/sci/ - Science & Math

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNulEa8LTHI&feature=iv&src_vid=L75ESD9PBOw&annotation_id=annotation_2385329623#t=52s

>>7580100
>18 minute fly time
>looks nothing like a car
Yeah no that's just a shitty helicopter.

They already made flying cars. They're called airplanes. Most airplanes can actually drive around on the ground.

>>7580131
It's a flying car in the sense that it's a flying craft anybody can safely pilot, even a child. It's all computer controlled so just point it where you want to go and it goes. As for crappy flight time, what did you expect, it's the 1st of it's kind.

>>7580100
>YOLOcopter

>>7580157
I'll believe it when they actually fly someone in it.

What is the definition of a "flying car" such that a helicopter doesn't count?

>>7580131
The helicopter IS the flying car.

I hate this, "Where's my flying car?" meme. They built them, you just don't want one, and you don't want all the other random strangers in the city to have them.

>>7580100
>YOLOcopter
>e-YOLO

>Money
>Government

In no particular order.

>>7580150

exactly, although planes are more like flying buses, flying personal cars are a horrible idea that will never be viable, think about how bad most paved road drivers are, and the training and licensing necessary, then imagine if everyone had to get pilot's licenses essentially for a flying car, and the accidents would be horrific, there would be no such thing as a fender bender or minor dent from a small accident, you would just be blown to bits and incinerated upon any type of crash no matter how small, and consider the terrorism possibilities

What do people want in a flying car, OP?

>VTOL
>No bigger than a Van
>Same travel distance as a car
>Easy to fly
>Cheap enough to buy

We have all of those things, just not on the same machine.

>>7581300
This.

>>7581302
A helicopter is not a flying car. A 15 year old couldn't fly a helicopter to the shops, that's the whole idea, a craft so safe and easy to fly that a kid could do it.
>>7581596
Well we need to put it on the same machine
>>7581373
You do realize that we can use computers to make them automatic right? I can fly a quadcopter across town without even actually flying it, it's called autonomous flight.

>>7581617
Has autonomous human flight ever actually happened?

>>7581617
>A 15 year old couldn't fly a helicopter to the shops, that's the whole idea
If the whole idea is to get a bunch of 15 year olds and unskilled fuckwads up in the air. Then fuck this shit.
Fuck flying cars.

>>7581621
Making things so easy and simple a kid can do it should be the ultimate goal.

>>7581621
>Having kids in automatic air vehicles at 15
>vs
>Having kids in manual ground vehicles at 17
It would probably actually cut the road death rate if we could encourage young people to give up cars and fly around town on autonomous drones instead.

>>7581650
Why give plebs so much power?
Let them be a retard and kill themselves in a car, and not a retard in the air, noise polluting everything and crashing into your house.

>>7581617
>A 15 year old couldn't fly a helicopter to the shops
You don't know much about modern, fly-by-wire helicopters.

Even older, simpler ones aren't that hard to fly. It's not like you can just jump in a car your first time and be ready to roll on the highway.

Remember as well that there is a tremendous amount of infrastructure built around cars: paved and marked roads, road signs, service stations, parking spaces.

Routine, high-density urban helicopter traffic would require "roads" in airspace and automated air traffic control. This stuff could have been done back in the 60s. Today we could do a really slick job of it for cheap. That's why Amazon is talking about being allowed to use delivery drones.

>that's the whole idea, a craft so safe and easy to fly that a kid could do it.
That doesn't even describe cars.

And, contrary to frequent assertion in these discussions, a helicopter doesn't just fall out of the sky if it has a mechanical problem. Normally, if the engine fails it can autorotate and have a controlled hard landing. Cars can also experience catastrophic malfunction, especially at highway speeds, and crash into things as fast as something that fell out of the sky.

>>7581722
The high accident rate from helicopters, and the presumed skill needed to operate them, comes from their use for emergencies and other irregular purposes, in areas developed without consideration of helicopters. If they were used for point-to-point transportation along established routes, they would be far safer and easier to operate.

>>7580098
quadcopters are more inefficient than regular helicopters because of the higher disc loading.

>>7581753
That just depends on how big the rotors are. A single rotor isn't inherently more efficient than two or four rotors. The more air you're pushing at lower speed, the more efficiently you can hover.

The downside of this efficiency is that you lose robustness, insensitivity to wind, and potential for speed. A rocket is about the least efficient means of hovering, but it gives approximately zero fucks about the weather and works up to arbitrarily high speeds.

>>7580098
Car safety specifications. In order for a new vehicle to be declared roadworthy, it has to have dual-stage airbags, bumpers, fancy seatbelts, crumple zones etc. All this is very heavy. The other issue is that airplanes are generally pretty big. This thing has to be small enough to fit on the road.

It's not impossible, but it's not easy either.

>>7582064
So it's all the governments fault. I knew it!

>>7582119
Eh, it's not all bad. The Terrafugia Transition got exemptions for some of the requirements for road vehicles and some of the requirements for microlight aircraft for example.

The front canard in picrelated was added due to the bumper requirement, but was later removed once the exemption was gained, improving the aerodynamics and reducing the weight.

>>7582160
The new minibumper.

>>7582160
>>7582164
That thing needs a runway to take off doesn't it? More of a "driving plane" than a "flying car"

>>7582845
If it wouldn't you'd called it a "driving helicopter", you're full of bad faith.

>>7582845
It's a "roadable aircraft", which is a type of flying car.
Roadable aircraft have an actual real-world purpose: getting from the runway to your accommodation at the far end of your trip without having to rent a car or hangar space.

Sounds like you're looking for a roadable VTOL. Its niche is rapid response across difficult terrain.

>>7581617
Pilot here.

This would be the "Main" problem with flying cars, barring price. Autopilots, no matter how reliable, can fail. and at that point the flying car becomes a flying missile, especially if the person inside knows nothing about flying a plane, let alone a car.The only true way to make flying cars viable is to make them require a pilot's license, but at that point they're just airplanes, albeit shitty ones.

>>7582932
>>7582164
>>7580098
My dick hard. Can't wait to see aeroplanes flying over my house

>7581617
>You do realize that we can use computers to make them automatic right?
which is exactly why modern airplane autopilots still need human guidance for landing, takeoff and possible error correction, because we "can just make it automatic :^)"
your whole response is proof that you have zero knowledge of actual aircrafts

>>7581722
We already have infrastructure in the air, it's called air traffic control. So every person who has a flying car needs to learn how to talk to air traffoc control

Because most of the time a normal car is good enough.

>>TFW no designers choose function over form anymore

>>That looks like shit.
b-b-b-b-but muh futuristic! It's the tech of tomorrow, TODAY!
>>IT. LOOKS. LIKE. SHIT.
b-b-b-b-ut.. muh futuristic..
>>What makes you think that things "from the future" have to look like bubbles with down syndrome?
I watched the jetsons once.

fucking plebs.

>>7583174
>we can use computers to autoland

>CAN

yes, they can, and do. They just don't use it often. Perfect for consumer uses though.

>>7583772
>Perfect for consumer uses though