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Silicon Valley CEO Says Skip The Bay Bridge, Consider Taking A Flying Motorcycle
CBS - SF ^ | September 19, 2017 6:31 PM | By Devin Fehely

Posted on 09/20/2017 12:05:18 PM PDT by Red Badger

It may look like something straight out of Star Wars, but flying motorcycles are almost here.

They could be ready to hit the sky in just a few short years.

“Three years from now flying cars will be very hot,” said Kitty Hawk CEO Sebastian Thrun.

It seems like the stuff of science fiction, but Thrun — engineer, entrepreneur and one-time driving force behind Google’s autonomous car program — says flying vehicles are just a few years, not decades away.

Thrun said, “We should not be getting stuck in the Lincoln Tunnel or the Bay Bridge anymore. You should just be able to go on your flying motorcycle and go wherever you want to go. That is actually becoming reality now.”

Thrun made that cheadline-grabbing claim during his talk on Day 2 of the Tech Crunch conference in San Francisco.

“We actually believe we’ll have our first product ready in February of next year. And it’s more of like a flying motorcycle than a flying car,” Thrun said.

It looks kind of like an airborne jet ski.

A very rough prototype was unveiled in April.

Thrun says the technology could someday revolutionize transportation as the innovations behind self-driving cars and drones merge.

“It’s an electric aircraft,” Thrun said. “And everything that’s hard about flying is done by the computer — all the wind computation stuff. And I get a joy stick interface that’s just like a video game. And it’s just as much fun as a video game, but it’s real.”

If two or three years seems likely an overly optimistic estimate about when flying vehicles might be on the market, Thrun says much like self-driving cars, technology will outpace regulations, leaving the rule makers struggling to catch up.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Technical; US: California
KEYWORDS: bike; harley; motorcucle
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To: Red Badger
Same cocaine fantasy. Never happen. They will be death traps for the "fliers" and anyone else within range. Please stop with this crap.

pabianice

ATP, CFI, NFO (ret.)

21 posted on 09/20/2017 1:12:26 PM PDT by pabianice (LINE)
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To: Rinnwald

YEAH! That’s the ticket.


22 posted on 09/20/2017 1:13:49 PM PDT by infool7 ((NEW! and improved order) Pray, Think, Pray, Act, Pray Pray Pray...)
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To: pabianice

It’s only a matter of time.....................


23 posted on 09/20/2017 1:14:58 PM PDT by Red Badger (Road Rage lasts 5 minutes. Road Rash lasts 5 months!.....................)
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To: All

I’m willing to be a beta tester, if they will be loaning them out free.


24 posted on 09/20/2017 1:43:43 PM PDT by LegendHasIt
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To: Red Badger

As usual The Onion broke it first!

http://www.theonion.com/video/mean-automakers-dash-nations-hope-for-flying-cars-14182


25 posted on 09/20/2017 1:55:07 PM PDT by Seruzawa (TANSTAAFL!)
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To: John Milner

blade tip speed would be super-sonic, it would destroy itself in no time at all going that fast.


26 posted on 09/20/2017 2:37:11 PM PDT by Jeff Vader
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To: Red Badger

If the naysayers filling this thread had their way we’d still be carting around on horse and buggy


27 posted on 09/20/2017 3:25:54 PM PDT by Jarhead9297
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To: Jarhead9297

It is just scaling up a quad copter and putting a person on top. Not that hard really.


28 posted on 09/20/2017 4:20:45 PM PDT by TalonDJ
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29 posted on 09/21/2017 7:17:47 AM PDT by martin_fierro (< |:)~)
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To: martin_fierro

Ruining a perfectly good KTM motorcycle just to get lolz seems a bit much.


30 posted on 09/21/2017 7:43:28 AM PDT by Seruzawa (TANSTAAFL!)
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To: Red Badger

we dont need idiot drivers flying overhead ..


31 posted on 09/21/2017 7:45:01 AM PDT by ßuddaßudd (>> M A G A << "What the hell kind of country is this if I can only hate a man if he's white?")
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To: Red Badger
They are forgetting government. If automobiles were a new invention, we proles would never be allowed to touch one - let alone drive it. You think California's junta of paranoid Socialists are going to let white conservatives just take these potential politician-killing suicide devices up in the air? You'll need three personal interviews with Jerry Brown just to look at one. :)
32 posted on 09/21/2017 7:51:29 AM PDT by Mr. Jeeves ([CTRL]-[GALT]-[DELETE])
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To: wally_bert

Robotech was underrated!


33 posted on 09/21/2017 8:01:35 AM PDT by T-Bone Texan (Trump's election does not release you from your prepping responsibilites!)
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To: T-Bone Texan

Very much.

I have the boxed CD set of music too.

My favorite was series three.

The Cyclone motorcycle was my favorite mecha.


34 posted on 09/21/2017 8:09:22 AM PDT by wally_bert (I didn't get where I am today by selling ice cream tasting of bookends, pumice stone & West Germany)
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To: Jeff Vader
blade tip speed would be super-sonic,

My mower blade isn't even close to supersonic but it's fast enough that my neighbors say it's too damn loud and it rattles too....

35 posted on 09/21/2017 9:33:02 AM PDT by Hot Tabasco
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To: Mr. Jeeves
They are forgetting government. If automobiles were a new invention, we proles would never be allowed to touch one - let alone drive it. You think California's junta of paranoid Socialists are going to let white conservatives just take these potential politician-killing suicide devices up in the air? You'll need three personal interviews with Jerry Brown just to look at one. :)

Ding! Ding! We have a winner on the thread. This is exactly true in every respect.

36 posted on 09/21/2017 10:55:08 AM PDT by zeugma (I live in the present due to the constraints of the Space-Time Continuum. —Hank Green)
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