Flying Car Flies From London To Africa 148
krou writes "It may not be exactly what people have envisioned or tried over the years, such as the flying car in Bladerunner, or the previously reported Terrafugia Transition, but the BBC is reporting that a flying car (creatively dubbed the Skycar, but different from this Skycar) has flown from London across into Africa. They modified a parajet fan that can fly a man into a bigger fan with a canopy that is capable of flying a car."
Re:Confusing Wording (Score:4, Informative)
The design of the fan and canopy, which is capable of flying a car, is based on a smaller fan and canopy which was capable of allowing a person to 'fly'.
Actually... (Score:5, Informative)
The vehicle flying to Africa is more a proof-of-concept than anything else, a fully functioning engineering prototype. The actual flying car model is slated to be released next year and is supposed to be a real car.
Disclaimer: I work for one of their sponsors.
Re:Pure genius (Score:3, Informative)
Re:It's just a simple paraglider...so what? (Score:3, Informative)
Once you liquefy a gas, it stops being compressible.
From the article: (Score:1, Informative)
..."and after rigorous testing will travel from London across the Sahara to Tombouctou for the maiden voyage in Spring 2009."
Hasn't happened yet.
Re:Pure genius (Score:4, Informative)
I just narrowed it down to ABP a few minutes ago, but I have a strong aversion to having to swallow even that small amount of castor oil to get to the video.
Re:Pure genius (Score:2, Informative)
I'm running Firefox with NoScript and Adblock Plus - didn't have to disable Adblock Plus to see the video, but I did have to manually reload the page after allowing it under NoScript in order to load the video.
Re:It's just a simple paraglider...so what? (Score:3, Informative)
When we're talking about these sorts of orders of magnitude difference, it's effectively incompressible. Hydrodynamics don't bother taking compressibility into account, for example.
I wouldn't want a pressure vessel at millions of atmospheres in MY camper.
Re:Wild Kingdom... (Score:3, Informative)
Actually this is a Powered Paraglider [wikipedia.org] attached to a 4-wheeled cart that can be certified as a 'car'.
This isn't really a 'new' thing as the carts used by powered paragliders have been getting more and more complex each year I see them, now they are complex enough to qualify as a car.
That being said, this is awesome!