Forty years back you could buy an airplane in a box and build it in your garage. Called then and today, "homebuilts," it came with a VHS tape, plus step-by-step instructions on how to make your very own aircraft in your very own home. It was more like a one-place or two-seat tandem, Ultra-Light, with an open cockpit and frame. If you had an Airframe and Power plant Certificate, all the better. How cool was that, I thought, for a couple of thousand bucks, I could mechanically piece together my own aircraft, style a, sort of, landing pad on the roof of my rental--sure, my landlord wouldn't mind a small design change to her roof line--and, I could take off every morning and avoid all the traffic along the 405/I-5 corridor, as long as I registered my craft and had a license, I didn't see a problem. Wow, what a dream that would be! I could roll out of bed, grab my coffee and toast, start up my engine, advise the tower--flight plan already logged--and I could be at the office in 15 minutes, as opposed to 55-90 minutes stuck in traffic. Dream was right, building an aircraft takes full time dedication--it could take years--and is more complex and expensive than I eventually realized. Literally, shelving the idea, it came upon me, a flying car!
How about a hybrid of a car and an airplane, someone must be working on it. Was there technology that existed in the 80's that could support a flying car? Surely, the government had some sort of cutting-edge, reverse-technology and it was in the works. The military had jet packs in the early sixties, somewhat like the movie, the Rocketeer, 1991, but those were highly dangerous and highly combustible, unless they had installed state-of-the-art safety features since then. I was fortunate enough, as a child, to witness someone flying a jet pack and it embedded in my memory. I became fascinated with flying and the idea of a flying car. After all, Henry Ford had his "Flivver," designed in 1927 as an "everyman's" aircraft, his version of a flying car. With many designs in-between, the incredible Moulton Taylor Aerocar was designed and built by Moulton Taylor in 1949 and six prototypes were built. The design was brilliant in it's concept, a compact vehicle hitched to a fuselage with fold out wings, ready for takeoff in a matter of minutes, but it never entered production.
There wasn't much information available on the Internet in the early nineties, however, fast forward through the nineties with technological advancements, and you could find a few articles here and there on flying cars. The bottom line in the challenges and developments of making flying vehicles was money. It seems, that is why it has taken so long in mass producing them for commercial use.
Okay, so here we are almost 20 years in the 21st Century, and beyond the Space Age, and you ask, "Where's my flying car?" Well, come to find out, there are now many intrepid, dedicated, national and international, entrepreneurial companies who have designed an developed models for flying cars; such as, the European, AeroMobil, developing its version--AeroMobil 5.0 VTOL--of an air taxi ferrying four passengers for daily commuting with a potential range of 100 miles. We should see this version on the market in 5-7 years the company estimates; Terrafugia of Woburn, MA is developing a transformational model, converting into an airplane from a car and vice versa. Other companies, along with major airplane manufacturers, have similar models in the works. Uber wants a fleet of flying cars by 2020. Many issues still exist, however, if we're to finally have our futuristic flying dreams come true, like traffic vectors overhead and sharing the sky ways with other aircraft, plus weights and balances issues that exist for comparable aircraft, you know, "will your carry on bag fit in the overhead compartment?" If our flying cars are to operate similar to a helicopter, by taking off and landing vertically, the details must be streamlined, designed and redesigned, the balance of forces--aerodynamics--are crucial for takeoffs and landings.
Which brings us to our motive of wanting flying cars in the first place, our reasons now are quite different from back then. It may have been a dream or space fantasy to have a flying car, but now, we'll turn to this technology in order to improve our transport and transportation systems by facilitating congestion, decreasing pollution, an increasing safety factors to save lives working towards a better future. Also, to save the environment, the earth, by alleviating the negative global changes currently taking place.
The next level? Where are my pneumatic roadways? Well, that's another blog...
For more information on flying cars: www.abcnews.go/Business/flyingcars;
www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-incredible-flying-car-of-the-1950s.
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