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Technology

NASA Tests Flying Scooter For Commercial Take-Off 273

Posted by timothy from the can-you-say-liability-suit-boys-and-girls? dept.
Ant writes: " NASA will discover tomorrow whether a prototype airscooter - a jetpack-like device propelled by fans - could really be a viable mode of transport. If successful, the airscooter trial at Nasa's Ames research centre in California could form another stepping stone in the development of personal, individual aircraft that allow commuters to speed over traffic jams, doctors to fly to emergencies and soldiers to leapfrog minefields. The SoloTrek Exo-skeletor Flying Vehicle (XFV) is designed to allow a pilot to stand upright, with fans 3ft in diameter above his head that lift him into the sky, allowing flight at speeds of up to 80mph for up 1Å hours on a tank of petrol." Despite the cool graphic, note that what's being tested is an engine, not the whole rig pictured -- that's just a tease. Consultation with the UK branch office revealed no clue of how long "1Å hours" is. Any ideas?
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Nasa Tests Flying Scooter For Commercial Take-Off More

Nasa Tests Flying Scooter For Commercial Take-Off

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  • Yes, that is the symbol for an angstrom, however, I believe that they meant one Ampere-hour, which means it will run at one amp for one hour for that amount of fuel. It's the rate of fuel usage and the power derived from that amount of fuel.

    No, power is in Watts. Amperes measure the current; and Ampere-hours measure electrical charge. All this doesn't apply very well here.

    I think they probably meant 1 1/2 hours, and the funky symbol for 1/2 got warped somehow.

  • this site isn't much more than one of those end of magazine deals where they advertise x-ray vision glasses, and penis pumps.

    the dude has a couple trashcans cut in half resting on a plank backpack. Hell, would you send me

    "#FLJP Plans----$22.00 #FLJZ Assembled and tested----$11,500.00

    If I were to spend my winter afternoon creating a story and a mock-up like this?

  • Ever have an X-ray from a recently-build machine? Software in there? You bet.

    A sqwwaaaaakin' good time! irc.rabidpenguin.org

  • Axtually, the fan exhausts are to either side of the person, not directly on to him. I imagine the wind force would be pretty similar to the wind forces I experience riding my motorcycle on the highway. You should try it sometime - wind in your hair and all that. OK, wind in the helmet, but same idea!
  • Then again.. things that can cost well over a million dollars just to own - let alone keep up - aren't exaclty main stream. The problem with the Jetpak and convertible car-slash-airplane were not because people didn't have proper training - it was because both of them weren't feasible at the time.

    And I doubt that they'd make flying one of these things as complicated as flying a plane if they actually want to market these things. Planes aren't mainstream because of their price - they aren't mainstreamed, and they are not necissarily designed to be.

    I think the idea here is to see if having a personal aircraft is possible, not if it'll work if you strap an ape to it and show him how to work the controls.

    As far as the safty thing - look at what happened with railroads.. People were horrfied by the incredible speed they could reach (10mph). Several people of power wanted them (more or less) outlawed.. Saftey has a tendancy to catch up after innovation.
  • It is probably too late to really talk to anybody here but...

    I've seen a lot of comments regarding how unsafe these things are and comparing them to the lack of safety in automibiles.

    One of the greatest troubles with automobiles is the lack of space in which to drive them. Everywhere you look there is something to run into and lots of those things also happen to be moving at relatively high rates of speed.

    Well, once we open up the third dimension a lot of that crowding goes away. People will have time to blink out for a bit in most places. Speeds are much lower than traditional aircraft, so there is an excellent chance for even a fairly negligent driver to see an oncoming obstacle and move, especially as a lot of these obstacles are fairly large.

    You won't see a lot of commercial use of these devices until their carrying capacity and fuel efficiency increases dramatically. Commercially it will be a niche product...EMT's whizzing to injury sites, police on patrol, etc.

    A lot of ground vehicle accidents involve commercial vehicles, and not merely because they are on the road a lot. A lot of commercial drivers become inured to the responsibility of conducting a vehicle.

    There are still the problems of takeoff and landing, which are the most dangerosu phases of flight operations. To some extent technology can help an operator manage the troubles there.

    There is the problem of engine failure. This can be handled with parachutes, airbags and additional safety gear like helmets and ankle/knee braces.

    Finally I imagine that, like motorcycle riders, personal air vehicle operators will exercise greater caution than your average automobile operator. Have you ever noticed how motorcycle drivers pull over very quickly during adverse weather ? I know I have seen many drivers pull over under bridges and call for a ride. Ever notice the conspicuous absence of motorcycles under many weather conditions.

    People act as stupid as they think they can get away with, witness motorcycle drivers flying around at 90 or 100 mph. Of course they only seem to do this under dry road conditions with good visibility. People in cars act very stupid because they think they are safe. They are wrong of course. People in jet packs or the like will have to be very aware that they are in danger.

    Finally a lot of people who are afraid to drive do so because "They have to." A lot of these people have poor eyesight, poor reflexes or a variety of anxieties about the entire driving process. A lot of these unsafe drivers will simpley choose to stick with ground transportation. We can use stricter licensing to eliminate others.

    We can also tie having a personal aircraft license to having a safe ground transportation license. This may make for safer ground drivers, as people vie for their air licenses. Further the only people with air licenses will have at least a moderate record of transport safety.

    There are solutions to the problems. They will be found because people want to do this. They will be found because governments want this. (They don't like having to maintain our roadways, anything that can make that problem go away will be helped along.)

    The most influential arguments against this technology I've seen on Slashdot come from pilots. Flying is complicated and very technical. Humans and computers can combine to overcome these problems. The Airbus planes are a step in this direction...but not there yet. Imagine having a system like that on a simpler aircraft to assist the pilot. The upside is that the aircraft can be flown more simply by more novice pilots. The down is when the computer screws up and takes away necessary control from the pilot like the A320 at the Paris Airshow a few years back. The answer is not here yet, but it IS coming.

    So maybe not next week or next year, but it will get here sooner rather than later. I look forward to it.
  • Clearly hasn't been paying much attention to humankinds history.....we're continually doing things that would have seemed impossible/highly stupid in the past.
  • I don't want to fly around the sky in the future with the same people I drive around the roads with in the present...
  • Gravity would clean up midair accidents quick!

    (Nevermind about the people UNDERNEATH the accident!)

    :)
  • Since the team of trained squirrels administrating Slashdot care so much about your explanation like there is no tomorrow, the black helicopters are coming to torment you with their sonic lasers. But they will not fix the problem, of course.
  • I don't completely agree, I think it's a matter of training, and as someone else said, this can be much-reduced by computer automation of most flight tasks.

    It's a well-known fact that far more people die in automobile accidents than plane crashes. In part, this is because at any reasonable speed, being close to the ground just means you're closer to obstacles you could run into. Another (bigger) reason is that any idiot can drive a car, but flying planes generally requires rigorous training and testing, especially doing so commercially.

    Personally, I think driving cars should be similarly restrictive; there's no reason someone who doesn't know how to use their turn signal, not drink before driving, obey traffic signals, and think on their feet should be behind the wheel of a chunk of metal traveling 80+ mph. But the popular demand just won't allow that, and as roads become more congested similar pressure will be exerted towards making personal flight easier/safer.

  • I'm sure as soon as these things start getting popular, someone will make a line of oversized ones for absolutely no particular reason other than to consume more fuel and take up more space... oh yeah, and to look butt ugly! [pontiac.com]

    I'll just stick to my Vespa [vespa.net], land scooter for now.
  • There is no technology available now or forseeable in the future that will make it safe to fly a personal plane into a thunderstorm or into ice. There is no technology that will take away your ability to fly into them. The only technology that can do that is technology that keeps you on ground, always.

    "If God had wanted man to fly, he would have given us wings."

    "Flying is for the birds, not man."

    etc.

    What a dope you are. You can't see the sky for the clouds...

  • Look if you want central control, stick to public transport - trains trams buses etc. Trains are far easier to do safely.

    Computers aren't going to help much - we don't have the eyesight and agility of birds, plus we don't have as good a flocking ability/instinct- you really need that when you have tons of people flying together. You already have people not respecting each others space in 2D, it's going to get worse in 3D.

    We aren't as resilient too. Imagine a mid-air collision between a few of these things. Once the pilots are knocked out by an impact 500 feet in the air, things aren't going to be so glamorous.

    Avoiding power lines, cables and tethers is going to be bad too. How many of you can see cables >500 feet away so that you can avoid them at 80 mph?

    Firework season is going to be fun too ;).

    Link.
  • if you are sending it overseas, how do you send it by land?
  • This toy's been in development a while - the web site's Solotrek.com [solotrek.com]. Hope they can make it fly - and navigable by mere mortals, not just Special Forces folk.
  • Should I get a UPS when these arrive? I allready lose power when some idiot knocks over a power pole, now people will be frying on the power lines.
    --
  • No notes on airbags, Bewulf clusterability, onboard mp3 players or OnStar buttons (in case of problem press & scream - quickly!)

    Yes, but if you read the fine print, there's an option to install a big red "Don't Panic" button.

    Douglas Adams rules.
  • between the Great Space-Fungus, and personal helicopters, I'm staying in my wireless-networked house.

    I can catch Mir fungus in space, or get chopped up in some 16-learner's permit-holding cheerleader's prop blades on my way to work.

    No Thank You.

    A host is a host from coast to coast, but no one uses a host that's close
  • I know power is watts or Amp Volts or anything equivalent, but you get the meaning I was getting at, right? I know it doesn't make sense, and it's probably a mangled character, but it does make a tad more sense than an angstrom-hour, right? that's like a meter second, which isn't used all that much in classical mechanics if I'm not mistaken . . . but it's still funny
  • I wonder if the blades will spin long enough though... A helicopter has rather large blades, which have enough inertia to keep spinning for quite some time.
    It's not about the inertia of the blades. The blades start spinning during a descent the same way that a powered-off window fan will start moving if a gust of wind blows in the window. IIRC, helicopter pilots call it "autorotation".

  • Typo (Score:3)

    by Matt_Bennett ( 79107 ) on Sunday October 22, 2000 @01:36PM (#684526) Homepage Journal
    The symbol is one for an angstrom -- which is 10^-10 meters. I think if that distance was significant, there wouldn't be much market for these things.

    We've only got a few months left in the year 2000- I want my personal Jetpack we were all supposed to have by now!
  • % units 40mph metres/second
    * 17.8816

    That's more like a 50 foot drop. (like you'll care when you hit bottom). Now you know why a seat-belt is considered such a good idea.
    `ø,,ø`ø,,ø!

  • This can be fun and useful in really wide open spaces. But if we can't get people to flock properly then I think it is too dangerous to allow high densities of people up in the air at once, especially in cities and other populated areas.

    People won't keep to speed limits either. 130kph (36 metres/sec) doesn't give you much time to avoid power lines, nylon kite string, wires 200 metres away - assuming they even see them. Highly trained military chopper pilots have problems with stuff like this, I doubt the public are going to do even half as well. You don't get swans and geese flying street level in New York City, and that thing isn't going to be even as agile.

    In event of an accident the chances are high that the pilot won't just kill himself in a densely populated area. 200 kilos of stuff landing on ground pedestrians/motorists from 5 stories up is usually fatal.

    The hype is probably to get funding from more sources.

    I'd want to fly one, but I think we should only fly in air fields.

    Cheerio,
    Link.
  • What can I say... This has to be the coolest thing I've ever seen. Unforunately this is probably vaporish but it's still nice to dream.
  • "If successful, the airscooter trial at Nasa's Ames research centre in California could form another stepping stone in the development of personal, individual aircraft that allow commuters to speed over traffic jams..."

    ...until they collide with a swarming mass of other commuters attempting to avoid said traffic jams....
  • exactly my point! of course that would never happen...

    __________________________________
    all misspellings were intentional.

  • If successful, the airscooter trial at Nasa's Ames research centre in California could form another stepping stone in the development of personal, individual aircraft that allow commuters to speed over traffic jams, doctors to fly to emergencies and soldiers to leapfrog minefields.

    Don't you mean allow commuters to get caught in flying traffic jams?

  • I rely on somebody's programming every time I hop in a commercial airliner.

    No, you don't. You rely on at least two very highly trained and experienced human pilots, who control the plane and make the go/no-go decisions.

    The reasons for flight not becoming as commonplace as automobile driving are related to human decision-making and knowledge, not to technology. And let's face it: for flight to become that commonplace, the very same idiots that drive on the roads today would be flying in the air, making decisions as poorly up there as they do down here. How many morons have you seen drive really slowly in the left lane, or drive side-by-side and exactly the same speed as the guy in the lane next to them? These are the people we're talking about. They're the same people that "just want to get their work done" but don't want to learn how to get their work done. It's the type of person who doesn't want to make any decisions, they just want to get from point A to point B as easily and quickly as possible. Flight requires decision making that precludes such a person from sitting in the left seat, and all the electronics in the world aren't going to help.

    Hell, there are enough trained pilots who try to be like that as it is: they're the people that ask the weather briefer whether or not they should go, rather than making that decision for themselves.


    --
  • <humor>

    I disagree. Anything that removes stupid people from the gene pool (preferably before they breed) is a good thing.

    </humor>

    Actually, stupid people are why this will never really take off (no pun intended) in the US. Just look at general aviation. An alternator for a '73 Ford costs $50, the alternator for a '83 Cessna costs $300. Same alternator, save the FAA approval tag on the Cessna. Why is the Cessna more expensive? Liability insurance: your '73 Ford seizes up, are you going to file a multimillion dollar suit? Your Cessna crashes, will your heirs?

  • No way. (Score:3)

    by mindstrm ( 20013 ) on Sunday October 22, 2000 @05:02PM (#684537)
    The average person (and most above-average persons) are simply unable to be focused enough to drive safely in 2 dimensions, let alone 3.

    I mean, even myself.. I make every attempt to be a good driver, and usually I'm quite successful, but there are always times when you look the wrong way...

    What we need is better public transportation, better forms of mass transport, not even *MORE* forms of personal transport. THey are wasteful, resource wise, and inefficient.

  • You missed the point. He presented the arguments that were used against planes (which, as you now say, are acceptably safe) when they were first introduced. Now, people are making arguments against these personal devices. The naysayers, though, as he points out, aren't always right.

    No, I think the other guy was right, he was just trying to be witty. There is nothing actually relevant about saying "people objected to X which is now widespread, so your objections to Y must be equally wrong." The fact that naysayers aren't always right is pretty useless for evaluating an argument against something.

    Its like if someone was talking about their hopes for a presidential candidate and I started making hopeful comments about our new chancellor adolf hitler who will bring us out of this recession. There has been no useful critique of the real subject at hand.

    And of course the differences between fears about the mechanical workings of a new device and the unavoidable practical implications of thousands of people zipping through a 3D area with no markings of lanes are so great as to make the comment just a silly throwaway line.

    Have you ever been on the boston esplanade for the fourth of july? There's lots of boats out having fun. Most of them are rafts and canoes, but there are a few power boats zipping around. There's big signs on the bridges warning people not to leave wake, but every few minutes some moron will zip through leaving a wake that rocks smaller boats on both shores.

    Now imagine that everyone was in the fast boats, and instead of a fairly straightforward trip up on down the river, you had some people going across and some suddenly dropping in from above because the fast part of your trip is through where they stop, and someone just sort of stopping and circling because they were getting their bearings, and....

    You can't make these problems go away with silly "quotes" about a completely different situation. It can be funny, but "aren't we feeling clever" is the only real response, because it is not useful or relevant.

    -Kahuna Burger

  • Right. I am.
    But it's *too close*. How many accidents do I see on a daily bassis? what about the other drivers?

  • Re:Just what we need... (Score:3)

    by British ( 51765 ) <british1500@gmail.com> on Sunday October 22, 2000 @07:33PM (#684541) Homepage Journal
    just what the world needs.. Fly-by shootings.

    We will have gang wars up in the air! It'll be just like Cowboy Bebop.

  • Re:Meet George Jetson... (Score:3)

    by stripes ( 3681 ) on Monday October 23, 2000 @04:43AM (#684542) Homepage Journal
    Yeah. I guess those guys at Nasa's Ames research center don't know what they're talking about. I'll bet none of them even has a pilot's license, especially that former Navy fighter pilot who developed the thing.

    Yeah, the thing may well fly. That isn't what the pilots are saying is impractal (in the next 10 years). If it works doctors may fly to patents, or paramedics. After a lot of training. Infentry may fly over minefileds, again after training (maybe somewhat less because someone might decide to risk it rather then letting them get shot cleaing a mine field under fire). But who will you not see flying? The guy who drives 45 in the fast lane. The guy who doesn't check his tires every few days. In fact almost anyone that wouln't pay a big chunk of cash and go through a longish training program with the risk of failing the test at the end and not being allowed to fly.

    At least until we get some pretty damm bug free auto-flight/landing/takeoff code, and you know how little bug free code is out there... (NASA comes pretty damm close on the shuttle code, but it is very expensave and slow code to have written, and doesn't to as much real-time machine vision and control system work as this would...)

  • That skycar(on the main page) looks badass! Looks like something Speed Racer would fly.
  • When we ship products over-seas we have three viable options ... Finally, we could send it by land.

    could you really?

    Long as the sea between russia and alaska is frozen over, sure. (and weren't they talking about a bridge?)

    I believe that it is theoretically possible to walk from the tip of south america to capetown. Massivly impractical, but possible. When you're on foot, a straight line is rarely the best route between two points.

    -Kahuna Burger

  • And do you know how many cars with busted taillights/underinflated tires/rusted out bodies I've seen on the road?

  • Re:Meet George Jetson... (Score:3)

    by Alioth ( 221270 ) <no@spam> on Sunday October 22, 2000 @05:12PM (#684556) Journal
    And I have to question it too.

    Forget PP-ASEL/AMEL - have you ever tried a helicopter? They don't exactly glide well when the donkey quits - mess up an autorotation and you're extremely dead. I seriously doubt this thing can even autorotate. And don't give me any of this BRS nonsense either: a ballistic chute will probably never have zero-zero (zero airspeed, zero altitude - or near enough not to kill you) capabilities without costing a fantastic amount of money.

    The other snake-oil solution is Moller's skycar. That thing will never fly. He's been hawking it for years, but it's never got airborne. Moller has an interesting dream, but only the gullible invest.

    Dylan Smith (PP-ASEL, IR)

  • You put too much faith in ballistic recovery systems. How much is a BRS with zero-zero (zero airspeed, zero altitude) capabilities going to cost? Martin Baker does it with ejection seats, but the Air Force forks out a lot of money for those things.

  • And let's face it: for flight to become that commonplace, the very same idiots that drive on the roads today would be flying in the air, making decisions as poorly up there as they do down here.

    And let's face it, you probably drive a car, ride a bicycle, or take a bus and thus share the road with those idiots every single day. The difference is that I can put *considerably* more space between myself and them in an aircraft than I can in a car.

    Additionally, licensing would probably inherit the primary-safety-first attitude of the aircraft administration powers-that-be rather than the "let any moron loose in a lethal weapon" attitude that persists in some (not all, try getting a car license in most of Europe) countries with regards to cars. Hopefully, therefore, many of the morons would either have it educated out of them or wouldn't get a license.

  • One amp-hour???? The (large) battery pack I use for my cellphone can do better than that (of course, it only provides 12 volts... 1Ahr@1200 volts would be impressive).

    In any event, 1Ahr doesn't make sense in the context. I'd be more inclined to think that the Angstrom character was meant to be something else, like a 1/2 symbol, that got mangled in the translation to the web. unfortunately, this would require figuring out which font/character set was used for creating the original.
    `ø,,ø`ø,,ø!

  • Truth be told, nearly everything you say applies just as well to cars as it does to planes.

    Bullshit. Bullshit bullshit bullshit. People (including me) drive in conditions every day that would kill you in a private plane. People expect to and do drive in snow storms, freezing rain, harsh winds, thunderstorms, etc etc etc. People drive to freaking Starbucks when the State Police are going on the radio to say "Stay home unless you absolutely have to because we need the roads clear for emergency vehicles." You try that stuff even once in a flying machine, and you probably will die. Maybe the first time you'll get lucky, but on the second or third, you'll die. Not "stuck in a snow bank waiting for AAA" - dead.

    Any problems with uncontrolled/stupid flight or equipment failure can be solved with a ballistic recovery system

    Bullshit again. Read "I Rode The Thunder" for a description of what it's like to be under a parachute in a thunderstorm. The guy was trapped in one for over an hour, got the shit beaten out of him by the hail and the wind, and major frostbite.

    Just for reference, I've had about twenty-five hours of instruction.

    Lose the arrogance and the ignorance, or quit flying before you kill somebody. I've lost a couple of friends because one of them got away with flying in clouds with ice in them the first couple of times, and didn't get away with it the last time. I also lost my Aviation Medical Examiner because he took off in fog without an instrument rating and flew into a hillside. I guess he figured his hand-held GPS with an obstruction database would show him the hills.

    A polyanna "technology will take care of it" attitude has no place in aviation. Pilots live or die on the strength of the go-no go decisions they make on the ground, and the vast majority of the non-flying public is neither equipped to make those decisions, nor do they have the patience or time to learn to make those decisions.

  • ...on the market, owned and operated by a small but substantial percentage of motorists, which, compared to a typical automobile:

    • is cheaper
    • uses less fuel
    • performs better
    • is more fun to operate
    • has more freedom to maneuver around traffic
    • takes more skill to operate
    • is less forgiving to operator inattention, maintenance and thus...
    • ...probably has a higher accident rate

    What is this futuristic transporation marvel? A motorcycle.

  • doctors to fly to emergencies

    Yeah, air scooter accidents.

    --
  • There's a great deal of concern about having people who you wouldn't trust on a bicycle flying these things - perhaps it would be required to have these things fly themselves (you punch in the address and away you go)?

    You might even make this kind of thing into a taxi service - ask for a pickup on your wireless PDA (or watch), the thing will come flying down to a sidewalk nearby, you strap yourself in & punch in the destination address, and away you go!

    There could also be a central traffic management system to keep track of all the air-taxies, plus some default behavior in case of loss of communication.

    As far as people learning to trust the things, I'd anticipate that once a decent number of people were flying around in these things with a very low percentage of accidents, then people would gradually start trusting them (just like they learned to accept cars going faster than 40mph...)

  • Earlier flying rigs (Score:3)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Sunday October 22, 2000 @09:40PM (#684588) Homepage
    A reasonably good backpack flying rig was developed in the 1960s, using one of the smallest aircraft turbines ever built. Unlike the earlier hydrogen peroxide rocket based technology, the turbine model had fuel for about half an hour of flight time. This was an Army project. The major problems were stability and control, and the fact that ankles are lousy landing gear.

    The SoloTrek stands on its own feet, not the operator's, which is a big improvement. On the other hand, the SoloTrek prototype doesn't appear to have much give in its landing gear. Controlling the rate of descent of this thing will be tough, because it's done with the throttle alone. The blades are fixed pitch. This implies a control lag that the pilot must compensate for. That's a tough piloting job.

    On the stability and control front, this thing has no automated stability augmentation, which is suprising. Helicopter and VTOL craft are far tougher to fly than ordinary aircraft; they have less intrinsic stability and more control inputs. I would have expected more smarts in this thing, to make the piloting task manageable by mere mortals. Enough marginally stable VTOL craft were tried back in the 1950s [hiller.org] that it's clear the pilot needs help. At least attitude stabilization seems indicated. A radar altimeter system to help control vertical speed at landing is probably needed, too.

    The Moller Skycar [moller.com] supposedly has stability augmentation, but those guys have been hyping their vehicles since 1968 (yes, 1968) without producing anything flyable. I have their 1974 brochure, and it was Real Soon Now back then. Their web site has had the same Real Soon Now hype for a year now.

    See the Popular Rotorcraft Association [pra.org] for ultralight gyrocopters and similar air vehicles you can buy and fly right now. Less hype, and those things fly just fine.

  • "Ad" posted at a friend's skydiving club:
    For sale: Parachute

    Used once, never opened
    Slightly soiled
    (never got the phone number).
    If these things got popular, I think you'd see a LOT of those kinds of ads -- but they wouldn't be jokes.
    `ø,,ø`ø,,ø!
  • 1) I have already seen a model of such a device that can be bought, and had, and used, relatively cheaply.

    2) I believe that they meant approximately 1 hour.

  • Personal flight will never be widespread (Score:3)

    by Kohath ( 38547 ) on Sunday October 22, 2000 @01:44PM (#684599)
    Personal flight will never be widespread. Falling to your death is just too high a risk for a normal person. And personal ground transportation is OK (not great, but good enough).

    This is how the world works. "Good enough" usually wins out.

  • Does anyone have any idea how traffic control would be handled with these things, if everyone were using them at some point in the future?
    I mean, airports use very complex control systems that CERTAINLY wouldn't be practical, but with no clearly defined streets in the sky, you couldn't exactly do red lights and stuff like we do now :)
    and yet, given how dangerous accidents would be with one of thse, there'd have to be something I think...
  • Actually, the trick is stay CLOSE to the ground. This gives you the stability without the drag. An example of such personal "aircraft" is the Airboard [airboard.net] personal hovercraft from Sydney Olympics Opening Ceremonies.

    They go upto 30 mph, and cost around $7,000 AND ARE AVAILABLE TODAY!

    The website also claims they are VERY safe. They are marketing them at first as a kind of go-cart without wheels for use at theme parks. I think that is their strategy until they can get them certified as street legal in various jurisdictions.

  • This is a horrible idea (Score:3)

    by Auckerman ( 223266 ) on Sunday October 22, 2000 @01:48PM (#684611)
    I don't know about you, but the people I know can barely drive a car, much less fly personal jet packs. I can juse see it now, "John Doe was killed today by flying into the Empire State building....making him the 345th person to die this week......"

    No thanks, I'll stick to my bicycle.

  • Assuming they can get cars to fly, there exists the possibility (no matter how small it is) that Milla Jovovich will bada boom right through the ceiling. The only thing better than that would be meeting the blue opera lady, but hey, I'm a realist...
  • It'd be GREAT -- until you actually got a reasonable number of people using it. At that point, you'd have to deal with thousands (millions?) of people trying to fly over manhattan at rush hour. Without some kind of controlled laneways, I'd expect the death rate to be FAR above ground traffic for a similar volume. Consider that the probable end result of a 'fender bender' would be a 150' fall. Then, of course, you've got to deal with the people on the ground that you fall on.

    Then you'd have to deal with the problem of landing... Not a big deal when you're going home, but can you imagine 14,000 people trying to land on top of the World Trade building at 8:30am??? It would be MAYHEM. People fighting over their place in the landing queue; running out of fuel (at 1200 feet) and landing in the middle of rush-hour (ground) traffic. -- or worse yet, going through 3 other people's rotors on the way down.

    Yep, I'd love to have one of those, but I would NOT be using it for commuting once they became popular.
    `ø,,ø`ø,,ø!

  • I disagree. I think they meant the 1 Anstrom... kind of like traveling in light years, or making the Kessel run in 12 parsecs.
  • You missed the point. He presented the arguments that were used against planes (which, as you now say, are acceptably safe) when they were first introduced. Now, people are making arguments against these personal devices. The naysayers, though, as he points out, aren't always right.

  • what would you do? (Score:3)

    by brad3378 ( 155304 ) on Sunday October 22, 2000 @01:51PM (#684621)
    >There's no doubt it will fly, if the engines are powerful enough. But one needs to ask what would a pilot do in the event of an engine failure

     scream like hell and cross your fingers!

  • Opens up new program opportunities on Fox (Score:3)

    by _N0EL ( 245472 ) on Sunday October 22, 2000 @01:52PM (#684623)
    Upcoming television shows on Fox:

    1) When Airscooters Collide
    2) When Airscooters Crash to Earth
    3) Airscooter Chases Caught on Tape


  • I think personal flight will become widespread, but not for a long time. I think just now there are some factors holding back personal flight, viz.:

    1)Expense - way more expensive than cars. But, in 50 or 100 years I would expect people to be much wealthier and personal planes much cheaper. Plus, for personal flight you really need a VTOL capable aircraft, which adds to the cost greatly.


    Cars are _much_ more expensive than bikes, but we drive them because we can't accept the inconvinience of the time delay, or minimal "trunk space", or single-person per vehicle, or physical stress, or just plain rattling of otherwise expensive clothing.

    In the future, (as others have pointed out), traffic jams will be so incredibly bad (even if we ever did go back to trains), that you'd HAVE to travel in 3 dimensions just to alleviate congestion (think of 5-layer semiconductors :). Constructing 5 layer freeways is insane, (especially when you look at the cost of maintanance). At some point, it becomes cheaper to fly in 3D - having dozens of layers, each for different directions, and different constant velocities.

    Yes it will cost more marginally (impossible to be more fuel efficient in air than on ground), but the utility of faster transit will cause people to accept it, just like we accept more expensive cars (that have power everything).


    2)Becoming qualified enough to fly one. You can't just let any fool fly an aircraft - they're dangerous! But, in the future I would expect the job to be done by computers, which negates this little awkwardness.


    I do not believe that _anyone_ should be allowed to fly in populated areas in such a device. A person could endanger not only themselves, but citizens or buildings. Even if they were trained, they could hit birds at 80MPH, which would kill them, causing them to crash into the populace. Unless you make a really powerful shell, you're not going to protect the individual, and I just don't see it as being practical.

    It _might_ be possible for computers to auto-pilot you - to have radar that detects and avoids birds. You'd still have to have a protective shell. Bugs hitting you at 80MPH can't be very safe or friendly (I don't know how bikers do it).

    I would feel more comfortable with small, light, efficient one or two seater commuters, and probably not "rocket-man" packs.


    3)Air Traffic Control. We have got enough problems as it is controlling our skys, but this would also be taken care of by computers and also improved GPS systems in the future.


    Well, the only way I could image it would be to have a "high-way-grid", where the computers (as spoken above) would keep you on your path.. You'd have to have enough deviation room to avoid birds, etc and not crash into on-comming lanes.

    It would be IMPOSSIBLE to manage air-traffic control as it currently exists with single engine jet-packs. Would it really be quiet enough for the mono-pilot to fully communicate with the tower. Not to mention what happens when you have dozens or hundreds or thousands of people on this "wireless" network. You'd essentially have to have a cell-phone grid, with people communicating with the central "computer". You'd also have to be restricted to a max altitude so that you don't interfere with normal air-traffic.

    Also, I don't like the requirement of saturating the wire-less spectrum. I would only condone computers on the pack that did all the guidance, and radar. And that computer would restrict you to the grid mentioned above. If in open fields, you could possibly operate with greater freedom (assuming that the combination of on-board radar and computer) could keep you safe.


    4)The inherent absurdity of using an aircraft to pop down to your local newsagent. But then, we probably once thought this of cars. All it takes is for personal aircraft to become an attainable status symbol and - whoosh! - they'll take off all right, no matter the absurdity. It's happened with lots of other things, right?


    I suppose if you can have bike-racks, you could have jet-pack racks. Course, being that hey're really new and fragile, I can't imagine anyone leaving a pack outside a store with just a chain wrapped around it. If we did go to commuter air-planes, parking would be a night-mare (unless maybe the wings fold).

    I don't see this happening any time soon.. And by the time the economics and congestion WOULD catch up, I think we'll have invented new technologies that make the personal craft almost seem rediculous.
    I doubt we'll ever actually invent the "matter transporter". Hell, you'd have to prove Christians wrong first (unless there really is a soul).
    I think that we might discover anti-gravity, or at least gravity canceling forces. In this case, I would assume that you'd need a big engine. This would necessitate something the size of either a train, truck or car. What I invision is regular hybrid gas/electric cars that can dock with a levitation transporter. That transporter carries you to a programmed destination across the 3D freeway. You then drive you car to the specific location while on the ground. Air transport is only really efficient at higher velocities, so it would be senceless to fly all the way up to your house or store.. You could still make use of stop-signs, stop-lights, etc at the local level (especially since you'd have to contend with pedestrians). The dangerous flight would all be computer controlled navigation of highly efficent use of space.

    A big problem I see with air-freeways is the effect of cross-winds on aerodynamics. Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you have two lanes, one on top of the other, going in opposite directions, then the bottom lane will recieve a lift boost, because air flow will be faster on the top side than the bottom. The top lane, however, will have greater air-flow on the bottom, reducing it's lift. This causes an instability.. At the very least, the two lanes will be "attracted" to each other ( much like a pair of parallel wires).

    If you had the lanes side-by side then you'd be back to an innefficient 2D plane. Even if you seperated the two lanes by great distances, you'd form a turbulance at some level.

    You'd need a "twisted pair" of lanes to cancel out the aerodynamic effect.. LAUGH!! OBVIOUSLY this require computer control.

    Oh well.. All of this is well beyond our reach.. And if it's not, then I feel sorry for my grand-children who will have to endure learning to drive in such unsafe environments.

  • Stephen Notley did a fun little cartoon on this subject a while back...

    Up! [angryflower.com]

  • "but with no clearly defined streets
    in the sky, you couldn't exactly do red lights and stuff like we do now"

    You don't need traffic lights. People flying
    in differnt directions would just fly at differnt
    alitutes.

    ex.
    North 2000'
    South 1500'
    East 1000'
    South 500'

    Of course this would not help tried to land...

  • If it works anything like a helicopter, then you can use the fan blades like a paracute to slow you down to survivable speeds.

    military pilots practice kind of thing.
  • Does this mean, We will have bigger and more bloody bugsplat's on our windscreen. Even the thought makes me shiver.
  • I hope they have one hell of a legal department and VERY deep pockets to deal with the liability issues. This thing's deceptively simple-looking, but it's basically a twin-rotor helicopter. And though they emphasize that it's neutrally stable, got redundancy out the ying-yang, etc., the fact is, if the drive train or the blades buy it, so will you: Your flying Yuppie toy will either roll inverted and drop like a rock, start some godawful eyeball-bugging yaw rate like a washing machine on spin cycle, or shake itself to pieces in midair. Not good. And even if it works perfectly, the FAA better jump all over pilot certification. This puppy seems to have NO INSTRUMENTATION apparent in the illustrations; I suppose it's a drag having to constantly pay attention to mundane things like dials. How do you know your fuel state? If you're dumb enough to get caught out in the dark or in fog, what in the hell are you supposed to do -- shut up and die gallantly? Death by hubris: I see some wealthy Malcolm Forbes-wannabee CEO or twentysomething brilliant-but-stupid software developer deciding to go out on a lark, getting a little too unwound, and clean forgetting about airport approach patterns, telephone/power lines, trees, cell-phone antenna masts (nasty hard-to-see guy wires) or migratory birds (don't laugh -- a hitting 20-lb. Canadian goose at 30 kts can do one hell of a lot of damage). We've already seen NASCAR driver Davey Allison fly his brand-new Hughes 500 into a chain-link fence because he wasn't paying attention to the surface winds; the same thing can happen with this kind of aircraft. (Fixed-wing aircraft aren't much better: They don't call the vee-tailed Beech Bonanza the "fork-tailed doctor killer" for nothing.)

  • Not very long (Score:5)

    by Michael Woodhams ( 112247 ) on Sunday October 22, 2000 @02:01PM (#684660) Journal
    How long is 1Å hours?

    1Å = 10^-10m, (or 0.1 nm), an old unit most often used in measuring wavelengths of light.

    Physicists, especially in relativity or particle physics, often use factors of c (speed of light) and sometimes G (gravitational constant) and h-bar (Plank's constant) to change the units of quantities. A common example is to say that the rest mass of an electron is 511,000 electron volts - measuring mass in units of energy. This appears to be such a case.

    We can convert length (Å) to time by dividing by the speed of light. The speed of light in Å/hr is 1.07x10^22, hence 1Å hours is 9.3x10^-23 hours.

  • Tomorrows World (UK science program)done a program last year showing a backpack helicopter from Japan with 2 counter rotating blades to keep it stable. It had a few hours flight time, could do 100 mph and they were getting ready to start production.

  • Actually, mostly I was just "being clever"... I really don't think that these things will be in widespread use by private citizens anytime soon. There might be some industrial applications (law enforcement, forestry, search and rescue, etc spring to mind).

    I think the safety concerns and traffic problems are addressable though. Consider onboard GPS units and altimeters to guide people in transit. Also consider large, lightweight parachutes augmented by mars-lander like airbag contraptions (probably the most dangerous accident will be those that occur at altitudes too low for parachutes to be effective.

    To sum up: Industrial use? Yes. Wealthy private enthusiasts? Yes. Average Joe going to work? Probably not any time soon (but I could sure have fun with one!).

    --8<--

  • I once worked in a place that was positively crawling with Boston Brahmins -- old, old money. It was an interesting experience having grown up in a poor, city neighborhood. They were very nice people, but clueless when it came to the other half and generally ignorant of the level of privilege they enjoyed. I walked into the cofee room and of them was talking about a plan to relieve congestion and noise in East Boston by using the decomissioned air force base in Concord, a very nice, wealthy and semi-rural suburb where many of these folks lived.

    "How could they think of putting something like that in Concord of all places?" she asked.

    "Since when do the folks in places like Concord think twice about putting any nasty crap they don't want to live with themselves in East Boston? And the people in Concord are doing lots more flying," I replied.

    If this guy's vision of the future comes true, I can imagine what 8:00 AM will sound like in places like Buttercup Lane and Horsebridle Path.

  • That sounds great, but my umbrella sheild might pop your pillows! Oh no! then we'de both have broken necks.

  • Just what we need... (Score:4)

    by smoondog ( 85133 ) on Sunday October 22, 2000 @02:02PM (#684672)
    This is just what we need. Dead people raining through our rooves.

    -Moondog
  • You might get a little more distance if you tried to glide this thing when it runs out of fuel. Wait!

  • Re:what would you do? (Score:3)

    by UsonianAutomatic ( 236235 ) on Sunday October 22, 2000 @02:02PM (#684674) Homepage
    Just like driving the freeways of Los Angeles, it's not myself I'd be concerned about, it's all the f@#$%ing idiots around me... I mean, if people can't drive their cars on the freeway without cutting across four lanes in 1/8 of a mile to make their exit/slowing down to 5 MPH just to rubberneck an accident/backing up on the freeway because they missed their exit, can anyone really be trusted to operate a personal aircraft, even with some sort of licensing program? I've followed the Skycar with some interest, but also with skepticism - I wouldn't trust other people to pilot their vehicles without hitting me, and for that matter I wouldn't want to be on the ground underneath the airways these craft would travel... unlike a car accident which can usually be pulled off the road without affecting anyone but the principals involved, a Skycar/jetpack accident is going to come crashing out of the sky onto somebody who's minding their own business.

  • We can't even drive CARS !!!! (Score:3)

    by gelfling ( 6534 ) on Monday October 23, 2000 @03:41AM (#684675) Homepage Journal
    Can you imagine flying through the airport that's between my house and my job? How about pushing each other out of the way to launch and land? What are the effects of cutting each other off. Air-Rage?. Do they have running lights so they don't crash into each other in rush hour? Bad weather? How do you police them? Drunk drivers? What about the prop wash from the inevitable 6-fan 6 passenger SUC (sport utility copter)?

  • Bugs hitting you at 80MPH can't be very safe or friendly (I don't know how bikers do it).

    It can be quite painful. Protective gear is very helpful but even if there is a little space of skin visible, bugs tend to get in there and smack you. It's only the biggest ones that hurt. Now birds, I've had one hit my helmut before and almost knock me off my bike. I've riden over 100,000 miles and this has only happened once. Running over cats and dogs is a larger concern, which I don't think would be a problem with a personal air craft! :)

    Believe it or not, rain hurts the most at higher speeds.

  • Well, they will have to avoid the DCA as it might be possible for the force generated by the fans to trigger the mines if they are too close from the ground.
    --
  • That's a straw man argument. You set too high a standard. What about the autopilot code that runs commercial jet liners? Millions of lives depend on it daily. Seems to work fine.

    Auto-pilot on a comercial jet can be fairly fucked up as long as it will turn off when the trained pilot or copilot grabs control to save the plane. The comercial planes also only use the auto-pilot in the relitavly safe part of the trip, the non-take-off/landing part.

    If you want to do the same on a single-person flight craft, then they have to have the same kind of training. If you want to skip that training then the auto-pilot has to be far better then current auto-pilots. It isn't complex, pick one.

    So many posters on this bord are naysayers. While you're all out there running around yelling "it can't be done" at the top of your lungs, someone's out there doing it.

    Yeah, some people are. Others are lising off real problems, ones that might spark someone else's good idea, or at least make us realise that putting our life's savings into an air-car-start-up may not be such a hot idea.

    I didn't even say "it can't be done". In fact I came right out and said NASA has pretty bug-free code in a place or too. It is expensave and slow to write. I fully intended people to gather that maybe an air-car auto-pilot could actually be pretty damm bug free, but it will take a while to write, and cost real money. That ain't never.

    Point: it doesn't have to be perfect, but it has to be close. Point: the shuttle's code is close. Please connect the dots. Did you get hard but not impossable?

    Why not focus your energy on doing something productive?

    I did. I wrote some code to visualise dependencies from a make file, shot a roll of color film (if I'm lucky it'll have three good pictures), and most of my first roll of Tmax ASA3200 black n' white film (I'm looking for a lot of visable grain), no idea if any of those shots are good. Oh, and I got back my last few rolls of film, including some three and a half OK shots of my dog jumping a fence.

    No flying though. Not today.

    Did you get to do anything productave?

  • You're right! This IS a great idea.

    All of the crappy drivers we have now will take to the air. Then when they screw up it will be for good. Within a few weeks all of the jerks we have to drive with now will be history, and both the highways and airways will be safe. Go SoloTrek!

  • Now birds, I've had one hit my helmut before and almost knock me off my bike. I've riden over 100,000 miles and this has only happened once. Running over cats and dogs is a larger concern, which I don't think would be a problem with a personal air craft! :)

    Yes but birds are just a little more common a couple of stories up than they are 6 to 7 feet off the ground. They are also bigger. You probably got hit in the helmet by a less than one pound bird. Wanna try it with a pigeon, or a hawk (common in some big cities) or a goose if you're commuting a long distance high up?

    Anyway, the personal flying device is a cute idea. if they get a working model that costs less than a car, I'm sure there will be people buying them for recreational use, and I'd invest right now in a company planning on renting them in a safe location for "extreme sports" type use. Maybe ranchers will even find them useful for arial searches and reports to people on the ground managing large flocks. But thousands of people commuting into work in their private jetpacks? Never happen, sorry. Its not that the technology has been lacking, its just an unworkable idea. (kinda like video-telephones - They've had the tech to do it for years, but it hasn't happened.)

    -Kahuna Burger

  • Not 1Å (Score:4)

    by Pentagram ( 40862 ) on Sunday October 22, 2000 @02:05PM (#684691) Homepage
    I think the 1Å is a typo - according to the hard-copy newspaper, the actual time is 1½hours.


    ---
  • You make a solid point as to the relevance of the original point, and I concede. However, a few comments about the actual content; your concerns are really quite unfounded.

    One thing to remember about 3D space as compared to 2D is that it's big. Really, really big. Most "near collisions" in planes are at such distances that it's not even easy to spot the other vehicle.

    The other thing to remember is that these things will never make it off the ground without some form of traffic control. Either this means people learn skills equivalent to what's needed for a VFR-rating pilot's license, or the whole system is computerized. In short, what you're citing is a (fairly minor) technical detail. People are smart 'nuff to find solutions to such things, and solutions will be found.
  • There are plenty of people that like to embark on such risky endeavours as base-jumping. The "Xtreme" crowd might be willing to pay top dollar to tool around with one of these things in remote areas.

    Having said that, I think you are probably right about day-to-day personal transportation. I doubt too many governments would allow the average human to cruise around downtown in one of these things.

  • When I Get One (Score:3)

    by empesey ( 207806 ) on Sunday October 22, 2000 @02:09PM (#684700) Homepage
    I'll wait until Ron Popeil comes on TV to pitch these. I mean, getting these will be REALLY cool, but it'll be even cooler, if it comes with kitchen utensils, beef jerky maker and fishing rod.

    Babes will be knocking down my door.

  • Re:Typo (Score:3)

    by LionMan ( 18384 ) <leo.stein@NosPAm.gmail.com> on Sunday October 22, 2000 @02:16PM (#684708) Homepage Journal
    Yes, that is the symbol for an angstrom, however, I believe that they meant one Ampere-hour, which means it will run at one amp for one hour for that amount of fuel. It's the rate of fuel usage and the power derived from that amount of fuel.
  • Personal flight will never be widespread. Falling to your death is just too high a risk for a normal person. And personal ground transportation is OK (not great, but good enough).

    I think personal flight will become widespread, but not for a long time. I think just now there are some factors holding back personal flight, viz.:

    1)Expense - way more expensive than cars. But, in 50 or 100 years I would expect people to be much wealthier and personal planes much cheaper. Plus, for personal flight you really need a VTOL capable aircraft, which adds to the cost greatly.

    2)Becoming qualified enough to fly one. You can't just let any fool fly an aircraft - they're dangerous! But, in the future I would expect the job to be done by computers, which negates this little awkwardness.

    3)Air Traffic Control. We have got enough problems as it is controlling our skys, but this would also be taken care of by computers and also improved GPS systems in the future.

    4)The inherent absurdity of using an aircraft to pop down to your local newsagent. But then, we probably once thought this of cars. All it takes is for personal aircraft to become an attainable status symbol and - whoosh! - they'll take off all right, no matter the absurdity. It's happened with lots of other things, right?

    I expect that the age of the plane will eventually arrive, allright. Until they are replaced by matter transporters.

  • Several people have expressed concern about other drivers and that would worry me, too. A lot of the people on the road really shouldn't be.

    In the case of a flying car, that problem SHOULD be fairly easy to avoid; modify FAA regs slightly to allow vertical take offs and landings from places other than airports and still require a pilot's license to operate a flying vehicle. Let the stringent requirements of getting and maintaining a pilot's license weed out the people who will be dangerous in the air.

    Some people might complain that this attitude is elitist. I'd like to volunteer those people to fly in a 747 pilotted by a person with just a driver's license.

  • /. posts stories like this once every couple of months, and it's always one of the same five scam artists with a prototype that has flown--once--a couple hundred feet.

    90-minute flying time on a tank of fuel? Somebody please wake me up when someone flies one of these for ten minutes straight.
  • The highways have long been a butcher shop, and this hasn't resulted in fewer people using cars, highways, etc. Obviously you would have to have more stringent requirements for licensing, somewhere between the current requirements for a car license (do you have a pulse?) and a plane license (sort of difficult).

  • Meet George Jetson... (Score:5)

    by BadDoggie ( 145310 ) on Sunday October 22, 2000 @02:31PM (#684733) Homepage Journal
    There's been talk about of personal flying transportation since the end of WWII, and still no single idea has been even remotely successful. Not the Jetpak [the-strange.com], not the convertible car-slash-airplane [georgeglazer.com], none of them. Why?

    You ever had a single flying lesson? Screw MS Flight Sim (which is what gave me the flying bug to begin with), but an actual hour or so behind the yoke or stick of a real airplane. Probably a Cessna 152 or 172.

    You generally don't get into the left seat until after you've had a bit of ground instruction, save for "discovery flights". One of the biggest things pilots learn is weather and a bit about how air works. Yes, air. A great big, honking, bloody ocean of fluid dynamics. The instant you are airborne, physics as you are used to it changes, and drastically.

    The FAA and most other civil aviation authorities require a minimum of 40 flight hours to get a basic pilot's license, allowing you to fly certain basic types of low-power, single-engine aircraft in very nice weather. And unless you live in a few places in Florida, Texas and Nevada, you don't get a whole lot of continual "nice" weather.

    Flying is easy, but it's hard. It's complex as hell, conditions can change instantaneously and if you screw up, you make the news, posthumously. The largest block of deaths in General Aviation are pilots with less than 150 hours of experience, and you have at least 45 of those behind you before you even get your ticket to go out on your own, unsupervised.

    Nobody with a pilot's license believes any of these "everyone will be flying a personal craft in the next 10 years" stories. We never have and we never will, because we learned, the same way that Linux users learn not to do anything as root except locally, that experience is a mutha.

    And don't even bother talking about the idea of automatic, computer-controlled flyways and such nonsense. You may love your OS, but you would not actually risk your life on it. It only takes a drop of about 20 to 30 feet to kill you.

    Spare me, please.

    BadDoggie, PP-ASEL/AMEL (Aircraft, Single-Engine Land, Multi-Engine Land)

    Once you have flown, you will walk the Earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, there you long to return." -- DaVinci

  • Their website is at http://www.solotrek.com/ [solotrek.com].

    From their site:

    SoloTrek XFV is a brand new kind of flying machine that you step on, strap on, and fly. This ultra-compact aircraft lets you takeoff vertically, dash to your destination, then land literally anywhere. Using ordinary 87-octane gasoline, SoloTrek can hover for up to 3 hours, reach speeds of up to 70 knots, and traverse distances of up to 150 nautical miles. SoloTrek has been designed to be safe, easy to fly, and easy to maintain.
    No notes on airbags, Bewulf clusterability, onboard mp3 players or OnStar buttons (in case of problem press & scream - quickly!)
  • You all recall how the Pathfinder landed on Mars, it inflated giant airbags aroung itself and just plummeted to the ground from a few hundred feet altitude.

    It seems to me that this would be the only possible recovery from this air-scooter; as you would often not be high enough for a parachute to work; and the typical helicopter autorotation would clearly not work.

    But, deflated airbags don't weigh much or take up much space, and can be deployed instantly. If you could get the terminal velocity down to 80fps or so with big enough airbags (no problem) then there'd have to be about 5ft of airbag between your bod and the ground to have a pretty survivable crash-landing.

    Without that; these will not be practical. Having no recourse for engine failure absolutely not an option -- piston engines are *way* too unreliable for this.

    thad

  • Re:Personal flight will never be widespread (Score:5)

    by rongen ( 103161 ) on Sunday October 22, 2000 @03:57PM (#684755) Homepage
    Personal flight will never be widespread. Falling to your death is just too high a risk for a normal person. And personal ground transportation is OK (not great, but good enough).

    Actually there is little reason to believe anyone would want to fly by any means when a perfectly good steamer line goes between London and New York on a weekly basis. With brandy and whist to pass the time, one scarcely minds a few days travel, I dare say.

    Only a madman would allow himself to be transported in a flying machine. The risks are outrageous. Even if one was to survive such a flight the damage to one's reputation (being thought of as a reckless anarchist) would certainly not be worth the time saved or the risk.

    --8<--

  • "/. posts stories like this once every couple of months, and it's always one of the same five scam artists with a prototype that has flown--once--a couple hundred feet. "

    umm you mean like these guys? [hfmgv.org]

    (read the last paragraph)
  • Nobody with a pilot's license believes any of these "everyone will be flying a personal craft in the next 10 years" stories. We never have and we never will...

    Yeah. I guess those guys at Nasa's Ames research center don't know what they're talking about. I'll bet none of them even has a pilot's license, especially that former Navy fighter pilot who developed the thing.

    Wait a sec...
  • And don't even bother talking about the idea of automatic, computer-controlled flyways and such nonsense. You may love your OS, but you would not actually risk your life on it. It only takes a drop of about 20 to 30 feet to kill you.

    I rely on somebody's programming every time I hop in a commercial airliner. I haven't yet depended on medical electronics not to kill me, but that will probably happen somewhere in the future too. It's difficult, slow, and costly, but you can build software for safety-critical systems.

  • Yes, these things are wildly dangerous. Our highways, on the other hand, are fine....
  • This answer jives with the number in the article. The maximum SPEED is 80 mph. The maximum DISTANCE is 150 miles. Assuming maximum distance could be reached at maximum speed (which is, of course, untrue), then the thing can fly for 1 hour, 52 minutes. Of course, if you're optimizing for distance, the time you spend aloft is probably going to be much longer.

    So, you can probably make a safe assumption that you'll get anywhere from 1.5-3.0 hours flying time on a tank of gas, not taking into account things like crashes, engine failures, bathroom breaks (!), etc.
  • You know, I have thought this same thing ever since I got my PPL in 1983. All the talk of personal air-cars and such, with the level of driving skill on the roads, extrapolating said level to the airways would result in carnage on a unbelievable scale. Aviating requires at least a basic knowledge of physics and meteorology, as well as ability to think in three dimensions plus time. Not to sound elitist or anything, but not everyone has those skills. Would I trust some members of my immediate family to fly? No.
  • I've always liked the idea of personal flying machines, but the fact is it's just not as good an idea as it sounds.

    We take a lot of simplicity for granted when on the ground. You get a whole lot of stability for free; no worrying about pitch and roll - and yaw is far more precise. You get very efficient braking and holding for free too. No, air vehicles will be too difficult to control and too expensive to operate for a _very_ long time.

  • Truth be told, nearly everything you say applies just as well to cars as it does to planes. Conditions are complex. The smallest screwup results in your delivery to your parents in a box. Things can change in an instant (ever drive in the winter? rain?). And when you're flying an airplane, the frequency at which another airplane comes whizzing by in the opposite direction only a couple of feet away is (hopefully) very low.

    Also, this thing wouldn't be able to stall. Doesn't work that way. Any problems with uncontrolled/stupid flight or equipment failure can be solved with a ballistic recovery system.

    Just for reference, I've had about twenty-five hours of instruction.

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