Yikes, what a death trap. This monstrosity combines the unreliability of a car with the dangers of a small aircraft.
Cars are not as reliable as aircraft because they're not maintained as well, and the operators are far less disciplined.
It is generally accepted that small aircraft aviation is generally 10x less safe than driving on both a passenger-mile and per-trip basis. And most small aircraft are flown for recreation, not transportation. When you fly for transportation there is a need to get from point A to point B on some reasonable schedule, which pressures the pilot to take all kinds of risks with weather, maintenance, etc. And that's for a rigorously licensed pilot. I doubt that the pilots that fly this thing will be up to the quality of even your average Cessna pilot.
Combine these two factors, and you have a flying coffin. I would not be comfortable living within even a hundred miles of one of these.
I'm amazed by the "It'll never work" attitudes of people sometimes.
I suppose there's a good feeling that comes from pointing out perceived flaws and problems in things, or from treating emerging inventions as though they were fully commercialized products.
I can only imagine what erstwhile tech forums would have read like if they'd been around when Edison was churning out ideas at Menlo Park, or if there had been internet commenters looking over Marconi's shoulder, or Bell's.
I still think voice communication is a great idea, and mobile phones are failing hard at it. It's not about the quality of the call even, it's about the way people handle reachability, distraction and personal space.
"Generally accepted" by whom? In General Aviation (think 4-seat "Cessnas" as opposed to commercial/airlines), you are far less likely to be involved in an accident than if you are driving a car. But GA accidents are likely to be much worse than auto accidents.
Auto drivers take the same kind of weather and maintenance risks when trying to conform to a schedule (when is the last time you went over 55mph on the 101 in the rain to catch a flight?). GxP for pilot training and cockpit management implore a "Safety First" approach, but it all still comes down to pilot decision making (which must be distinguished from "licensing rigor").
"Motorcycle with a parachute" is a pretty good way to describe this (although really it's a dune-buggy with a parachute--it has a roll cage and seatbelts). Looks less dangerous than a fixed-wing aircraft for the pilot and passengers (parachute landing at very slow speeds). Certainly less dangerous for the human and other "obstacles." So, low risk to you (less than your neighbor's SUV, for sure).
BTW they have an option that takes off the front two wheels and add a single wheel in front to make it a motorcycle (tricycle) it solves California regulations.
"Soon they decided to try the bucket drop, a technique Dad had developed to deliver and retrieve items from missionaries who had no airstrip. He circled his plane overhead in tight circles while a long cord with the goods attached was reeled out behind the plane. Air friction on the basket at the end of the line would make the cord cut to the inside of the circle flown by the airplane, while the weight of the basket caused the cord to fall. When enough line was extended behind the plane, the end of the line would actually hang motionless in the air. Letting out more line at that point would make the line drop straight down where it could be made to hover just above the ground."
I have never before heard of this technique. Sounds like it would take a lot of experience to make it work. Very cool.
The documentary "Beyond the Gates of Splendor" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0337868/ is quite good. You can stream it from Netflix. Although I'm not religious, I must admit it demonstrates the value of the Christian ideal of forgiveness. The movie has lots of old footage, including his father's inventive method of delivering supplies from his airplane to the natives via a tethered bucket
Yes, this story is amazing. He came to speak at my university with some of the members of the tribe, one of whom was in LOVE with flying. He couldn't speak English, read, etc. but he was apparently a pretty good pilot. By the way, this same guy was one of those in the group that killed his father. Amazing stuff.
What we want to do is develop a commercial market. Sell it
to people up here for whatever they want to do with it. So
we can get the quantity up so we can get the cost down so
we can serve the humanitarian missions market which is our
primary market.
I wish the One Laptop Per Child people had taken this route instead of the "for a limited time each year, we'll force you to buy TWO of these (and donate one of them) for each ONE that you want" approach that they chose to do.
The end result was noble in that you were contributing to charity. But the way they did it made me feel like they were gouging people.
His focus is on serving the third world. It is clear in the video you need a runway and you don't have one when stuck in traffic. Or probably the room you need to deploy the wing.
I think he should play up the fact that this takes off with half the speed Marty McFly would need to turn on his flux capacitor.
He said it could take off from a football field and clear the stanchions. It evidently needs a 300 foot unpaved field and a bit of space around it without anything exceedingly tall. That's pretty good performance, and you can get by with a lot less than a proper runway, but it can't take off from a traffic jam.
Well you don't have to be stuck in traffic. Your Android or iPhone could tell you there is a major traffic jam up ahead or you might know that between x-y time, you'll hit the daily commute rush. That way you could just "take off" from your street where you know there is clear skys and low traffic.
If people had these, it wouldn't of course solve any of the classical 50's flying-car-in-a-traffic-jam problems. Instead, the jam would materialize mid-air with hundreds of these little flying cars looking for a strip of highway to land nearby a supermarket before they all run out of gas and start dropping like flies, unless they've already crashed into each other in the uncontrolled airspace in a very uncontrolled manner.
Luckily the guy was apparently envisioning usecases for medical and rescue team, mostly.
I thought exactly these two points when he said it's great for when you are stuck in a traffic jam and you can fly over everyone at 40mph. Well, not if everyone is already in there air! It would be funny in a weird twist of fate that if this was adopted an in 1000 years everyone started buying road cars again to avoid the airways congestion...
I also thought about the props when he was just driving round, I don't know what laws are like in the USA but if you are caught with a lump of wood sticking out the back of the car in the UK then you get pulled over, never mind 6 x 3 foot knives!
The air is a whole lot bigger than the ground. Roads are 33 ft wide. The air is - the air! Its miles wide and 3D. It would conceivably be had to collide with another air car if you tried.
Takeoff and landing is the risky time, and that is mitigated by the timing - it takes seconds to land this thing (100 yd airstrip) so you'd have to attempt to land at the same moment as someone else which is in your favor.
I agree but at the same time you would have hot spots. Shopping centres etc etc. This car is also not automated so how would you avoid mid air collisions? You would obviously need to land near your street, so there would need to be designated landing strips, you couldn't just plonk down in a field somewhere.
It would be like frequencies too, you would only be able to fly in a limited amount of "space". The rest would be reserved for airplanes and helicopters.
It's only the same as airplanes having to follow flight paths, there would be directions that car-o-planes could go in.
I know what you are saying but imagine London or New York with flying cars everywhere. The end result would really be no different. Concentrated areas with millions of cars flying in it.
For all his talk of "flying over traffic," that he realizes how super-rural areas (places without roads) could be a major benefit from this is great. And smart.
(Assuming it costs less than a small plane, which I imagine it does, and can carry an extra person reasonably.)
The more I think about this scenario, the less sense this vehicle makes.
He says it needs about 300 feet to take off and land--any decent bush pilot can do that with the right plane, and the best can do far better[1]. A used bush plane probably costs about the same as one of these things, and you can go several times faster than 40 mph. You could carry a lot more stuff, too.
But what if the landing strip is any significant distance from the place you're trying to get to? Well, if all of the terrain in-between is unsuitable for landing (forest, jugle, or just plain rugged), it's probably too rough for a tiny little car like this, too. Even if you [i]could[/i] use the car mode to go that last mile or so, it would still probably be faster to fly the first several hundred miles of the trip in a bush plane and then go the last bit on foot (or mule, etc.) rather than fly the first part at 40 mph and drive the last bit.
If you're talking about shorter trips (tens of miles instead of hundreds) without roads, it would be cheaper, faster, safer, and more effective to just get a jeep.
Can anybody propose a (non-edge case) scenario where you wouldn't be better off with either a bush plane or a jeep?
[1]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbHSRrcxzq8 (I should note that, while the plane in the first part only needs a few feet to get airborne, the part it doesn't show is where the pilot has to stay in ground effect to accelerate for another 200 feet or so before he can climb away.)
It seems like the takeoff distance could be greatly reduced if they were able to momentarily use both the wheels and prop. That or some type of mechanism that detects when the front wheels are leaving the ground and switches to the prop.
I recently joined the ITEC team that makes the Maverick car. They desire to have a car that meets people's needs in remote areas. Often as you work in remote or even disaster areas, roads stop or are blocked. With the Maverick you pop up the sail and fly over the problem or take the shorter straight route. It does take about 10 minutes or less to get ready to fly. Can take off in 150 feet but 300 is advised for takeoff and landing, which is significantly less normal small planes.
It is designed so that "everyday" people can fly it, because the sail it is inherently more stable than a fixed wing aircraft. It has a steering wheel that you turn right it goes right. To go higher give it more gas to go lower give it less gas. No ailerons, flaps, rudder or elevator, it uses warping of the sail to turn.
If you guys have questions about ITEC or the Maverick I would be happy to answer them. BTW I have not flown in it yet, they only have the one proto-type and three more are in production. But I have gone 92mph on the ground and it can easily take my Corvette.
Actually he makes it clear in the video, it's a good car that can be driven in excess of 95 mph does 0-60 in 3.9 seconds. So it is definitively a flying car ;p
The only logical use case is as a driving plane, because using it as a car more than the absolute minimum necessary would be prohibitively expensive.
First: insurance. You would have to insure it as both a plane and as a car, and insurance companies aren't going to know how to handle that, which means they'll either refuse to touch it or charge a premium. Even if such vehicles became common enough for insurance companies to get comfortable with them, they're still probably on the expensive side for cars, and repairing collision damage on airplanes costs a lot more than repairing comparable damage on cars. That's not normally such a big deal because collisions are much less common for airplanes, but with this vehicle you would combine the high collision risk of a car with the high repair costs of an airplane.
Second, and more importantly: maintenance. The FAA requires that periodic inspections and preventative maintenance be conducted at regular intervals, and those intervals are defined in terms of the number of hours the engine has been operating[1]. Airplane maintenance is way more expensive than car maintenance, but every hour you drive this thing on the road will count as an hour towards maintenance required at airplane rates.
Airplane maintenance is way more expensive than car maintenance, but every hour you drive this thing on the road will count as an hour towards maintenance required at airplane rates.
Yes, but this isn't an airplane. It's a flying car ;)
Seriously, the maintenance comparison wouldn't appear to be the same. It looks like this thing has a propeller attached to a drag style engine. I would expect maintenance costs to be more akin to a souped up car than an airplane.
Also, by law to drive (in California at least) you're only required to have liability insurance covering the party you hit. Covering your own vehicle is optional.
The reason airplane maintenance is expensive isn't just that airplanes are generally more complex. It's mainly because you have to pay a certified A&P[1] to do it. You're not just paying for the work, you're paying for the entire apparatus of certifications and inspections that backs it up.
>Also, by law to drive (in California at least) you're only required to have liability insurance covering the party you hit. Covering your own vehicle is optional.
If you go this route, you have an even bigger incentive to keep it off the road: if you get into a fender-bender, you'll have to pay to the exorbitant repair bill on your "car."
Sure, using an A&P is fine. I'd still imagine the maintenance costs on this thing, consisting mostly of a drag engine, propeller, and chute would be less costly than that of a traditional airplane wouldn't you agree?
I do agree it would certainly make sense to opt in for covering the car as well. I was mostly making the point the liability rule could be a baseline showing insurance companies had no reason to charge a higher rate than, say, a sports car (under a minimum coverage scenario where they cover only liability costs).
It appears this vehicle costs $84K. I believe any person able to afford a 100K class of car would certainly be able to pay the maintenance and insurance costs to drive it as a car ;)
Not sure what you were trying to say here, but using an A&P isn't "fine," it's mandatory, and it's very expensive.
>...less costly than that of a traditional airplane wouldn't you agree?
Maybe a little, but not significantly. This still misses the point: airplanes are required to get periodic maintenance way more often than cars, and airplane mechanics cost way more than car mechanics. The complexity of the airplane isn't the primary cost driver, the frequent maintenance and the safety requirements placed on that maintenance are.
>It appears this vehicle costs $84K. I believe any person able to afford a 100K class of car would certainly be able to pay the maintenance and insurance costs to drive it as a car ;)
I know a lot of people who own small planes. Most of of those planes were purchased for a price comparable to this thing (because they were purchased used--they would have cost considerably more than $84K if purchased new). All of these people are upper middle class, so these planes represented major expenses for them. They all have to be very careful about how much they fly their planes or they would break their budgets; using their planes as cars would be a terrible waste of money.
Becoming certified as an A&P is a very expensive and time-consuming process, but it pays off in the end for professional A&Ps because they can charge a premium for their work. However, I know a few people who went through this process even though they already have great careers and have no intention of working professionally as A&Ps. Nor were they especially enthusiastic about aircraft maintenance as a hobby. They did it because, in the long run, it was cheaper for them to become certified so they could do all of their own maintenance on their planes rather than pay somebody else to do it. That's how expensive aircraft maintenance is.
Not sure what you were trying to say here, but using an A&P isn't "fine," it's mandatory, and it's very expensive.
I was trying to say factoring in an A&P wouldn't lead me to believe operational costs would necessarily jump to be prohibitively expensive.
This still misses the point: airplanes are required to get periodic maintenance way more often than car
But you're still missing my point. It's not an airplane :) In other words, I would expect the work and associated costs (including a fully certified A&P) to be quite different on a hot air balloon, let's say with an added engine driven propeller, than on an airplane. The complexity difference is relevant because there is less to go wrong for safety and repair.
I know a lot of people who own small planes...All of these people are upper middle class, so these planes represented major expenses for them.
Yes, but I'd wager those planes are capable of more than 40 mph in the air, and I seriously doubt they would have been bought by under such strenuous expense if they were not. Boats can also represent a source of strained expense, but, like airplanes, they provide recreational function outside the normal cost of living. A person buying this vehicle at 84K with the duplicate function of use as a car, which happens to be capable of 40 mph in the air, is probably going to be richer than upper middle class.
Hey, I'm just an observer looking in at all this. Maybe Maverick LSA hasn't thought your points through, and their project path is flawed. My belief is that it would be workable as a car.
>But you're still missing my point. It's not an airplane :)
I understand what you're saying, and you're wrong. You're wrong because as far as the FAA is concerned, it is an aircraft, and if you want to fly in their airspace, you're going to have to follow the same exact rules as any other aircraft of the same category. They're not going to let you skimp on their safety and maintenance requirements just because you happen to drive it on the road part of the time.
>In other words, I would expect the work and associated costs (including a fully certified A&P) to be quite different on a hot air balloon, let's say with an added engine driven propeller, than on an airplane. The complexity difference is relevant because there is less to go wrong for safety and repair.
A hot air ballon does have very different maintenance requirements, mainly because it doesn't have an engine (the "P" in "A&P" is for Powerplants). As I keep saying, the main driver of added costs isn't so much things in need of repair, it's periodic maintenance. The FAA has rules that say, "After every n hours of engine time, you have to take your aicraft to an A&P for [inspection or overhaul]." (There are other types of intervals as well, in terms of airframe time or calendar time.) They don't care if those hours were spent flying or driving, either way you have to go pay an A&P to do that stuff. Those costs simply do not exist for cars, where maybe you have to stop in for an annual smog check. The simplicity might save you a few hours of labor costs with the A&P, but your cost structure is still going to be much closer to "airplane" than to "car."
But even when something does need fixing, you're still going to pay a lot more than you would to get a car fixed. The FAA won't let you go to a car mechanic to get the "car parts" fixed, they will insist on having all maintenance performed by an A&P. They are correct to insist on this, because any time you are flying it isn't 50% car or 40% car or 70% car, it's 100% aircraft.
>Maybe Maverick LSA hasn't thought your points through, and their project path is flawed. My belief is that it would be workable as a car.
I think their target customer is a very small niche: people of means trying to get around a country with lousy infrastructure. Odds are pretty good that a country that lacks quality roads also lacks a serious aviation administration, so all the stuff I've said about satisfying FAA safety requirements probably wouldn't apply. That still leaves the very real safety issues of flying around in something that wasn't maintained by someone qualified to work on aircraft, in a place where the nearest repair and medical facilities are potentially days away. A lot of this will probably be resolved by the fact that the kind of person who is going to motor off into the wilderness of a third-world country is probably the kind of self-sufficient person who gets qualified as an A&P before venturing off into the middle of nowhere.
It's not a 84K airplane it's a 30k car + (84 - 30)K airplane. I bought a vary nice car even though I only drive ~5K miles a year. I could sell my car and add an extra ~800-1000$ a month to be able to fly on the weekends, but paying ~90K + hanger fees and still needing a car is much harder.
PS: Renting an airplane is still a better option if you fly less than 10 hours a month, but IMO there is a nitch for a crappy flying car.
Well the likelihood that this becomes popular and allowed on road (imagine if everyone was to flyoff in the middle of a traffic jam, you'd get air jam and probably planes hitting each other).
It's more likely to be used in remote areas like in the middle of Ecuador as Steve Saint the guy in the video was hinting at. Or like here in Canada, some areas in northern canada aren't accessible by road from the south, this could fly the required miles to reach the next road. (well it would have to be better insulated and fly a little faster considering the distances).
Yes, he drove it 1400 miles, and it does 0-60 in 3.9 seconds, with a top speed over 95 mph. In the air it goes 40 mph, so it's definitely more able as a car. But it's also a boat and a snowmobile! "The propeller has 3 uses: in the air, on the water with pontoons, and on the ice it'll really go."
To me a flying car is something which you could just decide to go up when driving along on the freeway not spend half an hour assembling it before you could fly.
I've always thought a lifting-body blimp/dirigible vehicle such as the size of a minivan would do well, the majority of the space inside would be filled with helium. Carbon fibre for the skin and other very light-weight materials would be used.
It would be low speed and easy to control since it would fly fairly slow but probably highway speeds.
The biggest problem would be crash protection that would require a lot of extra material such as bumpers, safety glass, strong seat backs.
Awesome. My only concern is the time to set up the wings, which seems quite a work. He says the wings are under a zipper, and there's the big mast that needs to be raised, this can't be quick.
It looks like a HOAX, the video doesn't show the vehicle in a test fly, or during a take off. 98% of the video either shows the vehicle going on the ground just like other non-flying cars or shows people discussing about a flying car.
Why the downvote? it really does look like a hoax.
Plus when people say "flaying car" I expect a sci-fi like flying care: that it can hover and fly vertically, not have a parachute-like thing attached to it.
This one really almost looks like an april fools joke.
"It looks like a hoax" is not a useful comment and has no research to back it up. The poster apparently did not even read the text under the linked video, which says "[T]he FAA has also issued the Maverick a S-LSA aircraft airworthiness certificate."
It is highly unlikely the FAA would issue a S-LSA[1] aircraft airworthiness certificate to a hoax.
Cars are not as reliable as aircraft because they're not maintained as well, and the operators are far less disciplined.
It is generally accepted that small aircraft aviation is generally 10x less safe than driving on both a passenger-mile and per-trip basis. And most small aircraft are flown for recreation, not transportation. When you fly for transportation there is a need to get from point A to point B on some reasonable schedule, which pressures the pilot to take all kinds of risks with weather, maintenance, etc. And that's for a rigorously licensed pilot. I doubt that the pilots that fly this thing will be up to the quality of even your average Cessna pilot.
Combine these two factors, and you have a flying coffin. I would not be comfortable living within even a hundred miles of one of these.