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+--- Thread: "Where's my flying car?" (/showthread.php?tid=14160)
"Where's my flying car?" - robkelk - 07-02-2021
Right here.
So stop asking, already...
RE: "Where's my flying car?" - Dartz - 07-03-2021
I suspect shortly to be followed by the invention of the adamantium umbrella given the quality of some drivers I've met. All it'll take is one plank wandering into the path of a speeding 747 and they'll be banned.
I'd imagine though - it's neither a very good car, or a very good airplane.
RE: "Where's my flying car?" - classicdrogn - 07-03-2021
Indeed, examples of that kind of roadable airplane have been around in various forms since the 1950s at the latest. The problem isn't building them, it's finding enough people with a pilot license and the money and a jurisdiction that will allow one to be certified as a street-legal vehicle as well as an aircraft, and who also don't mind the unavoidable compromises of combining machines with functions that only intersect in that they need a place for people to sit inside (generally even the engines are not well suited to be shared between road and air propulsion because the duty cycle required is so different) and whose performance both suffers with every ounce added that doesn't support their own specialized purpose, to at least make back the costs of building them.
Indeed, wikipedia lists quite a few of them, and the one I was specifically thinking of first flew in 1949. And then there's the Moller Volantor series... You'd think with how mainstream the use and general idea of quadcopter drones has become he'd be able to get some funding together to finally at least get a fully flying prototype made, but no.
We haven't even seen those Disney/Boeing X-Wing drones again after the one media event, as far as I can tell, and if anyone has money to throw at a tech project for pure looks and hype it's the Mouse. I mean, that's basically describing the entire EPCOT Center and most of the theme rides at Disney World parks in general to begin with.
RE: "Where's my flying car?" - LynnInDenver - 07-03-2021
(07-03-2021, 08:15 AM)classicdrogn Wrote: We haven't even seen those Disney/Boeing X-Wing drones again after the one media event, as far as I can tell, and if anyone has money to throw at a tech project for pure looks and hype it's the Mouse. I mean, that's basically describing the entire EPCOT Center and most of the theme rides at Disney World parks in general to begin with.
Well, those, as near as I can tell, were only built to be part of a media event, possibly just that one, since it was the official public opening of Galaxy's Edge. First, I think they were either 1/3 or 1/2 scale (nowhere near big enough, the fan built X-Wing here at Wings Over the Rockies isn't full size either, but is seriously larger anyway since it's expected to have someone sit in it), and quadcopters are really pernacious beasts to deal with even with automation in anything past a stiff breeze (which would likely limit the times of year they could actually use them), have really limited battery life at best because of weight limitations (I'd be shocked if the ones at Disney had more than a 15 minute flight endurance at their size), plus the dangers of flying them over a crowd. I recall the footage, they never did anything other than a hover, and then flew away from the crowd, and were never over any guests, and quite likely not even over any staff in the "ring road" area, and were probably landed almost immediately once they were out of sight.