I guess some personal aircraft don't need aiports, like farmers crop dust and just takeoff/land in their fields. They do need pilots licenses though. In order for 'air cars' to become a viable transportation vehicle of the future, the pilots license thing will need to be done away with and they'll need to be takeoff and land anywhere. Or at least there will need to be some type of hybrid car/pilot license. It'll take a long time for regulations to adjust to this new transportation but I'd love to have one and leave roads behind :)
If someone rear ends my car, my car is totalled and I have to deal with that.
If someone rear ends my car while we're flying, we plummet to the ground and die.
If a flying car is as easy to get a license for as a current car, there would be no more reason to hijack a jumbo jet for terrorism.
Run out of fuel while in the air? Can't push it to a gas station, you just fall to your death and probably injure others in the process.
Who will do the maintenance and mechanical checks on these? Airplanes have significant dedicated staff to service them. People with today's cars put off oil changes and let dangerous repairs go undone until the breaking point.
I have no hope for this being "viable" at all in my lifetime. It would require AI control instead of manual piloting, and massive amounts of reduntant safety measures.
There is no way this can become real anytime soon. I doubt it'll become reality this century. From Politics to Safety there are far too many and very massive reasons this won't happen.
If someone rear ends my car, my car is totalled and I have to deal with that.
If someone rear ends my car while we're flying, we plummet to the ground and die.
If a flying car is as easy to get a license for as a current car, there would be no more reason to hijack a jumbo jet for terrorism.
Run out of fuel while in the air? Can't push it to a gas station, you just fall to your death and probably injure others in the process.
Who will do the maintenance and mechanical checks on these? Airplanes have significant dedicated staff to service them. People with today's cars put off oil changes and let dangerous repairs go undone until the breaking point.
I have no hope for this being "viable" at all in my lifetime. It would require AI control instead of manual piloting, and massive amounts of reduntant safety measures.
There is no way this can become real anytime soon. I doubt it'll become reality this century. From Politics to Safety there are far too many and very massive reasons this won't happen.
as far as safety goes, to each his own. i see people ridding bikes on the edge of the road with truck traffic. not for me...
i will say running out of fuel seems to be a common reason for personal aircraft crashes. i was doing some work at a small airport in West Virginia. when we came back to work the second day there was a crashed plane on the runway. the guy i talked to said he worked there 11 years. in that time there were 3 crashes and all three were by running out of fuel.
Intentional harm and accidental crashes would both increase with such a vehicle.
Also, even if these were safe, caught on in a huge way, were affordable and fully supported... we'd still need highways. Think about non-personal vehicles such as construction equipment or semi trucks using highways today. Also, today cars and semis are very common, but we still have railroads all over the country in use. So the existing infrastructure wouldn't go away, but other types would need to be constructed too? Unless the vehicle is supposed to fly into a garage and land safely in the hands of someone who just got his pilots license from the DMV.
It isn't financially feasible to mass produce them either, as the laws and infrastructure to support them don't exist so people wouldn't buy them. It'd be like trying to sell bullet train when there are no tracks to someone setting out with his covered wagon headed west.
Consider fully electric vehicles and the charging stations required for those and how rare charging stations are in the nation today.
It mostly comes down to politics and law, and what politician wants to be seen as legalizing an easy way for 9/11 to happen more frequently? What politician wants to legalize a way for schoolchildren to die when their parent ran out of fuel and they fell to the ground? How the hell can no fly zones be kept that way? How can people be stopped from just parking one on top of a hotel building's roof?
There are probably hundreds of reasons beyond any kind of design issue as to why this won't happen any time soon.
Intentional harm and accidental crashes would both increase with such a vehicle.
Also, even if these were safe, caught on in a huge way, were affordable and fully supported... we'd still need highways. Think about non-personal vehicles such as construction equipment or semi trucks using highways today. Also, today cars and semis are very common, but we still have railroads all over the country in use. So the existing infrastructure wouldn't go away, but other types would need to be constructed too? Unless the vehicle is supposed to fly into a garage and land safely in the hands of someone who just got his pilots license from the DMV.
It isn't financially feasible to mass produce them either, as the laws and infrastructure to support them don't exist so people wouldn't buy them. It'd be like trying to sell bullet train when there are no tracks to someone setting out with his covered wagon headed west.
Consider fully electric vehicles and the charging stations required for those and how rare charging stations are in the nation today.
It mostly comes down to politics and law, and what politician wants to be seen as legalizing an easy way for 9/11 to happen more frequently? What politician wants to legalize a way for schoolchildren to die when their parent ran out of fuel and they fell to the ground? How the hell can no fly zones be kept that way? How can people be stopped from just parking one on top of a hotel building's roof?
There are probably hundreds of reasons beyond any kind of design issue as to why this won't happen any time soon.
Intentional harm and accidental crashes would both increase with such a vehicle.
Also, even if these were safe, caught on in a huge way, were affordable and fully supported... we'd still need highways. Think about non-personal vehicles such as construction equipment or semi trucks using highways today. Also, today cars and semis are very common, but we still have railroads all over the country in use. So the existing infrastructure wouldn't go away, but other types would need to be constructed too? Unless the vehicle is supposed to fly into a garage and land safely in the hands of someone who just got his pilots license from the DMV.
It isn't financially feasible to mass produce them either, as the laws and infrastructure to support them don't exist so people wouldn't buy them. It'd be like trying to sell bullet train when there are no tracks to someone setting out with his covered wagon headed west.
Consider fully electric vehicles and the charging stations required for those and how rare charging stations are in the nation today.
It mostly comes down to politics and law, and what politician wants to be seen as legalizing an easy way for 9/11 to happen more frequently? What politician wants to legalize a way for schoolchildren to die when their parent ran out of fuel and they fell to the ground? How the hell can no fly zones be kept that way? How can people be stopped from just parking one on top of a hotel building's roof?
There are probably hundreds of reasons beyond any kind of design issue as to why this won't happen any time soon.
Let me start the list:
#1) People are idiots. (Sums it up pretty well)
Or as I like to say "other people are the reason why I can't have nice stuff".
No way this will ever be allowed to operate in the US, unless their is a TSA agent in every garage of every home.
Uh people still fly personal aircraft all the time.
Out of airfields or airpots, not from their garages.
I guess some personal aircraft don't need aiports, like farmers crop dust and just takeoff/land in their fields. They do need pilots licenses though. In order for 'air cars' to become a viable transportation vehicle of the future, the pilots license thing will need to be done away with and they'll need to be takeoff and land anywhere. Or at least there will need to be some type of hybrid car/pilot license. It'll take a long time for regulations to adjust to this new transportation but I'd love to have one and leave roads behind :)
If someone rear ends my car, my car is totalled and I have to deal with that.
If someone rear ends my car while we're flying, we plummet to the ground and die.
If a flying car is as easy to get a license for as a current car, there would be no more reason to hijack a jumbo jet for terrorism.
Run out of fuel while in the air? Can't push it to a gas station, you just fall to your death and probably injure others in the process.
Who will do the maintenance and mechanical checks on these? Airplanes have significant dedicated staff to service them. People with today's cars put off oil changes and let dangerous repairs go undone until the breaking point.
I have no hope for this being "viable" at all in my lifetime. It would require AI control instead of manual piloting, and massive amounts of reduntant safety measures.
There is no way this can become real anytime soon. I doubt it'll become reality this century. From Politics to Safety there are far too many and very massive reasons this won't happen.
as far as safety goes, to each his own. i see people ridding bikes on the edge of the road with truck traffic. not for me...
i will say running out of fuel seems to be a common reason for personal aircraft crashes. i was doing some work at a small airport in West Virginia. when we came back to work the second day there was a crashed plane on the runway. the guy i talked to said he worked there 11 years. in that time there were 3 crashes and all three were by running out of fuel.
not seeing it this century? i don't know...
I was just thinking about how many overhead power lines would end up being cut up by those rotors as the car either took off or landed :lol:
we don't get into enough accidents already?
Needs to be an inflatable flying car!
http://now.msn.com/flying-car-crashes-near-elementary-school-in-canada?o...
I think it's fairly obvious that getting your license for that flying car won't be as simple as getting your drivers license
Intentional harm and accidental crashes would both increase with such a vehicle.
Also, even if these were safe, caught on in a huge way, were affordable and fully supported... we'd still need highways. Think about non-personal vehicles such as construction equipment or semi trucks using highways today. Also, today cars and semis are very common, but we still have railroads all over the country in use. So the existing infrastructure wouldn't go away, but other types would need to be constructed too? Unless the vehicle is supposed to fly into a garage and land safely in the hands of someone who just got his pilots license from the DMV.
It isn't financially feasible to mass produce them either, as the laws and infrastructure to support them don't exist so people wouldn't buy them. It'd be like trying to sell bullet train when there are no tracks to someone setting out with his covered wagon headed west.
Consider fully electric vehicles and the charging stations required for those and how rare charging stations are in the nation today.
It mostly comes down to politics and law, and what politician wants to be seen as legalizing an easy way for 9/11 to happen more frequently? What politician wants to legalize a way for schoolchildren to die when their parent ran out of fuel and they fell to the ground? How the hell can no fly zones be kept that way? How can people be stopped from just parking one on top of a hotel building's roof?
There are probably hundreds of reasons beyond any kind of design issue as to why this won't happen any time soon.
Let me start the list:
Or as I like to say "other people are the reason why I can't have nice stuff".