The first flying cars are due to hit the market next year. What kind of impact do you think this will have on our future?

None.

couldn't see the medium; can't reallt answer this

Well, it was just an audio file. NPR's podcast of the Discovery Now spot from March 24th.

The things as of now are too expensive for most people, $194,000 apiece. But if enough rich folks buy 'em to make mass production cost effective, they could catch on. My hope is that eventually there will be enough of them around so we could think about unpaving a lot of the landscape that is currently under tons of asphalt and concrete.

I think this is cool. There are far too many of 'em on the streets these days.

I don't think we would unpave them. I think a lot of road users would just enjoy the extra space.

More deaths, in the air and on the ground.

I'm still waiting for my jetpack...

You and me both!

I wonder if they will make that bubbly noise, like from the Jetsons.

Gee cars that fly how cool they will be hot

> I wonder if they will make that bubbly noise,
> like from the Jetsons.

Should I be ashamed to admit that I still watch that show?

What kind of impact do I think this will have on our future? I think there will be a lot more impacts taking place in the air.

A flying car will hit the market next year, sending groceries and shoppers scattering in all directions.

I man-made mayhem.

Meet George Jetson...
Jane, his wife...

People will go further into debt, because people are stupid and buy crap they want, but don't necessarily need. People tend to buy gadgets because they think it makes them 'cool' and 'popular' and want to be seen as 'being up with the Joneses'.

Anyway, Caractacus Potts beat them to it some time ago, with Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

> People will go further into debt, because
> people are stupid and buy crap they want,
> but don't necessarily need. People tend
> to buy gadgets because they think it makes
> them 'cool' and 'popular' and want to be
> seen as 'being up with the Joneses'.
>

That may be true for a while. I'm looking further into the future than that though. I hope we will get around to unpaving the landscape eventually. I would hate to see this planet go the way of Trantor in Asimov's Foundation Trilogy.

Oh....yay........the Jettson's are here.

No impact at all. They would cost more than planes, have less range, and still be required to take off and land at airports to keep air traffic straight.

I used to design plane cars when I was kid on paper. Now I'm doing it more for real, building a flying moped, specifically with a solar paraglider. I've determined that airfoil theory is flawed, and my own primitive wind tunnel tests on a new design to prove such appear to confirm this.

I'd like to see the pavement go too, but there are much better ways to do it besides increasing fuel consumption for lift. Jets are aleady 7% of our fuel usage. Aerial trains were my idea (suspended from the same high tension lines used for the jet-stream wind power turbines). Really though I'd make each skyscraper it's own self contained community, with no reason to leave except to bicycle amongst the migrating animals or vacation to other communities or geographies.

I'm working on a solar paraglider though that fits in a backpack and can fly anwhere, not just rare updraft locations. No airport or even a license required for those.

Cool. Those will probably be less expensive than those flying cars too. Do you really think solar energy alone would provide enough power though? Seems like the mass of the collectors would be a limiting factor there.

> No impact at all. They would cost more than planes, have less range,
> and still be required to take off and land at airports to keep air
> traffic straight.
>

The cost and range problems would be only temporary problems. If they prove popular enough, mass production and design research will bring the costs down and improve range and fuel efficiency, much as the current automobile has evolved. Every new technology starts out expensive at first. When DVD players first came out, they were about $300 apiece. Today you can pick one up anywhere for about $40.00. Not that I'm comparing DVD players to cars. Just giving an example of the evolution of technology. The Discovery Now spot did not say anything about airports. Of course, some smooth empty stretches of pavement would be necessary for take-off and landing, but need not be limited strictly to runways.

Okay, Wikipedia actually has an article on flying cars that mentions the Terrafugia Transition:

Terrafugia, a private company founded by MIT graduates, is developing the Transition,[3] a roadable aircraft that the company describes as a "Personal Air Vehicle". The aircraft can fold its wings in 30 seconds and drive the front wheels, enabling it to operate as a traditional road vehicle and as a general aviation aeroplane. The Transition "Personal Air Vehicle" is expected to be released to customers in late 2011. An operational prototype was displayed at Oshkosh in 2008[4] and its first flight occurred on 2009-03-05.[5] The estimated purchase price is $194,000. Owners will drive the car from their garage to an airport where they will then be able to fly within a range of 100 mi (160 km) to 500 mi (800 km). It will carry two people plus luggage and its Rotax 912S engine operates on a single tank of premium unleaded gas.[6]

And yes Kristal, you are right. You have to drive the thing to an airport to take off. Dang! It's gonna be a while yet before the Jetsons arrive on the scene.

Ha! Found some video of the thing too: http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/ind...

People have already succeeded using photovoltaics to run electric gliders. I'm going way more efficient, directly converting heat to lift. Every square yard on a sunny day has more than a horsepower of power (550 lbs/ft/sec). A 200 pound person (200lb*9.8ft/sec^2) requires only 3.6 square yards if done efficiently to lift. A typical paraglider has 30-50 square yards, more than ample to deal with inefficiencies.

I think I might even make it for under $400.

Motorized paragliders typically carry 20-30 HP motors which weigh another 75 lbs.

I don't want to go into more detail, hoping to increase my odds of being the first to achieve it. I've easily been beat to 1200 such promising inventions already. Just last weex I discovered my variable torque DC engine for doing fast/strong electric bikes without a transmission is already on the market. Most of the stuff I see in my life like music mixing software, count-down cross walks, and such is stuff I thought up years earlier.

By this time I've figured out stuff like superconductor high-tension power lines knit on the fly with nanotech and gamma-hologram rays, or even Star-Trek teleporters which phase particles of matter/anti-matter.

Designing airfoils is my latest exciting engineering study. So much more is happening there with vortices, oscillations, and such then one would have imagined.

I think the flying carpets of myths already had the tech down, judging by descriptions of King Solomon's carpet and such.

I caught your other two comments too.

Really, any plane capable of taxiing down the runway was a flying car. Planes on aircraft carriers had folding wings.

I already have an electric engine and propeller for the conversion I'm doing with my tandem mountain bike.

Alas, if everyone started flying, there might be airports every two miles, but air traffic requirements would be so tight that it would be done with computers, and flying would generally be less interesting than sitting in freeway traffic is now.

You're right though, costs would keep going down, and it probably is in fact inevitably how most travel will happen.

If you think having a boulevard half a block away sucks, imagine them filling those boulevards with apartment buildings and having the boulevards overhead, with the occasional car crashing through someone's roof on a regular basis.

I'd prefer myself that cars had large TV's and drove on autopilot through tunnels (akin to the old drive-in theaters), with forests overhead, between sky-scraper city-states.

I'm concerned myself with my solar paraglider cruising up the california beaches on vacations and having to deal with traffic control on all the military and missle bases along the way.

Do I know how to kill a dream or what?

> Really, any plane capable of taxiing down the runway was a flying
> car. Planes on aircraft carriers had folding wings.

Yes, they do. But you can't fit those suckers in a garage. I know, I was on an aircraft carrier for a while and saw 'em up close and personal.

> If you think having a boulevard half a block away sucks, imagine them
> filling those boulevards with apartment buildings and having the boulevards
> overhead, with the occasional car crashing through someone's roof
> on a regular basis.
>

Well, it's that I think having a boulevard nearby sucks so much. It's just that there're so many of them. I don't mind living in a city. In fact, I can pretty much make myself at home in just about any environment, including on the highways themselves. It's just that I think there should be more unspoiled wilderness than there is. I noticed there are some interesting new concepts in the way of green architecture taking shape now too, homes engineered in such a way as to minimize needs such as artificial heat and light. Even some interesting ideas in the handling of waste such as sewage. I like those ideas and hope they catch on too.

> I'm concerned myself with my solar paraglider cruising up the california
> beaches on vacations and having to deal with traffic control on all
> the military and missle bases along the way.
>

Yeah you would be kind of threading needle in that mess around LA, Long Beach and San Pedro, wouldn't you?

> Do I know how to kill a dream or what?

Nah. You can't kill the dream, only the dreamer. But the dream lives on! No, human beings can find ways to fill their needs with less negative impact on the environment. For all the talk about nature vs. man-made, the ultimate fact is that humans are part and parcel of nature as well. At least we are now gaining a better understanding of how we impact our environment and have started thinking about ways to reduce it or even mitigate it to some extent. Things might get worse before they get better, but they will get better.

Sewage could be combined with sun for excellent roof-top algae production for biomass.

Most old construction styles including adobe pueblos, thatched lodges, and scottish black houses were more green than what occurs now.

Some of my ancient house designs were half underground with skylights poking out.

I thought unobstructed longitudinal and latitudinal migratory green belts were a good idea, such that critters could travel from Canada to Mexico unimpeded if that's what they were meant to do. Bring back the bears and mountain lions. People annoy me who move into the periphery of developments in coyote territory, then push campaigns for coyote eradication when one eats their cat.

"Yeah you would be kind of threading needle in that mess around LA, Long Beach and San Pedro, wouldn't you?" - That's a separate mess of 3D air traffic map concerns. I'd just go in moped mode through such territory. No, it's the beautiful coastal territory Amtrak passes through like Vandenberg AFB, Andrews, Fort Hunter Liggett, and such. The military owns tons of lovely undeveloped restricted-airspace property. In terms of environmentalism, this has been as good a preservation thing as the national parks sometimes. I worry what will happen when places like Seaside are sold off.

Asphalt has done us a similar service, safeguarding strips of land we may need for farms with bike paths, overhead monorails, or desalination greenhouse canals someday. Steam was a groovy technology. That asphalt could be filled with steam generation for electrical generators (or steam tools again), if not just preheating our home water-heater supplies.

Us american humans drive everywhere and use fuel for every step of every process we do. The germans are willing to invent green new lifestyles. Americans only go as far being somewhat willing to buy greener products with sacrificing lifestyle.

I'm proud of those germans, inventing things like modern dirigibles and computer-kite assisted freighter ships (I think we should do the latter with trans-continental trains too).

Fortunately one piece of progress has been our increasing awareness of long-term comprehensive energy/environmental costs of solutions.

We still suffer from absurd stuff like sending Florida orange juice to California.

Although I would go much farther, taxing river polution, exotic hardwood depletion, and any other environmental tragedy that worked it's way into final products, Al Gore definitely had the right idea simply taxing fuel use, as found it's way into anything from avocados to guitars or computer chips. Ultimately the cost to continuing human life of any process could be estimated, and people who buy into our planets destruction should pay for (possibly remedying) it.

One state has rightfully outlawed short-lived photovoltaics as being sold as environmental energy alternatives.

The Heartland Institute produces major anti-environmental BS propoganda to keep the oil-exec conservatives confident in their positions. Unfortunately, while their half-truth conclusions are BS, the science they cite for their 'half' of the story is actually true.

One energy system I invented was the tidal aqueduct. Most tidal systems are only useful half-time at best (in the tank drainage or settling phase). I realized the tides head north up the coast, and could more continuously be tapped with aqueducts between key ports like San Diego, LA, and SF. {They could also double as desalination evaporators for inland agriculture.} That's a huge investment, and the power companies have more profit to gain from selling increasingly rare commodities than providing cheap power (over the span of a century or two).

Living in LA, I wouldn't mind the few people who choose to paraglide over using solar electric carts or the express-train busses, but I wouldn't want flying cars in town.

If our population keeps growing, we are likely to supplement our interstate highways with wind-turbine powered ocean highways.

Besides having to overcome gravity, one reason jets are so inefficient (compared to internal combustion) is that they only use the heat-expansion half of the power available. I invented a 6-cycle combustion moter which adds two steam strokes for further lost energy extraction. It appears three major car companies will be doing just that.

As I said about us americans not sacrificing life-style, cars are still no more fuel efficient than the Model-T. By 1980 we had 55 MPG VW Rabbit Diesels (people seem to have forgotten this). I thought 70's cars were more than adequate, yet instead of adding fuel economy, we just keep adding horsepower. ..faster stop/starts rather than redesigning our street traffic to avoid changing speeds.

I hope Obabma gets us to build all that expensive long-term energy infrastructure while we still have the energy to do so.

If you're an investor, I recommend super-conductor power-line mfgrs (three exist now, subsidized by the DOE so far). If we run metro cars on inland state solar-wind energy, a LOT more electricity is going to have to be piped through existing electrical conduits and high tension towers.

If I were governer, I'd push legislation that all roofs require a percentage of gardening, skylights, or solar collector. I would also put a moratorium on all horizontal housing and highway sprawl, and any regional water importation increases. Colarado has the right self-sufficiency plans in that direction.

One idea I had for construction of my own palace was ceramic and stained-glass thermally insulated Lego-bricks fired in a solar parabola kiln. The more we can use solar directly as heat or mechanical the more efficient we are.

I lived in a turn of the century wood-shop which taught me a lot. It had tools like hand-cranked grinding wheels. The main thing that impressed me though is that each bench had a spinning shaft which powered all the bench tools, not an electic engine for each tool. You could drive the shafts with wind, then power generators, provide lighting, and charge batteries during non-workloads. You could add flywheel treadles if necessary.

Daylight savings time used to be about saving energy. It amazes me how places don't even have skylights.

Akin to the wood-shop, I've envisioned (The Matrix -like) VR gyms in which people wear hydraulic hinged suits (computers adjust load and resistance) which power a central hydraulic driven generator. People with their VR goggles would emulate together rowing canoes, building log-cabins, and such. With internet connectivity, you and a buddy in Argentina could emulate climbing Everest, assembling a space-station, or sieging a castle together, all the time doing exercises targetted to your body needs and powering the neighborhood. ..or we could scratch the VR and go back to actually gardening, walking, turning ceramics, and such.

The green cross code will be amended to Stop, Look, Listen, Duck.

Soon we'll all be living on the moon!

> Soon we'll all be living on the moon!

Then, in the year 2076, the Lunar Colonies will revolt and declare independence. Earth will move forces out to the Moon to regain control and Luna will commence bombing Earth with big rocks...

I can't wait! I'll be 103 years old, but by that time we'll all be immortal.

> I can't wait! I'll be 103 years old, but by that time we'll all be
> immortal.

Yeesh! I'll be 118! Well, my plan is to live 4-ever anyway, or else die in the attempt.

I would only want to live forever if my family and friends could live forever, too. I used to want to live forever, but it doesn't have the same appeal it used to.