Flying Car Design Wins

The Associated Press ^ | February 16, 2006 | AP

[Westlander]

Wonderful. Idiots can't drive as it is and now they want a ton and a half flying over your head.

[Swordmaker]

Can it be called an "invention" when Popular Science and Popular Mechanics featured such cars on their covers forty years ago?

[billybudd]

The idea is to have a computer drive a car. And "computers crash all the time!" jokes notwithstanding, a computer can do a flying job easily - much more so than land driving. When we need computers to be failsafe, they are. Just look at the Mars Rovers, operating semi-autonomously, millions of miles away.

[ansel12]

I want a flying Harley.

[SteveMcKing]

The ONLY alleviation of traffic that works is to eliminate destinations as desired places to visit.

This will undoubtably make things worse.

[ansel12]

They were being used 50 years ago.

[billybudd]

I heard it took that guy Moller about a million bucks (probably a lot more) to make his prototype of a flying car, which does not even have enough control to fly untethered. What is this guy supposed to do with $30,000? That barely buys a good land car.

[Liberty Valance]

I remember an old news reel of the same thing in the forties or fifties.
Nothin' new under the sun.

[Liberty Valance]

http://www.retrofuture.com/flyingcar.html

[DakotaRed]

They were not only featured in magazines, they were actually built and available to the public.

[umgud]

a car-plane hybrid about the size of a Cadillac Escalade.

Great, flying SUV's.

[Echo Talon]

I think they need make a contest for these scientist to make something hover/levitate. Kind of like the skate board in the movie back to the future. even if a cord had to be hooked to the machine or box that they got to hover it would be a start.

[Dallas59]

It's 2006 and no FLYING CARS!!!

[Richard Kimball]

When I was in FD, about 20 years ago hovercraft were the "next thing." Austin got one for water rescue. It ended up with the nickname "Joke 1". It was difficult to control, and sounded like three riding mowers without mufflers running over a chain link fence.

[Gordongekko909]

This reminds me: it's 2006 already. Where the hell is my flying car?

[Gordongekko909]

We'll also need to invent a whole new subset of Ted Kennedy jokes.

[philetus]

Love That Bob

[Zarro]

GREAT article from the AP. So much information; I can hardly process it all...

(not)

[Echo Talon]

What I'm talking about isn't a hovercraft like we have today with air pushing the weight of the vehicle in the air, just seems their should be another way to do it.

[Richard Kimball]

Didn't they already invent one of these and call it an airplane? I suppose it would be an interesting problem to work on as a design or engineering project, but all of the technology already exists. There's a guy living out in the country close to here that builds his own ultra lights and flies them. Rigging a transfer case to drive the wheels seems like something that would take some of my old high school buddies about four cases of beer and a weekend to get taken care of.