Flying cars to solve congestion

I agree totally. Im sick of people saying this cant be done now...YES IT CAN. We have the technology we just need the government to set up the infrastructure for it. For people who say oh another 9/11 let me tell you something people can easily ram car filled explosives into buildings too....remember the first WTC attack in 1994? The fact is this only makes perfect sense to me for congestion and hell for people who want that feel of flying without going 30000 feet in the air. This is cool sh!t and ill be the first in line to get one when it comes out.

reply to post by Anti-Tyrant

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Only with lower level, lighter material you tend to not have quite such a large hazard from falling debris. Also aircraft tend to disintegrate only through large forces being applied to them from depressurisation (well, in the air at least, and a normal car would disintegrate if you drove it into a cliff face at 300 mph anyway), and thats not likely to happen with low level flying.

And you need fuel to make flaming wreckage, electric aircraft are unlikely to produce too much of that with a lack of kerosene.

[edit on 12-5-2008 by apex]

[edit on 12-5-2008 by apex]

The idea that flying cars will ease congestion is short-sighted. 50 years ago our roads were deserted too compared to today. As with most things in this world, humans can't just take what they need, they take all that they can get, and if we're let loose on the skies, it won't be long before that's clogged up either.

You can't solve one problem by creating another. The goal should not be to spill over into the skies to solve our road congestion, but to cut back on the necessity for cars in the first place.

reply to post by purplemonkey

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The Fifth Element.. trailer

They did it in the movies.
So why not for real.

'Toll roads in the sky'.. my latest hit single.

We already have flying cars. They're called airplanes, and helicopters. If these things hope to become a reality, they better be piloted by a supercomputer 100% of the time... I'd hate to be around pilots "Flying Under the Influence."

flying cars sounds to me like some other way for corporations to get more money thrown at them by the politicians, and the politicians will start putting heavy restrictions, everyone would have to learn designated fly zones, we'd have to worry about fueling costs as well, but then again who knows what kind of fuel we could be using in 20 years.

i dunno, flying cars would be neat, but i'd have too much temptation to throw my mcdonalds out the window or something and then hit somebody with it LOL.


dammit elroy! don't throw pennies out the window!!

I dont know if any of you get mechanics illustrated.. but that issue came out back in the 60s... by the year 2000 .. we were all suppose to be in some type of flying vehicle... as far as I can tell... my 64 mustang.. is ten times the car they build today.. not the motor.. but the car..

the only sensible flying car is one that either uses air thrust vectoring or antigravety otherwise anything else would be baad for downtown where there'd be hundreds of cars flyign around at over 50MPH all looking for a place to park. a flying car has to be able to loiter over an area at no air speeds. that flying car with the fans they have on tv everynow and then is just a step in the right direction.
i also dont see cars going past the second floor level in the city and/or even the highway.
instead i see like a layered airlane being the norm for this.

at least this means that bridges wont be such a drag anymore because technically you wouldnt need them anymore.

and you could park on the top of parkinglot buildings instead of starting at the bottom ha.

What about ferry crossings and the channel tunnel, they'd go out of bussiness, all you'd need to do is fly accross the drink and you're in France

If we want to slow down global warming why don't we get rid of all cars that are not hybrids and put hybrid engines into every car so that every car has great mileage and will pollute less into the air. Why are we waiting to solve a problem that is so huge. Maybe the problem isnt as big as it is put out to be. If you ponder over this for a while then you will realize that you will know when global warming is a problem because then hybrid cars will be on the car market at a cheaper price and the cars will be more known.

I still worry about it, to fully stop congestion, you'd need to remove a vast % of cars to be replaced with these. Now if you do the math, that's alot of cars flying above cities and homes, Not just one every now and again.
I'd constantly worry about one smashing through the roof.
where there's computer technology there's always the possibility of a malfunction.

reply to post by The Bear Man

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How many air traffic controllers would you need to keep the flying Prius’s in unison over London, all going to different addresses at different times?

Forget Heathrow marshalling hundreds of highly trained pilots per day. That would be mayhem.

As a side note my Mutta got knocked off her bike today by one of the millions of people in this country who shouldn’t be allowed the keys to their own front door never mind a flying car.

In my opinion, that's not being done because the car manufacturers are spending millions to persuade us it's not necessary and bribing politicians to keep the status quo.

However, as much as cleaner fuel systems are welcome, the rise of alternative fuels is also part of the problem of rising food costs. Bio-fuels are derived from corn, but corn production has not increased, but demand has, so corn as a food source has become more costly. Government has encouraged farmers to switch crops to corn, but that will take some time to come to full fruition (hence estimates of food prices continuing to rise over the short term). If you do have some spare cash at this time, invest in corn.

reply to post by apex

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I'm pretty certain that if something about the size of an average car were to plummet through the air at speeds approaching terminal velocity it would go through my roof like a hot ball-bearing through butter.

The average suburbain house simply isn't reinforced for that kind of brutal physics.

Just a thought, that maybe the aerocar will actually be the best option. That car is VTOL, and self flies. In the event of an emergency, there are three backups before a fourth, a deployed exterior airbag and parachute are activated. This car is far more realistic that a plane/car that requires a runway.

reply to post by whitesatan

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Read the facts. We have already dropped 85% of our emissions in twenty years. It will only get better, and Hybrids are not the answer. We need to stop using petroleum, period...

Actually, the navigation problem can be addressed with a 3D version of roads - think laser markers instead of gravel. And granted we will fill those up pretty quick too, but solving that problem will be easier than getting more land for more lanes ....

Add to that parallel processing multi-core computers in each car to avoid the FUI someone mentioned above ...

[edit on 5/12/2008 by 2believeor0]

Isn't this a thread from 1960? They were saying exactly the same thing then.

When they get the population down to 500 Million, they will break out the good toys.

Why dosen't the government ever do something to do away with the automobile, and provide a decent alternative. Wouldn't that solve most of the worlds problems? Like jobs close to homes, and moving enclosed sidewalks or local mag lev. Do you know that Raytheon has had one in their parking lot for many years Just waiting for a market?

Or mandating all cars are electric and weigh under 500 pounds. And all current cars are off the road starting next year. And making the car companies take the old ones as trade ins for their current market value.

Anyone with a will could get us out of this crunch, the politicians are too busy grabbing the cash for themselves. Don't they see it's all going to collapse around their ears?

There really is no problem with having cars in the sky. We already have HITS and collision avoidance. The computers in aircraft are redundant and so would be the ones in the flying cars. They most likely would also have an FMC so getting from here to there is not a problem either. 20 years in the future, no, we have the tech right now and its affordable.

Yup and then some terrorist gets into CCC head quarters and diddles with the program and slams the morning rush our into down town Manhattan...

And the 'official story' will be a 'computer glitch'

CCC = Car Control Central



Besides the Flying Car is hardly a new thing....

image source: http://library.creativecow.net/articles/wilson_tim/iphone/flyingcar.jpg