Well the idea that everybody will have a personal air transportation craft, that will be as easy to use as a car, seems like science fiction. On the contrary, a consortium to make this into reality already exists, with many serious participations in it.

It is called Southeast SATSLab,it is funded by NASA and it has members from economic and academic areas. Recently a company that has made significant progress, entered this consortium.This company has a ready experimental prototype called "Skycar".

It is a 4-seat vertical takeoff/landing craft,with rotating trusters like a Harrier.Some specs:8 rotary (Wankel) engines,top speed 350MPH,burns common gasoline,range:900Miles.It has satellite navigation,flight computers and even emergency parachutes.

http://www.moller.com/news/pressrelease/satslab.html

There's never going to be flying cars well not that lot's of people will fly around because we just don't have the fuel. Until we start using some other resource like hydrogen we don't have a chance. Maybe a couple of millionaires might fly them but the average person won't have them.

i think so too that the average ppl won't afford it but we can allways glue some wings on our cars=)

You both obviously don't read the news much. Toyota was featured in a news story a few months back about their proto type fr a flying car. They were testing it sucessfully in some desert. Estimated sales price was $50,000. A Corvet costs more. Now you say yea but look how many people have corvets..

How about how many people have $50,000 cars.

I didn't say the car would be expensive I said it would be too expensive to fly it round.

I am pretty sure they will use another form of fuel before it becomes common. I think that building ones that work with fuels we have now will get people interested, and make them realize it is possible. If they see a car flying, they will think, yeah, let's get in on that. Once they find a better form of fuel these things will definately "take off," pun definately intended.

"In limited production (500 units per year) the M400 Skycar will sell for a price comparable to that of a four-passenger high performance helicopter or airplane, approximately $500,000. As the volume of production increases substantially, its price can approach that of a quality automobile ($60,000-$80,000)."

Also, I just realized this would mean an all new kind of license, unless you would only need both a driver's and pilot's license. pulling over will be strange in the future.

/me has both a driver's license and a pilot's license. :x

I don't see it happening... Flying is something that takes quite a bit of skill, and frankly, most people are morons.

Pfffft, Computerised altimiter and GPS navigation. It is possible that it could drive itself actualy. Imagine GPS accident prevention.

Computerized altimeters and GPS Navigation are already here. We even use both of these things in the aircraft on a daily basis (look up the Garmin GNS 430). However, GPS accident prevention is very far off. GPS systems are not accurate to within feet, they are accurate to within yards. Also, GPS systems tend to lag, since information must be received by at least three satellites, and then sent to the unit in the vehicle. This lag time is not very substantial when used in a navigational device (upwards of 3 seconds), but when it comes to accident prevention, 3 seconds may mean quite a difference.

Many high-end aircraft nowadays have a system called TCAS (Traffic Collision Avoidance System). Other aircraft are displayed on a screen relative to your aircraft, with altitude and direction information displayed as well. In the event of a traffic conflict (one aircraft coming dangerously close to another), an alarm will sound. Also, taking the Boeing 747-400 as an example, a message will appear on a screen in front of the pilots giving a recommendation on what to do to resolve the conflict. Examples of these recommendations: Climbing left turn, descending right turn, etc. Keep in mind that the aircraft will not avoid conflicting traffic by itself, however, the technology is there.

lol, watch, you run out of gas, you're 200' in the air in a "sky car"... First thing on your mind "oh fuck me" ktnx...

I've been around planes my whole life because my dad is a pilot, but a lot of people haven't, and they're scared of flying. You'd be suprised at how many people would rather drive then fly because they think driving is safer(which it isn't). My guess is that people wouldn't buy flying cars just because of fear of flying/heights.

I'd buy 4! only i'd wigger a hanglider to the lol...

lol. imagine the wingspan u'd need for a hanglider to support a car. that'd be great

none out of the ordinary. you can pull one from a boat, only differance would be you'd be driving in the air as opposed to the water.

oh, i thought u meant a hangglider so that you could glide the car itself to the ground if it ran out of gas.

Oh my ph34r! This photo was taken by me this morning...and yes, it is stopped.

This is why people like to drive.

Was this an Auto Rotate test? I know Helicopter piolets need to learn how to auto rotate. Just wondering.

Nope. Since I'm working on getting my multi-engine rating, we were doing engine-out work. Generally this is simulated by keeping one throttle at idle and the other at full power. Once in a while though, we'll actually feather (stop) a prop to make things a tad more realistic.

Drake, you said something that I wanna comment on. You and a lot of the educated populace say that flying is safer than driving. You guy point out statistics about how there's more deaths and accidents involved in car wrecks than in plane wrecks.

However, what I say to that is, there's a heck of a lot more people driving around than flying around. So naturally there'll be more car wrecks than plane wrecks. However, that doesn't mean the RATIO is greater with cars. Cars may be considered safer cause the ratio between number of cars, and number or wrecks would be fewer, then the ratio between number of plane flights and number of plane wrecks.

In case I was confusing, here's an example:

Number of cars = 1000
Number of wrecks = 100

Number of planes = 100
Number of wrecks = 20

Now see, there's 100 car wrecks and 20 plane wrecks a year. planes are safer? no, cause you've got a 10% chance of getting in a car wreck, and 20% chance of getting in a plane wreck.

One thing a lot of people don't realize is that flying is inherently dangerous. This is why pilots must go through very rigorous training in order to be licensed by the FAA.

you go throught too much work to crash into my house .

but also one of the reasons people like to drive as opposed to fly is because they like to be in control of the vehicle so if they had the opportunity to own their own aricraft they might go for it, but as far as people being afraid to fly if a car crashes in some cases you have a chance to survive but when you fall from 20,000 feet..

yeah, that brought up another point I had in retort to people saying it's safer to fly than drive. Fatality in plane wrecks are greater than fatality in car crashes. Ratio-wise anyway.

I blame the media for this. If you look at the NTSB reports, the overwhelming majority of aircraft accidents are not fatal. The ones that you hear about, however, are the awful airline accidents.

I'm not talking about aircraft accidents. Bad landings, lost a wheel in landing etcetera. Just like I'm not talking about fender benders in cars that wouldn't have a chance at hurting anybody.

But if a passenger jet plummets to the ground, I mean comon... Sure it's rare - even ratio-wise - but the fatality in those babies...

bah, I'm not 100% convinced of my argument on this point. I shouldn't have said anything. I'll stick to the accidents ratio and leave fatality out unless I have more facts.