A
Anonymous
Guest
Dunno about you, but I just rev the old car up and hit speed bumps at 70mph - subjectively it feels like flying 
Where The Hell Are The Flying Cars? It's The 21st Century!
- Thread starter Mighty_Emperor
- Start date
A
Anonymous
Guest
found a little article here: http://uttm.com/stories/2005/04/15/60mi ... 8454.shtml
Also, for those with great researching skills. I remember back in the mid 90's that Michael Jackson had invested in a flying car that was going under the name 'batmobile' - I seem to remember that the article was in new scientist, but my backcatelogue is now sadly no-more. It may very well have been an idea of one of the above mentioned companies, but in my drunken state I can't find a decent reference
The biggest problems with flying cars are clearly how to designate the flight paths and implement crash/recovery technologies. Personally, I dread to think what the insurance would be Also, can you imagine (for those in the UK) the nasty stick-on accessories that would become available in Halfords! Brrrrr PS. Bumper stickers: my other flying car is a stealth plane!....I feel a wave of nausea...excuse me
Also, for those with great researching skills. I remember back in the mid 90's that Michael Jackson had invested in a flying car that was going under the name 'batmobile' - I seem to remember that the article was in new scientist, but my backcatelogue is now sadly no-more. It may very well have been an idea of one of the above mentioned companies, but in my drunken state I can't find a decent reference
The biggest problems with flying cars are clearly how to designate the flight paths and implement crash/recovery technologies. Personally, I dread to think what the insurance would be
Also, can you imagine (for those in the UK) the nasty stick-on accessories that would become available in Halfords! Brrrrr PS. Bumper stickers: my other flying car is a stealth plane!....I feel a wave of nausea...excuse me 
A
Anonymous
Guest
Moral dilemma time would you rather have advances in technology or give into over represented fear and have things remain the same? In either case, terrorists exist and attrocities will be committed. Take the British view - live with the terror and don't let the buggers win by making you change your patterns. Fact of the matter is, you are not likely to be involved in a terrorist attack. However, if you are the kind of person who plays the lottery and believe that you have a reasonable chance, then I suggest a maths/stats course :lol:
would you rather have advances in technology or give into over represented fear and have things remain the same? In either case, terrorists exist and attrocities will be committed. Take the British view - live with the terror and don't let the buggers win by making you change your patterns. Fact of the matter is, you are not likely to be involved in a terrorist attack. However, if you are the kind of person who plays the lottery and believe that you have a reasonable chance, then I suggest a maths/stats course :lol:
ramonmercado
CyberPunk
- Joined
- Aug 19, 2003
- Messages
- 58,202
- Location
- Eblana
Rocket Racers Promise To Take Formula One Into The Sky
ramonmercado
CyberPunk
- Joined
- Aug 19, 2003
- Messages
- 58,202
- Location
- Eblana
Pics at link.
- Joined
- Aug 15, 2005
- Messages
- 5,521
I think that "flying cars" must be like the long-heralded "picture 'phones" prophesied all through my youth (and even earlier than that) - everybody "knew" they'd be arriving, and soon, and absolutely nobody actually wanted one.
Aren't there already enough crashes on the roads? A "fender bender" in the sky is likely going to be fatal to a bare minimum of two people.
Aren't there already enough crashes on the roads? A "fender bender" in the sky is likely going to be fatal to a bare minimum of two people.
Timble2
Imaginary Person
- Joined
- Feb 9, 2003
- Messages
- 6,047
- Location
- In a Liminal Zone
I suppose we have "picture phones" now, with the ability to record and send movie clips from most mobile phones and video messaging over the interweb, although not quite in the way they were envisoned in old SF stories and those "World of Tomorrow" type articles and TV programmes.
I remember "flying cars" being billed as coming soon in comics and TV programmes from the early 60s, we never even got hover cars, which were definitely on the cards (apart from the things put together by hobbyists: it's quite amazing what some people manage to build in their garages).
I remember "flying cars" being billed as coming soon in comics and TV programmes from the early 60s, we never even got hover cars, which were definitely on the cards (apart from the things put together by hobbyists: it's quite amazing what some people manage to build in their garages).
- Joined
- Aug 15, 2005
- Messages
- 5,521
Back around 1947 or 1948, when I was six or seven, I watched an American newsreel which featured a gentleman who'd invented his own flying automobile.
Upon landing, the wings, rudder and propeller came off and got stored on the roof of the vehicle, which was then ready for regular road travel. The car could then be re-fitted for air travel again in about 30 minutes,
The newsreel added that the inventor was launching a factory to mass-produce his flying automobiles.
I wondered long after why I never heard again of this guy or his invention.
It was at least two decades later that I learned that this fellow had fatally crashed his sky-car within a few months of the newsreel being shown in theaters.
Upon landing, the wings, rudder and propeller came off and got stored on the roof of the vehicle, which was then ready for regular road travel. The car could then be re-fitted for air travel again in about 30 minutes,
The newsreel added that the inventor was launching a factory to mass-produce his flying automobiles.
I wondered long after why I never heard again of this guy or his invention.
It was at least two decades later that I learned that this fellow had fatally crashed his sky-car within a few months of the newsreel being shown in theaters.
- Joined
- Aug 7, 2001
- Messages
- 54,631
Category: Why didn't someone think of this before?!
The flying car
A British engineer has invented a fan-powered flying car - and to prove the Skycar works, he’s off to Africa in it
Richard Fleury
To Timbuktu by flying car: it sounds the most unlikely journey on earth; a sci-fi voyage from the pages of Jules Verne. But this is no fantasy. The car really flies. And the journey will become reality early in the new year when two explorers set off from London in a propeller-powered dune buggy heading for the Sahara.
The seed of this improbable adventure was sown four years ago when Gilo Cardozo, a paramotor manufacturer, had a eureka moment. For those not familiar with paramotors, picture a parachutist with a giant industrial fan strapped to his back, which provides forward motion and boosts lift for the parachute - or wing - during takeoff. Cardozo’s brainwave was to attach a car to the fan.
“I started making a paramotor on wheels that you sit on and take off and it suddenly occurred to me, ‘Why not just have a car that does everything?’” recalls Cardozo, whose Wiltshire-based company Parajet built the paramotor that the adventurer Bear Grylls used to fly near Everest last year.
A workable flying car has been the inventors’ holy grail for half a century, but the reality has remained elusive. Just ask Paul Moller, the Canadian engineer whose four-seater Skycar is still at the prototype stage after 40 years and more than £100m of development.
Cardozo, a self-taught engineer with a tiny fraction of that budget, thinks he may finally have cracked it. “I’ve been dreaming about making flying cars since I was a boy,” he says, “thinking about all the ways it could be done and seeing how all the other people in the world have done it wrong.
“No one’s ever made one that really does work that you can go out and buy. But here’s the ultimate solution: it’s cheap, it’s safe, it works, all the technology’s already there. So I pushed ahead and thought, ‘We’ve got to do it’.”
Without recent advances in flexible wing technology, the idea would barely have got off the ground. New aerodynamic profiles and materials make it possible to lift a vehicle weighing 1,500lb and passengers without dangerous instability.
“This thing will launch itself without any pilot input,” says Cardozo. “You just open it up and it goes. The more power you put on, the faster you go until you come off the ground [at 35mph]. The wing will basically lock above you [once airborne] and stay there, without weaving, at speeds of up to 80mph.”
Fully road-legal - the car passed the government’s single vehicle approval test last month - and designed to run on bioethanol, Cardozo’s Skycar is powered by a modified 140bhp Yamaha R1 superbike engine with a lightweight automatic CVT (continuously variable transmission) gear-box from a snowmobile. It boasts Ferrari-beating acceleration on land, an air speed of up to 80mph and can swap between road and flight modes in minutes.
“The fan’s static when you’re driving around,” says Cardozo. “The engineering challenge was getting a really reliable system that will switch power between wheels or fan.”
With chief pilot and expedition organiser Neil Laughton, Cardozo will fly and drive the two-seater more than 3,700 miles to Timbuktu. Setting off on January 14, they will take about 40 days to reach the city in Mali, west Africa, whose name is a byword for the back end of beyond (a recent survey found a third of young Britons claimed not to believe that Timbuktu exists 8) ).
etc......
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/drivin ... 106213.ece
_________________
(Previous new thread deleted, after heads-up from ramonmercado!)
PS: seems I can't delete it - some Mod will have to tidy up by deleting Flying Car from Mainstream News, thankee kindly... 8)
The flying car
A British engineer has invented a fan-powered flying car - and to prove the Skycar works, he’s off to Africa in it
Richard Fleury
To Timbuktu by flying car: it sounds the most unlikely journey on earth; a sci-fi voyage from the pages of Jules Verne. But this is no fantasy. The car really flies. And the journey will become reality early in the new year when two explorers set off from London in a propeller-powered dune buggy heading for the Sahara.
The seed of this improbable adventure was sown four years ago when Gilo Cardozo, a paramotor manufacturer, had a eureka moment. For those not familiar with paramotors, picture a parachutist with a giant industrial fan strapped to his back, which provides forward motion and boosts lift for the parachute - or wing - during takeoff. Cardozo’s brainwave was to attach a car to the fan.
“I started making a paramotor on wheels that you sit on and take off and it suddenly occurred to me, ‘Why not just have a car that does everything?’” recalls Cardozo, whose Wiltshire-based company Parajet built the paramotor that the adventurer Bear Grylls used to fly near Everest last year.
A workable flying car has been the inventors’ holy grail for half a century, but the reality has remained elusive. Just ask Paul Moller, the Canadian engineer whose four-seater Skycar is still at the prototype stage after 40 years and more than £100m of development.
Cardozo, a self-taught engineer with a tiny fraction of that budget, thinks he may finally have cracked it. “I’ve been dreaming about making flying cars since I was a boy,” he says, “thinking about all the ways it could be done and seeing how all the other people in the world have done it wrong.
“No one’s ever made one that really does work that you can go out and buy. But here’s the ultimate solution: it’s cheap, it’s safe, it works, all the technology’s already there. So I pushed ahead and thought, ‘We’ve got to do it’.”
Without recent advances in flexible wing technology, the idea would barely have got off the ground. New aerodynamic profiles and materials make it possible to lift a vehicle weighing 1,500lb and passengers without dangerous instability.
“This thing will launch itself without any pilot input,” says Cardozo. “You just open it up and it goes. The more power you put on, the faster you go until you come off the ground [at 35mph]. The wing will basically lock above you [once airborne] and stay there, without weaving, at speeds of up to 80mph.”
Fully road-legal - the car passed the government’s single vehicle approval test last month - and designed to run on bioethanol, Cardozo’s Skycar is powered by a modified 140bhp Yamaha R1 superbike engine with a lightweight automatic CVT (continuously variable transmission) gear-box from a snowmobile. It boasts Ferrari-beating acceleration on land, an air speed of up to 80mph and can swap between road and flight modes in minutes.
“The fan’s static when you’re driving around,” says Cardozo. “The engineering challenge was getting a really reliable system that will switch power between wheels or fan.”
With chief pilot and expedition organiser Neil Laughton, Cardozo will fly and drive the two-seater more than 3,700 miles to Timbuktu. Setting off on January 14, they will take about 40 days to reach the city in Mali, west Africa, whose name is a byword for the back end of beyond (a recent survey found a third of young Britons claimed not to believe that Timbuktu exists 8) ).
etc......
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/drivin ... 106213.ece
_________________
(Previous new thread deleted, after heads-up from ramonmercado!)
PS: seems I can't delete it - some Mod will have to tidy up by deleting Flying Car from Mainstream News, thankee kindly... 8)
- Joined
- Aug 7, 2001
- Messages
- 54,631
World's first flying car on the roads from next year - yours for just £130,000
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 4:50 PM on 18th December 2008
It's been a pipe dream for 30 years but now the world's first fully available flying car is set to hit the roads next year.
Ever since the Back to the Future movies lit up our screens in the 80s, designers have dreamt of an automobile that could take to the skies at the push of a button.
And now qualified pilots can order their very own Terrafugia Transition 'roadable' plane for just £127,000, with delivery planned for late next year.
The 'light-sport airplane' promises to bring more 'flexibility and convenience to your flying'.
The plane, which has fold-out wings that span 27.5ft when extended, has an airborne range of 460 miles and can cruise at 115mph.
Back on terra firma, it is capable of travelling at 'highway speeds' in car mode.
Fuelling the 19ft long plane couldn't be simpler - you just drive it into a petrol station and fill it up with unleaded.
It is powered by a 100 hp, Rotax 912S, four-stroke engine.
A spokeswoman for designers Terrafugia, based in Woburn, Massachusetts, USA, said: ‘You can keep your Transition in your garage.
‘Then you simply drive to your local airport, fly up to 460 miles, land, convert and drive directly to your destination.
‘You'll always be ready to drive or fly.’
A series of simple commands made from the cockpit convert the white craft from plane to car and vice versa.
But the wings only fold out if the correct key code is entered by someone with a pilot's licence.
Unlike many 'flying car' concepts which use thrusters to take off vertically, the Transition needs a short runway to take to the air.
The spokeswoman added: ‘Never let questionable weather cancel or endanger your trip again.
‘You can simply divert and continue on the ground until the weather clears.’
You can secure your very own Transition aeroplane by simply paying a deposit of £6,500.
The firm's website, 'Terrafugia.com', says of prospective owners: ‘Your deposit doesn't just reserve your very own roadable airplane, it gives us proof that today's pilot community is ready for this dream to finally become reality.
‘There's no risk to you - only the chance to be the first at your home field to unfold your wings and fly into the future.
‘Production schedules are filling up quickly.’
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... 0-000.html (with pics)
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 4:50 PM on 18th December 2008
It's been a pipe dream for 30 years but now the world's first fully available flying car is set to hit the roads next year.
Ever since the Back to the Future movies lit up our screens in the 80s, designers have dreamt of an automobile that could take to the skies at the push of a button.
And now qualified pilots can order their very own Terrafugia Transition 'roadable' plane for just £127,000, with delivery planned for late next year.
The 'light-sport airplane' promises to bring more 'flexibility and convenience to your flying'.
The plane, which has fold-out wings that span 27.5ft when extended, has an airborne range of 460 miles and can cruise at 115mph.
Back on terra firma, it is capable of travelling at 'highway speeds' in car mode.
Fuelling the 19ft long plane couldn't be simpler - you just drive it into a petrol station and fill it up with unleaded.
It is powered by a 100 hp, Rotax 912S, four-stroke engine.
A spokeswoman for designers Terrafugia, based in Woburn, Massachusetts, USA, said: ‘You can keep your Transition in your garage.
‘Then you simply drive to your local airport, fly up to 460 miles, land, convert and drive directly to your destination.
‘You'll always be ready to drive or fly.’
A series of simple commands made from the cockpit convert the white craft from plane to car and vice versa.
But the wings only fold out if the correct key code is entered by someone with a pilot's licence.
Unlike many 'flying car' concepts which use thrusters to take off vertically, the Transition needs a short runway to take to the air.
The spokeswoman added: ‘Never let questionable weather cancel or endanger your trip again.
‘You can simply divert and continue on the ground until the weather clears.’
You can secure your very own Transition aeroplane by simply paying a deposit of £6,500.
The firm's website, 'Terrafugia.com', says of prospective owners: ‘Your deposit doesn't just reserve your very own roadable airplane, it gives us proof that today's pilot community is ready for this dream to finally become reality.
‘There's no risk to you - only the chance to be the first at your home field to unfold your wings and fly into the future.
‘Production schedules are filling up quickly.’
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... 0-000.html (with pics)
- Joined
- Aug 7, 2001
- Messages
- 54,631
World’s first flying car prepares for take-off
Mark Harris
IS it a car? Is it a plane? Actually it’s both. The first flying automobile, equally at home in the sky or on the road, is scheduled to take to the air next month.
If it survives its first test flight, the Terrafugia Transition, which can transform itself from a two-seater road car to a plane in 15 seconds, is expected to land in showrooms in about 18 months’ time.
Its manufacturer says it is easy to keep and run since it uses normal unleaded fuel and will fit into a garage.
Carl Dietrich, who runs the Massachusetts-based Terrafugia, said: “This is the first really integrated design where the wings fold up automatically and all the parts are in one vehicle.”
The Transition, developed by former Nasa engineers, is powered by the same 100bhp engine on the ground and in the air.
Terrafugia claims it will be able to fly up to 500 miles on a single tank of petrol at a cruising speed of 115mph. Up to now, however, it has been tested only on roads at up to 90mph.
Dietrich said he had already received 40 orders, despite an expected retail price of $200,000 (£132,000).
“For an airplane that’s very reasonable, but for a car that’s very much at the high end,” he conceded.
There are still one or two drawbacks. Getting insurance may be a little tricky and finding somewhere to take off may not be straightforward: the only place in the US in which it is legal to take off from a road is Alaska.
Dietrich is optimistic. He said: “In the long term we have the potential to make air travel practical for individuals at a price that would meet or beat driving, with huge time savings.”
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/b ... 489287.ece
Mark Harris
IS it a car? Is it a plane? Actually it’s both. The first flying automobile, equally at home in the sky or on the road, is scheduled to take to the air next month.
If it survives its first test flight, the Terrafugia Transition, which can transform itself from a two-seater road car to a plane in 15 seconds, is expected to land in showrooms in about 18 months’ time.
Its manufacturer says it is easy to keep and run since it uses normal unleaded fuel and will fit into a garage.
Carl Dietrich, who runs the Massachusetts-based Terrafugia, said: “This is the first really integrated design where the wings fold up automatically and all the parts are in one vehicle.”
The Transition, developed by former Nasa engineers, is powered by the same 100bhp engine on the ground and in the air.
Terrafugia claims it will be able to fly up to 500 miles on a single tank of petrol at a cruising speed of 115mph. Up to now, however, it has been tested only on roads at up to 90mph.
Dietrich said he had already received 40 orders, despite an expected retail price of $200,000 (£132,000).
“For an airplane that’s very reasonable, but for a car that’s very much at the high end,” he conceded.
There are still one or two drawbacks. Getting insurance may be a little tricky and finding somewhere to take off may not be straightforward: the only place in the US in which it is legal to take off from a road is Alaska.
Dietrich is optimistic. He said: “In the long term we have the potential to make air travel practical for individuals at a price that would meet or beat driving, with huge time savings.”
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/b ... 489287.ece
- Joined
- Aug 7, 2001
- Messages
- 54,631
More on the Timbuktu expedition:
By flying car from London to Timbuktu
By Jude Sheerin
BBC News
A voyage to fabled Timbuktu in a flying car may sound like a magical childhood fantasy.
But this week a British adventurer will set off from London on an incredible journey through Europe and Africa in a souped-up sand buggy, travelling by road - and air.
With the help of a parachute and a giant fan-motor, Neil Laughton plans to soar over the Pyrenees near Andorra, before taking to the skies again to hop across the 14-km (nine-mile) Straits of Gibraltar.
The ex-SAS officer then aims to fly over the Atlas Mountains in Morocco, above stretches of the Sahara desert and, well, wherever else the road runs out.
But forget Chitty Chitty Bang Bang - this flying machine is based on proven technology.
Designed by a young British inventor, the Skycar enables its driver to pilot the vehicle at the mere touch of a button as though it were a microlite.
The team behind it calls the Skycar the world's first road legal biofuelled flying car.
Mr Laughton's destination is the west African country of Mali and its city of Timbuktu, a place which has had a mystical, "middle of nowhere" reputation since the heyday of Victorian exploration.
The daredevil 42-day expedition will pass 4,000 miles (6,400 km) through France, Spain and Morocco, head into the Sahara by way of Mauritania and Mali, before returning home via Senegal.
He had also hoped to make the 22mile (35km) flight across the English Channel, but that plan was vetoed by civil aviation officials.
Even Mr Laughton - who has scaled the highest mountains on seven continents and trekked at the North Pole - admits his latest "boy's own" adventure is a little eccentric.
"I like variety and thought this would be an interesting challenge," he told the BBC News website. "Also Timbuktu is an iconic and quirky destination."
The father-of-two says his long-suffering wife's initial reaction to his latest feat of derring-do was "unprintable", but she is now fully behind the charity mission.
As he prepares to set off from central London on Wednesday morning, Mr Laughton is optimistic the Skycar's maiden voyage will go smoothly.
-------------------
SKYCAR IN NUMBERS
Weight: 1,000lb (480kg)
Engine: Four cylinders, 1,000cc
Flight range: 185 miles (300km)
Cruising altitude: 2,000-3,000ft (600m-900m)
Top speed: 70mph (110km/h) airborne; 110mph (180km/h) road
Cost: £50,000 ($76,000)
------------------------
"Clearly the reliability of the car is crucial. We're going to have to cope with wind chill temperatures as low as -30C and blistering heat up to 50C. But it's been fully tested at a secret location and it 100% works."
With the help of sponsors, the team has invested about £250,000 ($380,000) developing the vehicle.
The brains behind the two-seater Skycar is 29-year-old inventor Gilo Cardozo, who will join Mr Laughton as co-pilot for the African leg of the trip.
The self-taught engineer's Wiltshire-based firm, Parajet, manufactures the industrial paramotors that propel the Skycar once it is airborne.
He has been dreaming of creating a flying car - the ultimate boy's toy - since childhood.
"The inspiration came from realising we can drive and we can fly, so why can't we do both? The problem all along has been the wing technology, which we think we've cracked with the Skycar," he said.
Mr Cardozo built and co-piloted the powered paraglider which took British TV survivalist Bear Grylls over the summit of Mount Everest in 2007.
He plans to sell the Skycar commercially to the public at £50,000 per vehicle, if it can prove its mettle on the Timbuktu mission.
The team is keenly aware, however, it is not just the environment which could prove hostile.
In 2007 the annual Paris-Dakar rally was cancelled amid reported threats from Islamic militants in Mauritania.
Mr Laughton said: "Sadly the political situation in some areas on our route is not good and there are some unsavoury people about so we must be careful."
On the road, the Skycar takes barely three minutes to convert into an aircraft.
The driver unpacks the special nylon wing from the boot, before unfurling the parachute on the ground to the rear.
The powerful fan's thrust propels the buggy forward and provides enough wing lift to take off at just 45mph (70km/h), from any "airstrip" longer than 650ft (200m).
Once airborne, the driver uses pedals in the zero-carbon vehicle's foot well to steer the Skycar by tugging cables that change the wing's shape.
Should something go wrong, the pilot can launch an emergency parachute, which should allow the buggy to drift safely back to earth.
A convoy of support vehicles will accompany the team every step of the way.
What the nomadic camel caravans of the Sahara will make of the flying machine is anybody's guess.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7821979.stm
By flying car from London to Timbuktu
By Jude Sheerin
BBC News
A voyage to fabled Timbuktu in a flying car may sound like a magical childhood fantasy.
But this week a British adventurer will set off from London on an incredible journey through Europe and Africa in a souped-up sand buggy, travelling by road - and air.
With the help of a parachute and a giant fan-motor, Neil Laughton plans to soar over the Pyrenees near Andorra, before taking to the skies again to hop across the 14-km (nine-mile) Straits of Gibraltar.
The ex-SAS officer then aims to fly over the Atlas Mountains in Morocco, above stretches of the Sahara desert and, well, wherever else the road runs out.
But forget Chitty Chitty Bang Bang - this flying machine is based on proven technology.
Designed by a young British inventor, the Skycar enables its driver to pilot the vehicle at the mere touch of a button as though it were a microlite.
The team behind it calls the Skycar the world's first road legal biofuelled flying car.
Mr Laughton's destination is the west African country of Mali and its city of Timbuktu, a place which has had a mystical, "middle of nowhere" reputation since the heyday of Victorian exploration.
The daredevil 42-day expedition will pass 4,000 miles (6,400 km) through France, Spain and Morocco, head into the Sahara by way of Mauritania and Mali, before returning home via Senegal.
He had also hoped to make the 22mile (35km) flight across the English Channel, but that plan was vetoed by civil aviation officials.
Even Mr Laughton - who has scaled the highest mountains on seven continents and trekked at the North Pole - admits his latest "boy's own" adventure is a little eccentric.
"I like variety and thought this would be an interesting challenge," he told the BBC News website. "Also Timbuktu is an iconic and quirky destination."
The father-of-two says his long-suffering wife's initial reaction to his latest feat of derring-do was "unprintable", but she is now fully behind the charity mission.
As he prepares to set off from central London on Wednesday morning, Mr Laughton is optimistic the Skycar's maiden voyage will go smoothly.
-------------------
SKYCAR IN NUMBERS
Weight: 1,000lb (480kg)
Engine: Four cylinders, 1,000cc
Flight range: 185 miles (300km)
Cruising altitude: 2,000-3,000ft (600m-900m)
Top speed: 70mph (110km/h) airborne; 110mph (180km/h) road
Cost: £50,000 ($76,000)
------------------------
"Clearly the reliability of the car is crucial. We're going to have to cope with wind chill temperatures as low as -30C and blistering heat up to 50C. But it's been fully tested at a secret location and it 100% works."
With the help of sponsors, the team has invested about £250,000 ($380,000) developing the vehicle.
The brains behind the two-seater Skycar is 29-year-old inventor Gilo Cardozo, who will join Mr Laughton as co-pilot for the African leg of the trip.
The self-taught engineer's Wiltshire-based firm, Parajet, manufactures the industrial paramotors that propel the Skycar once it is airborne.
He has been dreaming of creating a flying car - the ultimate boy's toy - since childhood.
"The inspiration came from realising we can drive and we can fly, so why can't we do both? The problem all along has been the wing technology, which we think we've cracked with the Skycar," he said.
Mr Cardozo built and co-piloted the powered paraglider which took British TV survivalist Bear Grylls over the summit of Mount Everest in 2007.
He plans to sell the Skycar commercially to the public at £50,000 per vehicle, if it can prove its mettle on the Timbuktu mission.
The team is keenly aware, however, it is not just the environment which could prove hostile.
In 2007 the annual Paris-Dakar rally was cancelled amid reported threats from Islamic militants in Mauritania.
Mr Laughton said: "Sadly the political situation in some areas on our route is not good and there are some unsavoury people about so we must be careful."
On the road, the Skycar takes barely three minutes to convert into an aircraft.
The driver unpacks the special nylon wing from the boot, before unfurling the parachute on the ground to the rear.
The powerful fan's thrust propels the buggy forward and provides enough wing lift to take off at just 45mph (70km/h), from any "airstrip" longer than 650ft (200m).
Once airborne, the driver uses pedals in the zero-carbon vehicle's foot well to steer the Skycar by tugging cables that change the wing's shape.
Should something go wrong, the pilot can launch an emergency parachute, which should allow the buggy to drift safely back to earth.
A convoy of support vehicles will accompany the team every step of the way.
What the nomadic camel caravans of the Sahara will make of the flying machine is anybody's guess.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7821979.stm
James_H
And I like to roam the land
- Joined
- May 18, 2002
- Messages
- 7,629
Videophones have kind of snuck up on us in disguise - I could now have a videophonic conversation with anyone across the world via the internet. The thing is, there's no point - all the information you really need to send can be done by phone or email.Timble2 said:
- Joined
- Aug 7, 2001
- Messages
- 54,631
- Joined
- Aug 7, 2001
- Messages
- 54,631
- Joined
- Aug 7, 2001
- Messages
- 54,631
The car that believed it could fly
Number of mad engineers who claim to have built flying cars: countless. Number of mad engineers who've actually succeeded: one. Meet the ex-SAS man who is making a 4,000-mile, 42-day journey by land and air from London to Timbuktu in the world's first bio-fuelled flying car ...
By Charlie Norton
Last updated at 10:00 PM on 21st February 2009
The wind is a little gusty but otherwise it's an unremarkable January morning on the military base in Ceuta, the Spanish enclave at the northern tip of Morocco. The guards are smoking cigarettes, drinking hot chocolate and discussing the weekend's football fixtures. Occasionally, one peers out across the Strait of Gibraltar at the passing warships, tankers and mega yachts cruising in and out of the Mediterranean.
Suddenly a 'pan-pan call', or safety alert, comes over the radio. From the excited shrieking, the guards can tell that something is seriously wrong, but the voice isn't Spanish, it's English. The man insists he is 'coming in to land' but the grey sky appears empty.
Twenty minutes later, a giant mechanical bug looms out of the clouds and starts to nosedive towards the narrow isthmus. It's a bright blue dune buggy, swinging beneath a 452-square-foot canopy and heading towards the base at 70mph, buzzing the oil storage tanks and the local houses. By now, the whole military complex is alive with people staring up at the sky. The 'flying car' looks dangerously out of control, but just as it seems to be missing the airstrip altogether, the pilot cuts the throttle and violently jack-knifes into the runway, involuntarily head-butting the windscreen as the machine comes to a halt.
As the startled Spanish soldiers race down the runway to detain the intruder, a wind-burned Englishman in a flying suit leaps from the car and starts jumping up and down like he's scored the winner in the FA Cup final. In fact, he has just flown from Tarifa in southern Spain across the Strait of Gibraltar on surely one of the first landmark adventures of the 21st century. He's piloted a prototype flying car - the first roadworthy vehicle to take to the skies.
Of course, the car he's just landed doesn't look like most people's idea of a flying car - this is not the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang of childhood dreams. It's called the SkyCar, and it's a souped-up buggy with a giant paraglider wing. It's the latest development in paramotor (powered paraglider) technology. The car, weighing nearly half a ton, is the heaviest object ever to be carried under such a wing. A fan motor drives it forward and the wing takes it up to a maximum height of 15,000ft. The buggy itself is a modified Rage Motorsport off-roader. It's four-wheel-drive and powered by a 140bhp Yamaha R1 superbike engine that's been converted to run on bioethanol.
The SkyCar's maverick pilot is the gentleman adventurer Neil Laughton, an ex-Royal Marine and SAS soldier who at 45 still has a nose for derring-do. One of his previous expeditions was the Seven Summits challenge (climbing seven peaks in seven continents, including Mt Everest).
The two-seater flying dune buggy was built by Giles Cardozo, 29, whom Laughton affectionately refers to as the 'boy genius'. Cardozo is his wing man and co-pilot later on the trip. The self-taught engineer pieced together the SkyCar in his Dorset barn. As Cardozo says, 'it's a beast of a dune buggy'.
It's rapid, too, and can accelerate from 0-60mph in 4.5 seconds - as quick as a supercar. When I get to ride in it later on the sand at Merzouga, Morocco, it feels very small and compact with a low centre of gravity.
It's a zippy ride - like a powerful go-kart - with a top speed of 110mph.
To fly, you unpack the nylon wing from the boot and unfurl it to the rear, then flick the transmission system mode from 'Road' to 'Fan'. To drive the car on roads, you sit on the rightand use the pedals as usual; in flight mode youpilot it on the left-hand side using a throttle in your left hand and two foot pedals.
The fan propels the car forward, inflating the wing and giving it enough lift to take off. The SkyCar can launch from any field or airstrip 600ft or longer in length.
'It's easy to fly,' says Cardozo. 'On the left hand you work the throttle to accelerate and to take it up and down, and your feet control the lines to alter the wing's shape [which in turn controls the steering]. It has a range of 180 miles and is designed to fly at an altitude of 2,000-3,000ft.' In the event of a catastrophic wing failure, a reserve parachute would be deployed to bring the car and pilot down to Earth.
Cardozo and Laughton are making the 4,000-mile, 42-day journey by land and air from London through France, Spain, Morocco, Western Sahara, Mauritania and Mali to Timbuktu on the edge of the Sahara Desert both to publicise the car and raise money for the charity Alive And Kicking. They are accompanied by a 12-strong entourage of support crew in trucks, Land Cruisers and motorbikes, and have the backing of explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes. 'We wanted to test the car on a great adventure and raise money for charity so we decided to drive and fly to an almost magical place,' Laughton says.
Toby Kilner, expert mechanic on the trip and regular on Scrapheap Challenge, says: 'We have been dabbling with the unknown - it's like flying to the Moon.'
The initial flights were fraught with problems. Tarifa was chosen as the jumping off point because of its favourable winds, but a practice flight led to a crash into shallow waves on the beach. Three days later, they were primed to try again as the wind reached an acceptable 30mph. This time, Laughton used his military connections to contact the Royal Navy, which positioned HMS Sabre on rescue duty while a Channel 4 film crew were ready to fly alongside in a chopper.
At 10am on January 29, the SkyCar raced down Tarifa beach, took off and swirled into the sky. Laughton made it up to 50ft but couldn't go higher. 'It was unflyable. I was swinging around like a monkey and I knew I was going to crash,' he says. 'I heaved myself out of my seat as quickly as I could and crouched on the side ready to jump.'
Then all of a sudden his luck changed. A gust hit the wing and spun the car round, in the direction of the beach. 'I realised I had a chance, so I leapt back in the seat and controlled it to the shore, landing on the beach. I was relieved to be alive, but I put my head in my hands, thinking the dream might be over.'
Cardozo ran up to the SkyCar, 'as white as a sheet'. The pair trimmed the wing a couple of centimetres to speed up the ascent. An hour later, they decided to make one last attempt.
'My adrenaline was really pumping. I was frightened but very focused,' says Laughton. 'The take-off is always a real buttock-clencher but I held my breath and I was away again.' This time the car rose up and ascended all the way to 1,000ft.
With height comes security, as you have more time to deploy the emergency canopy or correct the direction should anything go wrong. 'I felt very relaxed up there just below the cloud line, flying over ships and ferries,' says Laughton, 'and I started cruising without a problem. I had a moment of peaceful bliss above the sea.
'It's incredible to fly and actually very simple. It's surreal when you first take off, suddenly being in a car up in the air. I had to force myself to stop playing with the steering wheel when airborne.'
But the serene moment didn't last for long. 'I got a call on the radio saying I couldn't land at the private landing site in Morocco because of a military exercise, so that's when I made the distress call to Ceuta.'
Then the GPS system stopped working. 'I had to navigate blind as I came in to the tip of Africa. I knew to head to the harbour where the ships were coming in, and then I was over buildings, a children's school and some pylons. I could see the airstrip surrounded by water on three sides and buildings on the other. It was a very tough place to land. I nosedived in, nearly misjudged it and came in with an ungainly slam-dunk - a crash landing really. The steering column pin sheared off, the chassis bent, a rear tyre burst and I whacked my head into the windscreen and smashed it. :shock: But it was a huge relief and a real pleasure - I knew no one had done this before. It was a real first.'
He had travelled just over 12 miles at a speed of 56 knots during a 25-minute flight. And he had been very lucky to make it. As mechanic Kilner says: 'When he was coming in to land I was very scared. I only gave him a 20 per cent chance of survival if he hit the water. But Neil's got balls the size of coconuts.' Laughton briefly had time to call his wife in Oxfordshire, saying, 'Darling, I've made it, but now I've got to go - the Spanish military are after me.' 8)
The SkyCar project has been beset with bureaucratic problems since the start in London a month ago. After a media bonanza in front of the world's press in Knightsbridge, the expedition team were chased by aviation authorities through England and France. They were a victim of their own PR - everyone seemed to know from the media coverage that they were not yet legal to fly.
Such was the confusion over how to categorise the unusual flying machine that the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) had refused to grant any permits. The car is road legal but in flight mode it has the officials scratching their heads. Is it a plane, a microlite or something else? :?
In the end, the team stuck mostly to roads through England, France and Spain, before launching the car from Tarifa.
......
But nobody has yet built a high-performance car that flies and managed to put it on the market. This might be because much research and money has been put into making a car with wings like a plane. Cardozo's machine is definitely a car that flies - but it does so suspended beneath a wing.
The project has always been close to Cardozo's heart. 'It was my boyhood dream to build a flying car,' he says. 'But this is also a viable commercial project. I'm not going to sell millions of them but even if we sell 20 we'll be laughing.'
Cardozo has worked with paramotors for ten years and has flown a paraglider over Mt Everest with Bear Grylls. Cardozo's genius has been to create the SkyCar using existing technology on a relatively small budget of around £100,000. 'We've evolved it to be lighter and more powerful,' Cardozo adds. 'The hardest parts are the transmissions system and the wing. Anything to do with the fabric, or the contour, or the ribs on the wing can take the car from stable to uncontrollable.'
It could be very popular: when Cardozo and Laughton were conducting practice flights at Dunsfold airfield in Surrey, an executive producer from the James Bond films turned up to ask about the possibility of a SkyCar appearing in one of the next 007 films. There have also been phone calls from Saudi Arabia asking how much it would cost to have a SkyCar built and delivered. The price is likely to be more than £50,000.
After landing on the runway at Ceuta, Laughton was surrounded by Spanish soldiers, who immediately confiscated his passport. 'They released me quickly, but then I spent eight hours at the Moroccan border,' says Laughton. Unsure whether it was a car or a plane, Moroccan officials refused the team entry and they returned to Spain on the ferry. 'It was very funny when the staff on the ferry realised I was the same guy who had flown over them earlier in the day.'
Later that night, the SkyCar crew removed the fan motor from the back of the car to make it look less like a flying machine. They took a ferry back to Morocco and sneaked across the border near Tangiers to continue their journey to Timbuktu.
Unfortunately, when the team arrived in Merzouga it was too windy to fly over the dunes and the wing was ripped on jagged rocks when they attempted to take off. That's where the back-up team came in.
'It's like a six-week Scrapheap Challenge,' says Kilner. 'We carry cutting-edge technology with us in the trucks to keep going till Timbuktu.'
There is a 24-ton MAN 8x8 Dakar assistance truck, an ex-German Army Mercedes Unimog towing truck, two Toyota Land Cruisers and three KTM dirt bikes used for scouting the route ahead. Tim Maw, the expedition's deputy leader, is biking the whole way. He has already been shot at - at an advance campsite ahead of the main party in Morocco - and the rest of the trip promises to be just as dangerous as they aim to travel through the Empty Quarter of the Sahara.
They have to travel huge distances, across minefields in Mauritania and then through areas around the Mali border where the Tuareg rebellion still flares up. Worse still, there have been reports of Al-Qaeda camps north-west of Timbuktu.
'There is a significant kidnap threat in Mali... so we have to be very careful,' Maw says. 'We don't want anyone knowing our route.'
The plan is to fly the SkyCar whenever they can, landing in African villages to distribute footballs on behalf of Alive And Kicking.
Right now, the SkyCar is in the barren Sahara Empty Quarter hoping to reach Timbuktu by next week. Having come this far, the team are confident they will make it. As Doc says in Back To The Future: 'where they're going, they don't need roads.'
• For more information, go to skycarexpedition.com or aliveandkicking.org.uk.
http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/home/mosl ... d-fly.html
(The Skycar website has only been updated to the 19th, however.)
Number of mad engineers who claim to have built flying cars: countless. Number of mad engineers who've actually succeeded: one. Meet the ex-SAS man who is making a 4,000-mile, 42-day journey by land and air from London to Timbuktu in the world's first bio-fuelled flying car ...
By Charlie Norton
Last updated at 10:00 PM on 21st February 2009
The wind is a little gusty but otherwise it's an unremarkable January morning on the military base in Ceuta, the Spanish enclave at the northern tip of Morocco. The guards are smoking cigarettes, drinking hot chocolate and discussing the weekend's football fixtures. Occasionally, one peers out across the Strait of Gibraltar at the passing warships, tankers and mega yachts cruising in and out of the Mediterranean.
Suddenly a 'pan-pan call', or safety alert, comes over the radio. From the excited shrieking, the guards can tell that something is seriously wrong, but the voice isn't Spanish, it's English. The man insists he is 'coming in to land' but the grey sky appears empty.
Twenty minutes later, a giant mechanical bug looms out of the clouds and starts to nosedive towards the narrow isthmus. It's a bright blue dune buggy, swinging beneath a 452-square-foot canopy and heading towards the base at 70mph, buzzing the oil storage tanks and the local houses. By now, the whole military complex is alive with people staring up at the sky. The 'flying car' looks dangerously out of control, but just as it seems to be missing the airstrip altogether, the pilot cuts the throttle and violently jack-knifes into the runway, involuntarily head-butting the windscreen as the machine comes to a halt.
As the startled Spanish soldiers race down the runway to detain the intruder, a wind-burned Englishman in a flying suit leaps from the car and starts jumping up and down like he's scored the winner in the FA Cup final. In fact, he has just flown from Tarifa in southern Spain across the Strait of Gibraltar on surely one of the first landmark adventures of the 21st century. He's piloted a prototype flying car - the first roadworthy vehicle to take to the skies.
Of course, the car he's just landed doesn't look like most people's idea of a flying car - this is not the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang of childhood dreams. It's called the SkyCar, and it's a souped-up buggy with a giant paraglider wing. It's the latest development in paramotor (powered paraglider) technology. The car, weighing nearly half a ton, is the heaviest object ever to be carried under such a wing. A fan motor drives it forward and the wing takes it up to a maximum height of 15,000ft. The buggy itself is a modified Rage Motorsport off-roader. It's four-wheel-drive and powered by a 140bhp Yamaha R1 superbike engine that's been converted to run on bioethanol.
The SkyCar's maverick pilot is the gentleman adventurer Neil Laughton, an ex-Royal Marine and SAS soldier who at 45 still has a nose for derring-do. One of his previous expeditions was the Seven Summits challenge (climbing seven peaks in seven continents, including Mt Everest).
The two-seater flying dune buggy was built by Giles Cardozo, 29, whom Laughton affectionately refers to as the 'boy genius'. Cardozo is his wing man and co-pilot later on the trip. The self-taught engineer pieced together the SkyCar in his Dorset barn. As Cardozo says, 'it's a beast of a dune buggy'.
It's rapid, too, and can accelerate from 0-60mph in 4.5 seconds - as quick as a supercar. When I get to ride in it later on the sand at Merzouga, Morocco, it feels very small and compact with a low centre of gravity.
It's a zippy ride - like a powerful go-kart - with a top speed of 110mph.
To fly, you unpack the nylon wing from the boot and unfurl it to the rear, then flick the transmission system mode from 'Road' to 'Fan'. To drive the car on roads, you sit on the rightand use the pedals as usual; in flight mode youpilot it on the left-hand side using a throttle in your left hand and two foot pedals.
The fan propels the car forward, inflating the wing and giving it enough lift to take off. The SkyCar can launch from any field or airstrip 600ft or longer in length.
'It's easy to fly,' says Cardozo. 'On the left hand you work the throttle to accelerate and to take it up and down, and your feet control the lines to alter the wing's shape [which in turn controls the steering]. It has a range of 180 miles and is designed to fly at an altitude of 2,000-3,000ft.' In the event of a catastrophic wing failure, a reserve parachute would be deployed to bring the car and pilot down to Earth.
Cardozo and Laughton are making the 4,000-mile, 42-day journey by land and air from London through France, Spain, Morocco, Western Sahara, Mauritania and Mali to Timbuktu on the edge of the Sahara Desert both to publicise the car and raise money for the charity Alive And Kicking. They are accompanied by a 12-strong entourage of support crew in trucks, Land Cruisers and motorbikes, and have the backing of explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes. 'We wanted to test the car on a great adventure and raise money for charity so we decided to drive and fly to an almost magical place,' Laughton says.
Toby Kilner, expert mechanic on the trip and regular on Scrapheap Challenge, says: 'We have been dabbling with the unknown - it's like flying to the Moon.'
The initial flights were fraught with problems. Tarifa was chosen as the jumping off point because of its favourable winds, but a practice flight led to a crash into shallow waves on the beach. Three days later, they were primed to try again as the wind reached an acceptable 30mph. This time, Laughton used his military connections to contact the Royal Navy, which positioned HMS Sabre on rescue duty while a Channel 4 film crew were ready to fly alongside in a chopper.
At 10am on January 29, the SkyCar raced down Tarifa beach, took off and swirled into the sky. Laughton made it up to 50ft but couldn't go higher. 'It was unflyable. I was swinging around like a monkey and I knew I was going to crash,' he says. 'I heaved myself out of my seat as quickly as I could and crouched on the side ready to jump.'
Then all of a sudden his luck changed. A gust hit the wing and spun the car round, in the direction of the beach. 'I realised I had a chance, so I leapt back in the seat and controlled it to the shore, landing on the beach. I was relieved to be alive, but I put my head in my hands, thinking the dream might be over.'
Cardozo ran up to the SkyCar, 'as white as a sheet'. The pair trimmed the wing a couple of centimetres to speed up the ascent. An hour later, they decided to make one last attempt.
'My adrenaline was really pumping. I was frightened but very focused,' says Laughton. 'The take-off is always a real buttock-clencher but I held my breath and I was away again.' This time the car rose up and ascended all the way to 1,000ft.
With height comes security, as you have more time to deploy the emergency canopy or correct the direction should anything go wrong. 'I felt very relaxed up there just below the cloud line, flying over ships and ferries,' says Laughton, 'and I started cruising without a problem. I had a moment of peaceful bliss above the sea.
'It's incredible to fly and actually very simple. It's surreal when you first take off, suddenly being in a car up in the air. I had to force myself to stop playing with the steering wheel when airborne.'
But the serene moment didn't last for long. 'I got a call on the radio saying I couldn't land at the private landing site in Morocco because of a military exercise, so that's when I made the distress call to Ceuta.'
Then the GPS system stopped working. 'I had to navigate blind as I came in to the tip of Africa. I knew to head to the harbour where the ships were coming in, and then I was over buildings, a children's school and some pylons. I could see the airstrip surrounded by water on three sides and buildings on the other. It was a very tough place to land. I nosedived in, nearly misjudged it and came in with an ungainly slam-dunk - a crash landing really. The steering column pin sheared off, the chassis bent, a rear tyre burst and I whacked my head into the windscreen and smashed it. :shock: But it was a huge relief and a real pleasure - I knew no one had done this before. It was a real first.'
He had travelled just over 12 miles at a speed of 56 knots during a 25-minute flight. And he had been very lucky to make it. As mechanic Kilner says: 'When he was coming in to land I was very scared. I only gave him a 20 per cent chance of survival if he hit the water. But Neil's got balls the size of coconuts.' Laughton briefly had time to call his wife in Oxfordshire, saying, 'Darling, I've made it, but now I've got to go - the Spanish military are after me.' 8)
The SkyCar project has been beset with bureaucratic problems since the start in London a month ago. After a media bonanza in front of the world's press in Knightsbridge, the expedition team were chased by aviation authorities through England and France. They were a victim of their own PR - everyone seemed to know from the media coverage that they were not yet legal to fly.
Such was the confusion over how to categorise the unusual flying machine that the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) had refused to grant any permits. The car is road legal but in flight mode it has the officials scratching their heads. Is it a plane, a microlite or something else? :?
In the end, the team stuck mostly to roads through England, France and Spain, before launching the car from Tarifa.
......
But nobody has yet built a high-performance car that flies and managed to put it on the market. This might be because much research and money has been put into making a car with wings like a plane. Cardozo's machine is definitely a car that flies - but it does so suspended beneath a wing.
The project has always been close to Cardozo's heart. 'It was my boyhood dream to build a flying car,' he says. 'But this is also a viable commercial project. I'm not going to sell millions of them but even if we sell 20 we'll be laughing.'
Cardozo has worked with paramotors for ten years and has flown a paraglider over Mt Everest with Bear Grylls. Cardozo's genius has been to create the SkyCar using existing technology on a relatively small budget of around £100,000. 'We've evolved it to be lighter and more powerful,' Cardozo adds. 'The hardest parts are the transmissions system and the wing. Anything to do with the fabric, or the contour, or the ribs on the wing can take the car from stable to uncontrollable.'
It could be very popular: when Cardozo and Laughton were conducting practice flights at Dunsfold airfield in Surrey, an executive producer from the James Bond films turned up to ask about the possibility of a SkyCar appearing in one of the next 007 films. There have also been phone calls from Saudi Arabia asking how much it would cost to have a SkyCar built and delivered. The price is likely to be more than £50,000.
After landing on the runway at Ceuta, Laughton was surrounded by Spanish soldiers, who immediately confiscated his passport. 'They released me quickly, but then I spent eight hours at the Moroccan border,' says Laughton. Unsure whether it was a car or a plane, Moroccan officials refused the team entry and they returned to Spain on the ferry. 'It was very funny when the staff on the ferry realised I was the same guy who had flown over them earlier in the day.'
Later that night, the SkyCar crew removed the fan motor from the back of the car to make it look less like a flying machine. They took a ferry back to Morocco and sneaked across the border near Tangiers to continue their journey to Timbuktu.
Unfortunately, when the team arrived in Merzouga it was too windy to fly over the dunes and the wing was ripped on jagged rocks when they attempted to take off. That's where the back-up team came in.
'It's like a six-week Scrapheap Challenge,' says Kilner. 'We carry cutting-edge technology with us in the trucks to keep going till Timbuktu.'
There is a 24-ton MAN 8x8 Dakar assistance truck, an ex-German Army Mercedes Unimog towing truck, two Toyota Land Cruisers and three KTM dirt bikes used for scouting the route ahead. Tim Maw, the expedition's deputy leader, is biking the whole way. He has already been shot at - at an advance campsite ahead of the main party in Morocco - and the rest of the trip promises to be just as dangerous as they aim to travel through the Empty Quarter of the Sahara.
They have to travel huge distances, across minefields in Mauritania and then through areas around the Mali border where the Tuareg rebellion still flares up. Worse still, there have been reports of Al-Qaeda camps north-west of Timbuktu.
'There is a significant kidnap threat in Mali... so we have to be very careful,' Maw says. 'We don't want anyone knowing our route.'
The plan is to fly the SkyCar whenever they can, landing in African villages to distribute footballs on behalf of Alive And Kicking.
Right now, the SkyCar is in the barren Sahara Empty Quarter hoping to reach Timbuktu by next week. Having come this far, the team are confident they will make it. As Doc says in Back To The Future: 'where they're going, they don't need roads.'
• For more information, go to skycarexpedition.com or aliveandkicking.org.uk.
http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/home/mosl ... d-fly.html
(The Skycar website has only been updated to the 19th, however.)
ramonmercado
CyberPunk
- Joined
- Aug 19, 2003
- Messages
- 58,202
- Location
- Eblana
- Joined
- Aug 7, 2001
- Messages
- 54,631
Could be sooner...trevp66 said:
Terrafugia Transition 'flying car' gets go-ahead from US air authorities
The Terrafugia Transition, a light aircraft that can convert into a road-legal automobile, is to go into production after being given a special weight exemption by the US Federal Aviation Administration.
By Tom Chivers
Published: 12:56PM BST 29 Jun 2010
The Transition was designed as a "light sport" aircraft, the smallest kind of private aeroplane under FAA classification, with a maximum weight of 1,320lb. But the manufacturers found it impossible to fit the safety features - airbags, crumple zones and roll cage, for instance - that are required for road vehicles into that weight.
Uniquely, however, the FAA has granted the Transition an exemption - allowing it to be classified as a light sport aircraft despite being 120lb over the limit.
Light sport aircraft licences require just 20 hours' flying time, making them much easier to obtain than full private licences.
The two-seater Transition can use its front-wheel drive on roads at ordinary highway speeds, with wings folded, at a respectable 30 miles per gallon. Once it has arrived at a suitable take-off spot - an airport, or adequately sized piece of flat private land - it can fold down the wings, engage its rear-facing propellor, and take off. The folding wings are electrically powered.
Its cruising speed in the air is 115mph, it has a range of 460 miles, and it can carry 450lb. It requires a 1,700-foot (one-third of a mile) runway to take off and can fit in a standard garage.
Terrafugia says that one of the major advantages of the Transition over ordinary light aircraft is safety - in the event of inclement weather, it can simply drive home instead of either being grounded or flying in unsafe conditions.
The company says that 70 people have ordered the car, leaving a $10,000 (£6,650) deposit each. The car is expected to retail at $194,000 (£129,000). Deposits are held in escrow, meaning that should the company go bankrupt before delivery, the money will be refunded.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/new ... ities.html
I'm not sure where my nearest 1/3mile runway is, or for that matter, any destination I might go to that has a runway near it. This "terrafugia" vehicle seems aimed squarely at people that already have flight experience, and access to airfield facilities etc.
I would expect that most people who want the 'flying car' of science fiction are more interested in something like a mid-size family vehicle, able to STOL/VTOL from outside their house, even if living in a city miles from a runway. That is the type of configuration the DARPA challenge is apparently encouraging.
And the sooner the better IMO.
I would expect that most people who want the 'flying car' of science fiction are more interested in something like a mid-size family vehicle, able to STOL/VTOL from outside their house, even if living in a city miles from a runway. That is the type of configuration the DARPA challenge is apparently encouraging.
And the sooner the better IMO.
Timble2
Imaginary Person
- Joined
- Feb 9, 2003
- Messages
- 6,047
- Location
- In a Liminal Zone
That's not a flying car, it's another of those light aircraft/car hybrids that they've been trying for the last 50 years or more. A proper flying car would be something like the ones in Blade Runner,, or the Jetsons..., or even those flying VW Camper vans in Doctor Who...
- Joined
- Aug 7, 2001
- Messages
- 54,631
...could be later
'Flying car' Terrafugia Transition redesigned and delayed
The Terrafugia Transition, the vehicle billed as the first road-legal flying car, has been redesigned, and its delivery date put back.
By Tom Chivers
Published: 12:17PM BST 05 Aug 2010
The car, which flew for the first time last year, has lost 90lb of useful payload, down from 550lb to 460lb. This means that with a full tank of fuel (120lb) it can carry just 330lb - 23 stone - including pilot, passenger and luggage. It has, however, gained an emergency parachute, meaning that it can land safely even if its wings were to fall off.
Its "canard" nose-plane has been lost, while its old single vertical tailplane has been swapped for twin booms with two fins.
According to Terrafugia, the redesign is in response to "lessons learned" in the car's first "proof of concept" flight in March 2009, and has included essential road-safety equipment.
The vehicle was originally intended to be delivered last year. However, the redesign - its second - has put it back, and Terrafugia say that it is now expected in late 2011. Lewis Page, an analyst at the technology site The Register, fears that the delay could be longer, and that incurred costs could even stop the project altogether.
In June this year the Transition received a significant boost when the Federal Aviation Administration allowed it to qualify as a "light sport" aircraft, despite it being 110lb above the weight limit for that class. This allows pilots to qualify for it after just 20 hours' flying time, significantly less than for a standard private pilot's licence.
It was over the weight limit because, unlike ordinary aircraft, it has to meet road safety standards in order to be road-legal in the US. To do so, it has energy-absorbing crumple zones and a rigid roll cage around the pilot and passenger seats, meaning it meets the requirements of the National Hghway and Traffic Safety Administration.
The wings can be folded automatically when on the ground, allowing pilots simply to drive home if the weather is bad, and the vehicle can be stored in an ordinary garage. It is expected to retail at $194,000 (£129,000), and would-be owners can place a $10,000 (£6,650) deposit to reserve one. Deposits are held in escrow, meaning that should the company go bankrupt before delivery, the money will be refunded.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/792 ... layed.html
(with new photos)
'Flying car' Terrafugia Transition redesigned and delayed
The Terrafugia Transition, the vehicle billed as the first road-legal flying car, has been redesigned, and its delivery date put back.
By Tom Chivers
Published: 12:17PM BST 05 Aug 2010
The car, which flew for the first time last year, has lost 90lb of useful payload, down from 550lb to 460lb. This means that with a full tank of fuel (120lb) it can carry just 330lb - 23 stone - including pilot, passenger and luggage. It has, however, gained an emergency parachute, meaning that it can land safely even if its wings were to fall off.
Its "canard" nose-plane has been lost, while its old single vertical tailplane has been swapped for twin booms with two fins.
According to Terrafugia, the redesign is in response to "lessons learned" in the car's first "proof of concept" flight in March 2009, and has included essential road-safety equipment.
The vehicle was originally intended to be delivered last year. However, the redesign - its second - has put it back, and Terrafugia say that it is now expected in late 2011. Lewis Page, an analyst at the technology site The Register, fears that the delay could be longer, and that incurred costs could even stop the project altogether.
In June this year the Transition received a significant boost when the Federal Aviation Administration allowed it to qualify as a "light sport" aircraft, despite it being 110lb above the weight limit for that class. This allows pilots to qualify for it after just 20 hours' flying time, significantly less than for a standard private pilot's licence.
It was over the weight limit because, unlike ordinary aircraft, it has to meet road safety standards in order to be road-legal in the US. To do so, it has energy-absorbing crumple zones and a rigid roll cage around the pilot and passenger seats, meaning it meets the requirements of the National Hghway and Traffic Safety Administration.
The wings can be folded automatically when on the ground, allowing pilots simply to drive home if the weather is bad, and the vehicle can be stored in an ordinary garage. It is expected to retail at $194,000 (£129,000), and would-be owners can place a $10,000 (£6,650) deposit to reserve one. Deposits are held in escrow, meaning that should the company go bankrupt before delivery, the money will be refunded.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/792 ... layed.html
(with new photos)
