https://techsomogro.com/gizmos-gadgets-flying-cars-really/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=gizmos-gadgets-flying-cars-really Science, Technology and the Future Fri, 02 May 2025 19:17:10 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.1 https://techsomogro.com/gizmos-gadgets-flying-cars-really/#comment-36433 Fri, 02 May 2025 19:17:10 +0000 http://www.21stcentech.com/?p=10136#comment-36433 […] companies are working on flying cars. This is not a recent development. Engineers had been dreaming of flying cars as early as 1937 when […]

]]> https://techsomogro.com/gizmos-gadgets-flying-cars-really/#comment-8644 Mon, 13 May 2013 20:06:03 +0000 http://www.21stcentech.com/?p=10136#comment-8644 Len, I am inclined to agree with you that the flying car is a solution in search of a problem. The superficial attraction of course is that you can avoid road congestion for routine travel, since you can hop up and over gravity-bound traffic. But let’s be generous and presume technology advances to the point that the premium for such cars is affordable, they can ascend nearly vertically (so no incremental runway construction) and they are self-navigating and collision-avoiding (so no flight plans required). What is going to make this impractical is the humble parking lot. Since your destination will need relatively close parking (or else what’s the point of speeding over there) and others will want to get there at similar times of day, I would be willing to bet that you end up trading horizontal for vertical congestion. Safety will demand a fair amount of vehicle separation around congested destinations, so plan on waiting in vertical queues. Just imagine how time for that will stretch out as wind speed rises!

]]> https://techsomogro.com/gizmos-gadgets-flying-cars-really/#comment-8643 Mon, 13 May 2013 19:50:35 +0000 http://www.21stcentech.com/?p=10136#comment-8643 The conceptual drawing of the TF-X is preposterously out of scale. As drawn, it’s a lead duck. If two small rotors could produce enough thrust to support a TX-F, they could produce enough thrust to support ordinary helicopters and the Bell Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft. Helicopter rotors are as large as they are because the laws of physics don’t allow them to be smaller.

]]> https://techsomogro.com/gizmos-gadgets-flying-cars-really/#comment-8642 Mon, 13 May 2013 19:35:29 +0000 http://www.21stcentech.com/?p=10136#comment-8642 The most amazing thing about flying car schemes are the people who are ingenious enough to design and build them, but at the same time are stupid enough to suppose there will ever be any significant market for them. Development of any practical flying car awaits the seemingly improbable invention of a thrust system that defies Newton’s third law of motion, and which operates independently of reaction mass. (For every action there must be an equal and opposite reaction). So far, no human has been ingenious enough to make the reactionless thrust system. If a reactionless propulsion system were to be invented, flying cars would rank near the bottom of a long list of potential applications.

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