficult to fly. They take up a hell of a lot of room, too, in the contexts both of airspace and manoeuvres near/on the ground. They aren't going to turn into flying cars any time soon.

Jump-jets like the Harrier are even worse, in that they can't at present get airborne vertically with a useful load. Ducted fans sometimes seem to offer hope, but the idea has been around for a long time without much in the way of credible kit appearing.

The solution is obvious: we merely need to increase the density of our atmosphere to increase buoyancy. The densest known gas, radon, is nearly 8 times more dense than nitrogen, so we pump radon into our atmosphere in quantity and eventually we'll have workable flying cars. Genius!

Re:Cmdr. Sisko wants to know --

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, JetBlue sometimes does this.. they take you out for a drive to the middle of the airstrip and back.

Re:Similar to the AeroCar

[ppanon]

Well, if we had nanotechnology that could make diamondoid structural materials, wing-sized monomolecular graphite sheets, and multi-meter nanotube cables, then you could probably pull off some decent highly-collapsible wings. At that point, you've probably also got either vacuum fluctuation or molecular distortion batteries powerful enough to power electric motors that can be re-configured to drive either wheels or a propeller.

So probably another 50-100 year wait.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Similar to the AeroCar

[ross.w]

But only if you can produce an inverse phase tachyon pulse and feed it back into the warp drive via the phaser array.