Could There Be Anything More Cool Than a Flying Car?
Claire Berlinski, Ed. ·
April 4, 2012 at 3:28pm
Major Milestone takes "Flying Car" Closer to First Delivery
New York, NY & Woburn, MA – (April 2, 2012): The Transition® Street-Legal Airplane is now a significant step closer to being a commercial reality. The production prototype of the Transition® Street-Legal Airplane completed its successful first flight at Plattsburgh International Airport in Plattsburgh, NY on March 23, 2012 ... Developed by Terrafugia, Inc., the Transition® is a two seat personal aircraft capable of driving on roads and highways, parking in a single car garage, and flying with unleaded automotive fuel.
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Jun '10
Re: Could There Be Anything More Cool Than a Flying Car?
Palaeologus
Casey Taylor
You are mistaken. The one thing cooler than a flying car?
A plane you can drive, of course. Way cooler. · 1 minute ago
Quit messing with my head Casey.
You and I both know that will never happen. · 4 minutes ago
Dreamers gotta dream, bro.
Jul '10
Re: Could There Be Anything More Cool Than a Flying Car?
Casey Taylor
Palaeologus
Casey Taylor
You are mistaken. The one thing cooler than a flying car?
A plane you can drive, of course. Way cooler. · 1 minute ago
Quit messing with my head Casey.
You and I both know that will never happen. · 4 minutes ago
Dreamers gotta dream, bro. · 21 minutes ago
You ideologues, you're all the same.
I mean really, a drivable plane will sell like a flying car? Look at the focus groups! The polls! The television series!
The Flying Nun crushes Highway to Heaven. It's indisputable.
Call me an establishment hack if you like, but at some point you will have to be practical about this stuff...
Aug '10
Re: Could There Be Anything More Cool Than a Flying Car?
Looks like on the road it has a couple of nasty blind spots behind the folded wings.
This does, however, solve one problem. It's easy enough to drive your car to the airport, and then fly away in your plane, but how do you get around your destination after you land? Rent another car?
Aug '10
Re: Could There Be Anything More Cool Than a Flying Car?
Flying cars are nothing new - The Taylor Aerocar even had an FAA type certificate, meaning anyone could buy and fly one as a regular airplane. In the 1960's. A few were sold, but in the end the design failed - because it was completely impractical.
The sad truth is that there will never be skies filled with car/airplane hybrids. Aviation capacity just doesn't scale like ground transportation, because airplanes have to maintain very large separations for safety. Cars on the ground can be spaced just a few feet apart, because they're stuck like glue to a hard surface and are therefore able to be placed precisely relative to each other.
Airplanes, on the other hand, are tossed about like corks in the roiling airmass they are flying through. They need thousands of feet of airspace around them to prevent them from banging into each other.
A big city has hundreds of thousands or millions of vehicle movements per day. The sky above it could only hold a tiny fraction of that capacity. So flying cars will never come to the masses except for sport flying, and there are already plenty of options for that.
May '10
Re: Could There Be Anything More Cool Than a Flying Car?
Oh, good. We don't have enough half-wits on our roadways. Now we can have them flying over head, too. Maybe dropping in for dinner when you least expect them.
Dec '10
Re: Could There Be Anything More Cool Than a Flying Car?
You guys have this all wrong. The real solution is one of those George Jetson car thingies. That whole anti-gravity thing is very cool and you can park it on the balcony of any high rise. Who needs streets?
Aug '10
Re: Could There Be Anything More Cool Than a Flying Car?
Next up: the Google plane.
Jun '10
Re: Could There Be Anything More Cool Than a Flying Car?
Palaeologus
Casey Taylor
Palaeologus
Casey Taylor
You are mistaken. The one thing cooler than a flying car?
A plane you can drive, of course. Way cooler. · 1 minute ago
Quit messing with my head Casey.
You and I both know that will never happen. · 4 minutes ago
Dreamers gotta dream, bro. · 21 minutes ago
You ideologues, you're all the same.
I mean really, a drivable plane will sell like a flying car? Look at the focus groups! The polls! The television series!
The Flying Nun crushes Highway to Heaven. It's indisputable.
Call me an establishment hack if you like, but at some point you will have to be practical about this stuff... · 24 hours ago
I am sooooo tired of all you establishment-types trying to stuff that corporate swill down our little duck gullets so you can have the foie gras of our hard-won liberty to serve as canapes at your Beltway cocktail parties. Well, no sir! Not anymore! I've tuned in, and I'm dropping out; I give you.... the Rinspeed sQuba.
Ron Paul 2016.