The Speculist

They're almost here: http://www.moller.com/

Of course, if they become commonplace carnage will ensue.

You may want to tell Patrick "Live Wire" Landry that there won't be flying cars. He's based his "longshot" campaign for governor of Louisiana on the "aeromobile."

2 main issues:
1) Traffic control: this is not so much in the way of signs and signals, but, in coordinating some sort of control over the individual egos. There are some folks who are so impulsive you can`t do anything with them. Imagine, for instance, You`re on the road stopped at a light that just won`t change fast enough so the dude behind having lost all patience decides to lift and as he`s just about over your head (you ain`t no saint either) you decide to lift off and !!!WHAMMM!!!. there you go you and him and everyone else around you are splattered.
2) stalled flying vehicles may have no fail safe controllable landing especially in congested areas

For a fictional view of the future air car watch "the fifth element" with Bruce Willis. That`s one scary ride. Not bad scifi I enjoyed it.

"They're almost here: http://www.moller.com/"

I remember first reading about Moller's flying car being "just around the corner" back in the 80's. Every couple years he manages to get a cover article on a major magazine, and then starts asking for investors. Strangely, despite decades of work and all those investor funds, he has never managed to get an un-retouched photo of any vehicle flying above ground-effect...

My boss wants a flying car almost as bad as Glenn Reynolds. She showed me some literature she ordered from Moller back in 1985. Included was an investment packet which she didn't utilize. Their design has evolved some, but some of the pictures on the website are still the same as they had in their brochure 13 years ago.

Everyone reading this would hate a world with "flying cars". You all have a pretty good idea of the accident rate on our roads as it stands, now just imagine if the FAA granted learners' permits to 15 1/2 year old kids, or renewed the licenses of 90 year olds.

Maybe 1/10th of the people who currently hold drivers' licenses have the physical fitness, and can learn all of the skills and knowledge required, to be aviators. The truth is, most of us are not good enough, or smart enough.

Software crashes, and stuff happens to motherboards, and what is needed then is an honest-to-god pilot, not someone who thinks a flying car would be really cool.

Flying Cars will happen, but as a subset of the general aviation community, and definitely not for most of us.

Have a nice day.

There's honestly nothing a flying car could do that a plane or helicopter couldn't do, and probably more cheaply. In fact, the civilian model airplanes and helicopters available today are just cheap and accessible as it would be possible for flying cars to be; more so, probably. We just need an air traffic control system that could handle a vehicle population several orders of magnitude greater than what they handle now, and you'd pretty much have your flying car civilization.

A guy at my local airport owns an Aerocar 1 built in the 1950s by Molt Taylor. It was a certified for production flying car with a body only a mother could love. He's working on his own flying car design based on a Lotus Elise. You can read about it at http://www.aerocar.com/ .

All vehicles are a matter of compromise. Hybrid vehicles like flying cars involve even more compromise. They have to comply with Federal Air Regulations (FARs) for aircraft and with other bureaucratic regulations for ground cars. Back in the 1970s, Molt Taylor was said to be near production on his much nicer looking Aerocar 3 with one of the Big 3 automakers. According to what I've read, the bureaucrats then went on a feeding frenzy. It was a car, so it had to meet the same emissions and safety requirements of all other cars. All of that added weight (the enemy of all things aeronautical) and cost to the vehicle. At the same time, it was an airplane, so it had to meet all of the FAR requirements. When the bureaucrats were finished, it was said that the driver/pilot needed about 7 licenses to operate the thing. The automaker backed out of the deal. I met Molt at Oshkosh in the 1970s. Needless to say, he didn't have many kind words for burearcrats.

There are only a few hundred thousand active pilots in the US. Learning to fly really isn't all that difficult but it takes a commitment of time and money. New avionics technology like NASA's "Highway in the Sky" project can make flying a lot safer and easier, but the technology to implement it is still very expensive. Certifying even a simple airplane for production costs many millions of dollars, and the more complicated the vehicle, the more it costs to certify. Certifying a flying car for production would probably cost upwards of $100 million.

The reasons are more technical than policy-oriented or social. The three things needed for a safe flying car are fail-safe computer power for an automatic pilot, a powerful lightweight engine, and a lightweight reliable power source. We currently have two of the three: solid computer software and rotary engines -- which have a much better weight/horsepower ratio than normal compustion engines. What's missing is lightweight power. Any gasoline or other liquid fuel is just too heavy and volatile to make aircars practical. We'll have to wait until either battery power becomes more mature or until closed-system fuel cells become commerically viable. At that point, some individual or institution will put the pieces together and produce a prototype that is pre-programable and uses GPS navigation to autopilot people to distant locations. My guess is another 10 or 15 years; not that far distant, actually.

The moller aircar http://www.moller.com as stated above is about ready for certification and a new license is being made available by the FAA and CAA. New ATC regs are also being formulated. The largest orders so far.... US Military.

Until we conquer gravity the biggest problem with a flying car is the same one that effects my piloting a small plane. Weather! Fog, storms, ice, visability, and other weather related problems that are a nuisance for auto travelers, will kill those in a plane.

Pilots have a saying. "Time to spare, go by air." It's wonderful when everything works well and the weather cooperates. But the consequences of something going wrong, (death), results in cancelled trips for reasons that would not stop auto travel.

"Flying" cars just aren't going to happen. Although I'm still hoping for "anti-gravity" travel.

Mike James:
The FAA doesn't give out "learners permits" per se, however the lower age limit for getting a pilots license is 16 years. Try not to cringe the next time a Cessna flys by...

The Moller Aircar is nowhere NEAR certification, and probably never will be. It hasn't even flown. It is fully of untested hardware, runs off of a gaggle of uncertified wankel engines turning uncertified ducted fans. It's fans are in the perfect position to suck in FOD off the ground. Because it relies on powered lift, the failure of any fan module means disaster.

The day that Moller flys a prototype for a new hundred hours, including transition from hover to full forward flight, and a distance of hundreds of miles, THEN I'd say that if he could raise a hundred million or so he might be ten years away from certification. I don't expect to see that day.

Moller's performance numbers are way, way off. His claimed range, fuel economy, and fuel capacity estimates do not even come close to adding up.

Put it in perspective: When Porsche decided to certify a new aircraft engine, it was not much more than a variation of standard aircraft engines with some new control technology. It took YEARS and millions of dollars to get that engine certified, and then it failed in the marketplace. Moller expects to certify an airframe, new avionics, new control systems, new engines, all put into a radical new configuration. Good luck.

There's another reason why we'll never see flying cars in widespread use - congestion. It sounds counterintuitive to most that you can pack far, far fewer airplanes into the sky than you can cars onto the ground below. And all the computerized traffic control in the world won't fix that. Aircraft are buffeting by winds and turbulence, which moves them hundreds of feet in each direction. They cannot stop on a dime like a car can. Formation flying is very dangerous, tricky business. In the real world, you need to maintain hundreds of feet of separation between aircraft. So how do you get everyone downtown? An office building might have 1,000 cars parked below it, and they all arrived within an hour or two of each other. That's much, much denser than the kind of traffic flow that Oshkosh Wisconsin gets once a year, making it the busiest airport in the world. And there are usually accidents each year, too.

Then there's weather - are you going to strand thousands of people at work every time a thunderstorm moves over a city? You sure aren't going to let the fly, unless you like raining metal.

Flying cars are a neat idea that, when you consider all of the details, become horribly impractical. And it has nothing to do with technology.

The Skycar only needs a 30’ dia. landing pad - something easily incorperated onto a flat roof! Landing on a flat roof would reflect noise up (especially if enclosed on the sides), it would be safer than trying to land on ground level, and the flat roof can be used for many other things in the mean time: for a seeting area instead of a side porch which takes up still more land. As an activity area like a tennis court across the top of say a four unit apartment building, or it can be used to plant Juniper-like shrubs or gardens.

It is necessary to start planing for flying cars (…or the Williams International Wasp II flying pods (which did fly in the early 80’s) or ‘Airbikes’) since homes lasts about 100 years or so! Flying cars can be made safe by using wafer thin “Smart Skin” radar patches on their skin: an ‘electronically’ stired radar.

Without the fear of always having to relocate so that we could always be right where our jobs were, couples could select or build a home that was more to their liking and needs, rather than a rubber-stamped, three-bedroom, beige-carpeted home that could be sold on the open market more quickly. If, for some reason, you wanted a five car garage, purple colored carpeting, or more functional built-in furnishings, you would not have to worry so much about getting your investment back, when it was time to sell. Committing to a place to live in this way has very profound implications on how much can ultimately be achieved with a home design, and, thus, out of life!

Problem with flying cars could include having a 100 million people showing up at the beach on the first nice day of summer…. Taxi services and a local VTOL transit hub are much more likely! We need to start building with them in mind now; otherwise, society will indeed become too ‘rooted’ to change later.

> . It sounds counterintuitive to most that you can pack far, far fewer airplanes into the sky than you can cars onto the ground below.

Flying cars travel so fast that people would get to their destinations in 1/10 the time. Thus, ever if there were a lot of owners using them, the sky would not be as full as those suffering in trafic...

That is a way cool water car. The flat bottom would also make it a better 4 X 4 as it would slide over stuff rather than getting hung up!

Lovely comments thus far, though most of them are of the 'if man was meant to fly, he'd have wings' variety. The technical assertions made are by and large amenable to solutions already in widespread use. The main reason why flying cars aren't a current part of our world is bureaucratic, as Mr. Taylor will readily tell you! Small, reliable fuel efficient engines do exist- they're called jets, and Williams sells small ones just about right for the job today- only they sell them to those who build cruise missiles. Fly by wire has been operational and reliable for 30 years- look at the F-16. Traffic control is easily amenable to a solution that recognizes both the challenges and opportunities the 3 dimentional nature of the situation poses. Bottom line? As usual, the good ol' US of A is bureacratizing its way into the back field of this emerging industry- just like it did with videotape and a long list of other emerging technologies. Flying cars are coming, and sooner than anyone here thinks. Three years before the Internet was in everyone's homes- and faces- no one thought it was going to make an impact save those few who saw the potential and invested in it. Mr. Moller may or may not be a good place for those investment dollars, but the industry is ready for a similar explosion- the companies at the forefront just won't be American ones.

There have been several viable attempts made to make a flyable automobile or a roadable aircraft. The main problem is that it takes oodles of money to develop and market such a machine. The number of vehicles necessary to be sold in order to recoup the engineering and certification expense seem to be in excess of what the designers feel can be sold.

I have a pilot's certificate and would love one at a price I could afford.

Flying cars will come, but only as "airborne mclarens"-they will simply be for rich, well-trained enthusdiasts like movie stars. and the flying car will take off from the third world because third world countries dont have any real regulations. and if they have regulations, you can bribe the governments into certifiying your products. too bad the only customers will be oil sheiks...

Mr Reynolds ,Don't lose hope, I am the connection of data you have been looking for. I have been an antigravity researcher for the last 14 years and I have the knowledge you need to build that dream car you desire. You DO NEED need someone that thinks like a car or plane designer but someone that thinks like a spaceship designer. If the man cannot explain all four unifying principles of gravity AND DEMONSTRATE them then that man is NOT for you Unless all you want is a goony-looking thing with wings and propelers. What I can design for you is a vehicle that needs no wings, no fuel ( it recycles the "fuel"! ) and only one two-section moving part ( mostly solid state! ) with the type of esthetics that you see only in sci-fi movies. Sounds Interesting ?? Yes I do Have a very High IQ but it will NOT come cheap. A. Flores

i think that eventually there will be a flying car but not anytime soon. Even though Moller's new car has had a successful testing i think it will take a long time for it to get off the ground the selling of cars that is. But they are a lot closer that ten years ago so the time is coming soon.

It is not just about cost. The concept of the Aerocar addresses many problems inherent in small GA aircraft. Primarily, what do you do when you get to the remote airport and need to drive into town, and what do you do when the weather turns bad enroute or before you are scheduled to return home. Most small GA aircraft are just not designed for bad weather.

The original aerocar could probably have been maintained at a cost not much more than a small plane. The Moller version, with 3 engines would cost a fortune to build and as much to maintain. Imagine the cost of your annual inspection or engine teardown (times 3).

I would LOVE to own an Aerocar but would probably prefer Taylor's. For now I will "settle" for my Amphicar.

Mollers Skycar will fly! Most concerns that have been voiced here have been covered by Mollers Team. I expect that in 5 years we will see the first production models rolling off the line. Yes, the military will be among the first users along with the wealthy, but they are on the near horizon. VTOL makes more since that flying cars. Although I did see plans for a flying car that had telescoping wings and fold up propeller that could transform from plane to car and car to plane without leaving the cockpit. You can bet I have your money on Moller, stock ownership is a wild ride, but I think long term will be fantastic.