Flying Machine
Travelling by an AC Chair Car compartment for seven-and-a-half-hours brings back old and forgotten thoughts. My journey by the Shatabdi express reminded me of those classic He-Man and Jetsons cartoons in which everyone had a quick and easy form of transport — a personal flying car.
Now wouldn’t that be a useful thing? Unlike an airplane, it wouldn’t need a pair of wings to keep it high, so that would save us a lot of space. The problem is to keep a lump of metal up in the sky at a constant height. I was thinking of something on the lines of a car with rockets attached to the base, providing a calculated acceleration precisely cancelling out that of the Earth. Yes, it would take a great deal of effort to maintain stability, and a great deal of money to pay for the fuel, but since it is possible in principle, somebody ought to come up with a working prototype.
Or has someone already developed something like this?
March 11th, 2006 at 19:47
Yes. The concept has been developed.
There is a company called Moller International based here at Davis in California. This company has developed a “Vertical-Take-Off-and-Landing” (VTOL) vehicle called Skycar. The prototype has been developed. The prototype has been tested and it is also available for sale. The price is about $1 million. Right now, the vehicle can only take-off, land and hover and travel extremely short (few meters) horizontal distances.
You can get more information and some test videos from their site at: http://www.moller.com/skycar/
Couple years back I did a presentation about them and had a chance to visit their testing facility where I got to see really what their challenges were. A few things that they mentioned (among a 100 others) was:-
1) Privacy: You would’nt want random people to land on the roof of your house!
2) Sound: The vehicle (if you see the videos) is extremely loud. Imagine having a large number of them in a city. Think how loud our environment will get (think Star Wars!)
3) Planning: Flying in the same space as regular aircrafts will be very tricky and risky. How about lanes? How do you divide opposing traffic lanes in mid-air? A separate company is working on that solution. They are using a computer grid to map lanes and feeding it to an onboard computer. The idea is to minimize manual control when in flight to minimize error and/or accidents. The driver should be able to control, but only if the computer allows him to (so as you can guess, no Windows OS here!!)
There are more issues like, exhaust fumes since it’s aircraft fuel being used and tons of other issues. They expect all of it to be solved by 2015 it seems.
You should talk to them, maybe they need more creative energy like yours
March 12th, 2006 at 10:20
Thanks for the link! It seems pretty interesting. As far as problems such as privacy are concerned, I expect they’ll be sorted out once the technology goes mainstream.
For the problem of sound pollution, I was thinking on the lines of a vacuum layer surrounding the main body. If there was a way of keeping the encasing or outer shell away from the main body without a physical connection (by using some kind of magnetic device), then it would prevent the sound from being transmitted. Of course, it would be even better if the sound could be converted into a more usable form of energy.
Did these people discuss the kind of ideas they had to solve the problems you mentioned?
March 12th, 2006 at 13:51
Privacy is one issue that will always remain a problem unfortunately. As far as sound pollution is concerned, right now they are not actively working on it — although there is team that is thinking about the solution. Your vacuum layer solution seems logical, however such a drastic difference in air pressures around the main body will obstruct flight efficiency of the main engines.
I know for a fact that these people are thinking about more ideas for solving the problems I mentioned. However, There is one small problem: Intellectual Property!
See, I had a ridiculously hard time finding information about them for my project. When I expressed interest in visiting them, there was some resistance. But when I was digging deeper and asking them about the different solutions — I was very politely shown the door. People there are very very very friendly and helpful, but are extremely cautious about giving out information that they themselves have not mastered yet.
This is understandable though, considering they are building a vehicle that will change the face of transportation as we know it and costs $1million they are right in keeping some secrets!
They discuss what they have and what are the future problems. Getting solutions for future problems from them is next to impossible.