The future of the flying car is finally arriving, a flying car, the AirCar, has completed a test flight between two airports in Slovakia, reports the BBC.
This wonderful development brought to us by Professor Stefan Klein (the article has a short video showing the car flying etc.) is not yet licensed to fly, and given the caution around aviation, such approval may be a long way off, but it is technically possible now, almost a century after the English Electric Wren which was seen as a rival to the emergent motor car. To think that within around 31 years, English Electric would build the Lightning is simply mind-boggling.
However, this fantastic development runs on a petrol engine, has an airborne range of c. 1,000 km (625 miles) and can cruise at 170km/h (c.106 mph), at 8,200 feet (pressurisation not an option at the moment it seems). Imagine the liberty of flight, in your garage, the horror of unrestricted travel, no speed cameras, the Left’s (and the State’s) hatred of mobility and autonomy will shine like the fiery pits of Hell.
Two passengers, provided that they don’t weigh more than 31 stone. Let physics limit your weight, not the government.
Dr Stephen Wright, senior research fellow in avionics and aircraft, at the University of the West of England, described the AirCar as “the lovechild of a Bugatti Veyron and a Cesna 172”.
but there is obviously a cautionary note:
“I have to admit that this looks really cool – but I’ve got a hundred questions about certification,” Dr Wright said.
“Anyone can make an aeroplane but the trick is making one that flies and flies and flies for the thick end of a million hours, with a person on board, without having an incident.
“I can’t wait to see the piece of paper that says this is safe to fly and safe to sell.”
With a 600 mile range, a self-fly/drive break on the Continent would be a breeze. Short-haul aviation is pointless in such a world, as are inflexible trains (HS2 etc.), even car hire. Bring it on.
Just you wait until someone invents reliable teleportation! You won’t find me flying around in one of these metal birds!
As for state control, I remember reading about someone in Los Angeles trying to build a flying car, and consoling people that they wouldn’t need to pilot- they could just type in the destination, and the on-board computer, communicating with some central control, would do the navigation.
As a pilot, this sounds like an invitation to mass tragedies. Flying any sort of a plane is not trivial, with many mechanical and weather-related risks to the occupants and everyone on the ground.
Now add in all the burden of controlled airspace, maintaining VMC and mass usage of such air-cars…let’s play dodgems at 200 MPH with people underneath.
If these things are ever to be feasible, they will need to be entirely automated: using both internal sensors and central control to achieve adequate separation and automatic abort to safe impact zones when failures are detected. And even then, people will fly them into CuNims and wonder why they get fried.
Now lets think about lawyers and product liability laws….
Like nuclear fusion, fuel cells, jet-packs, climate change… always coming soon but never arriving.
Next week – perpetual motion.
Tim the Coder
… and those swarms of Amazon delivery drones zipping about competing for airspace.
What Tim the Coder said.
If you manged to squeeze 1,000hp into a 172 all you’d get is a plane which could exceed VNE in a vertical climb…
In your dreams! Commercial aircraft typically manage into the tens of thousands, and a few light aircraft may get into 5 figures, but most of those will have crashed & been re-built many times. In any case, fatigue & corrosion is the usual determining factor. Even the B52’s the US military will (apparently) still be flying when they are 100 years old will have had extensive reworking, and won’t have anything like a million hours.
The main problem, if this thing takes off (sorry!) will not be the car/plane but the idiot in charge. Boy racers, drunk drivers,tailgaters, and the BMW versions where the indicators don’t work (or the driver has no idea what those little levers mean) will cause airborne chaos. Also, TfL installing floating traffic cones to rake up a couple of bob will be a certainty. Think I’ll stick with my Rusting Allaggro.
Like the public can be trusted to drive ground transportation. I want to be no where near the cities where the terrible drivers are both on the ground and airborne.
ROFL!
Not many of them around now:
https://www.howmanyleft.co.uk/?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=allegro
After all the time I spent developing a way of re-gassing the suspension units, I sometimes wish I’d kept my Maxi…
Totally agree with the expressions of caution. I don’t have flying experience, but I watch a lot of air crash investigation docs (!) and I think I have a fair idea of how dangerous it would be to have loads more amateur pilots in largely untried single-engine planes without much in the way of flight control and warning systems like in commercial planes. This’ll appeal to successful businesspeople who enjoy taking risks, so any socialists ought to approve of the likely consequences.
Also, I’ve never really understood why someone would want a car/plane mashup, except that the idea is kinda cool. But you get the worst of both worlds in terms of usability and performance. If you can afford to fly a private plane, surely it’s also possible just to rent a car at the other end, unless you’re in some remote area, in which case this kind of car/plane probably wouldn’t be suitable either for the airstrip or for the roads at the other end. It just seems like a way to make money (through VC) from gullible investors. If an idea hasn’t worked out for the best part of 100 years, there are probably good reasons to stop trying. Like the “Hyperloop”.
Since road cars have a usable life of only a few thousand hours (cared for exceptions, of course!), I think the reference to ‘millions of hours’ must be a fleet total: i.e thousands of aircars flying for thousands of hours, before some chump flies into a crane that wasn’t in the GPS, and crashes burning in a London street. Not that’d ever happen of course!
Or gets sucked into a wide-body turbofan, and gets sprayed over Slough.
Even in the US, where they have a far more relaxed attitude to home-build “experimental” aircraft, this sort of aviation remains a high skill and high risk endeavour.
And if completely robot-piloted, no human wheel nut, then… Oh! the hacking opportunities, oh yes, nurse!…..
Utter madness! We need to return to the days of 8mph horses and carriages. And even then, we need helmets! Big, thick ones!
Agree with all your points.
If all this could be done in some big test area where people could do this without appreciable risk to the general public, I’d be all for it. Fill yer boots. I live directly under a training route for F-15s, Typhoons, V-22s and other stuff, and I love it to bits and consider it a privilege to see them flying past at extremely low level. But I just don’t want some twat crashing into my bedroom in bad weather because he doesn’t know where he is or what the fuck he’s doing.
@Tim_The_Coder “Since road cars have a usable life of only a few thousand hours (cared for exceptions, of course!)”
Tens of thousands, don’t you mean? My (previous) Passat had about 180K miles on it and the avg mph hovered around 35mph. That’s about 5K hours or so.
On a side note, I bought a Crown Vic PI (Police Interceptor) that had close to half a million miles on the chassis and after a year sold it to a taxi company. I suspect it is still crabbing slightly sideways down the road….
-XC
Gadzooks, all Ye Prophets of Doom, fearful of the common man in a car (in the air). If starlings can avoid collisions in their fantastic murmurations, can we not also? Have you not seen wader smoke at some estuary in winter and wondered at the co-ordination?
We all know that there are bad drivers out there, usually just in front or just behind you, and yes, in my idle daydreams I believe I could solve the problem of all the inconsiderate motorists out there with a grill-mounted Lahti L-39 20mm rifle on semi-auto and licence to use it at my discretion, but this might not be universally acceptable. With GPS, and ‘skylanes’ there would be plenty of scope for use of these vehicles and a kind of designated landing zone with auto-guidance should prevent too many incidents, and yes, there might be a few Darwin Awards and unfortunate by-standers as natural selection takes effect and does its wonders, so I say persevere, and slip the surly bonds of Earth, and the altitude ceiling should keep them out of most pressurised aviation.
With its petrol engine, it should be good for up to 120,000 miles combined, aero engines are, I understand, somewhat more built for long runs at higher revs.
And there are not just foolish motorists out there, but also foolish pilots, as this mini-documentary narrating the chain of events when pilot high-jinks, joining the 41,000 feet club, led to a very short membership of that club.
@XC
Nope, I meant a few thousand hours. Your own experience backs this up: 180K miles in one car is very good indeed, yet you reckon that is just 5000 hours. One of the ‘well cared for’ exceptions. I did 230K in a Volvo, and it was mechanically good when the damned airbug electrics failed.
But most cars are built for 50-60K miles, so 2000 or 3000 hours tops, depending on the breaks.
And to refer to my point: 1 million hours is roughly continuous use for 100 years. Ho Ho Ho.
Mr Ed: You should look at an aviation map of SE England. Try almost any journey without an airspace infringment.
As I said, a centralised control and total autopilot would be essential. But that won’t save you from cranes, weather, or wake turbulence.
And a central computer system planning and controlling 30 million air cars… no trouble for the lot that gave us Test’n’Trace :).
And I was serious about the hacking opportunities, riches to be dreamt of.
Bother the “your files are encrypted, pay $1000 by bitcoin for the decrypt key”
How about “Pay $100K in the next 5 minutes or faceplant Wembley Stadium at 300 MPH”(*note). Deal or no deal?
Mmm, someone will make a TV show about it.
Note: Other high-profile targets are available.
Sure, but it’s not the birds I’m worried about. It’s the bird brained.
I’ve had more than a few birds think they could fly through my living room and gone full kilt into the patio doors. The net result was the dust imprint of a bird on the glass and usually a dead bird with a broken neck on the patio paving. So even those designed to fly can still make the occasional fatal mistake. As for cleaning up, it’s easy to throw the dead bird in the trash (or let next doors moggy run off with it) and wipe the dust off the patio doors.
It’s not quite so easy when a couple of hundred-weight (to a couple of tons) of metal, petrol and machinary comes crashing in through the roof because some bird brained CEO “Master of the Universe” has enough money to buy one of these toys, but not enough training and wherewithal to use it.
I mean, screw him, he’s dead from the moment of impact and it’s his choice to go bombing around in a machine where he has the illusion of control, but not the reality. The folks who didn’t ask for any of this are the family in the house that ends up being in the way of his terminal landing zone. Worse still the passengers of some flight from Alicante who encounter this idiot on their approach into Luton.
So, sure, I have no problem with them developing the technology and letting the rich kill themselves while using it, but as for letting these buggers fly around willy nilly? Nope. If they want to fly then they need to get a pilots license and do the hours proving they have some capability of still flying the damn thing when all the lights go out.
This thing’s been around for a decade. Its not like it hasn’t flown before. Nothing new here and no, you’re not going to see flying cars any time soon.
And that’s because no matter how safe and rugged you can make the thing, *normal idiots* that watch porn on their phones while driving will be behind the controls.
You simply do not want a thousand of these flying over your city.
And for the sorts of people who can afford the licensing in addition to the sheer space needed for taking off – they can afford a helicopter.
IMO, a self-driving ground car has far more utility than a flying one. And, if I’ve got the money, I’ll just let the self-driving car take me to the hangar for my private plane.
I think most rush hour car drivers have a hatred of mobility when I see them inching slowly along in vehicles totally inappropriate for their journeys.
Choosing a car, often a huge SUV, with 4 or more seats, only one of them occupied, is a certain way to guarantee congestion and delay every single morning and evening.
I cycle past and provide them with someone to blame for their plight.
There is zero chance of these technologies goes mass market.
The elites simply won’t allow it.
Look at our current direction of travel.
Between electric cars and energy costs, there will be a lot fewer people driving cars in 30 years time; flying cars will still be an eccentrics plaything.
TFW the Samizdata consensus is “regulate!”
(It’s sort of funny how this thread follows several other threads decrying safetyism in other forms. Don’t get me wrong – I’d shudder to see a ton of metal being piloted above me by most any of the people I know. But when our bright line becomes blurred by relying on “but my fears are more rational than yours”, we see again that libertarianism is more properly a trend than a position.)
bobby b
You may have found the acid test for libertarianism:
May I paraphrase you thus: “Everyone here’s a libertarian until (they fear) a car lands on their head” ? 🙂
Mr Ed/bobby b
Isn’t the essence of Libertarianism “..except where this infringes on the freedoms of others” ?
Crashing a ton of metal & fuel into their house and family at high speed is surely such an infringement?
Not a fan of government rules and licences in general, but here is quite a good example of where it, or something similar, is justified.
Another is spectrum allocation.
Or there’s anarchy.
T the C:
Crashing a virus (of some arguably nontrivial danger) onto someone’s head is not such an infringement?
(No, I’m not a masker or a quarantiner.)
But if we’re down to arguing, not the rightness or wrongness of bringing SOME measure of danger onto others, but the relative ranking of that danger (is it dangerous enough so that I personally think it’s significant), isn’t that like the old prostitute joke* of, we’ve established what you are, now we’re just haggling over price?
(* A: Will you sleep with me for a million dollars?
B: Sure.
A: How about for ten dollars?
B: No! I’m not a prostitute!
A: We’ve established what you are, now we’re just haggling over price.)
😉
(Mr. Ed, I think that sums it up nicely. We should only have ENOUGH state power.)
T the C (again):
I need to add: I’m not disagreeing with you. I’d regulate the flying cars heavily. I’d support spectrum allocation. I’d inspect meat. Etc.
I guess my point is that this space has been full of bald statements about how the state ought not be shutting down social interaction in the face of this virus, without much recognition that we don’t even know how dangerous the virus is. (Or rather, everyone knows, and everyone’s answer is different.)
I don’t need paper kites to be regulated. If they crash on me, I laugh. Not so much with flying cars crashing on my head. But, there is obviously some point in between kites and flying cars where the danger turns high enough so that we agree to regulate. (Small flying toasters?)
The discussion about the virus always seems to lack that component. If you believe that the virus is a killer (as many seem to do), then the state exercised proper power. If you think it’s a very limited danger, then the state overreached. But you cannot answer one question without first answering the other.
Tim t C
No, it is not an infringement of the freedoms of others, in law it is a trespass, to property or to the person.
Which raises the issue of whether a landowner owns the airspace above their land. In the UK, a statute has been passed to deem it not a trespass to overfly property above a certain altitude.
And indeed one of the big idiocies of strict libertarians is holding that damages would be an adequate remedy to a flying car landing on your head.
I don’t think it’s solely about risk. I’m reminded of Rylands v. Fletcher. The argument is basically that if someone does something unusual with their land/property, and something bad happens to someone else or their property, they’re liable. Whether correct or not, the point is that the unusual (or “new”) nature of the activity is important in that it plays a role, legally and psychologically, in how we view these things. It’s a kind of corollary to the “extraordinary claims” doctrine/dogma.
Us prophets of doom may well be overstating the general risk of these flying cars, but widespread adoption would fundamentally change my property/personal rights in that I would suddenly be subjected to a greater risk of injury/death or property damage when just lying asleep in bed. I think I therefore have a fundamental interest in saying no.
I’m not totally wedded to that argument, but there’s a more fundamental one that, arguably, my property rights ought to extend to the heavens, and that the government or others who use the airspace should be paying me a toll to use it, because of the real-though-slight inconvenience and attendant risk.
In a strictly libertarian world, there might be negotiation between property owners and flying car owners as to flight paths and so on. At some price point, people would be willing to accept the risk. But we’ve apparently decided that government controls navigable airspace, so a call for regulation is arguably an expression of what’s left of property rights in this area.
(Just seen Mr Ed has raised the airspace question too.)
Nobody’s discussed the libertarian angle on deploying surface-to-air home-defence missiles, however.
If you want to see the state’s attitude to flying cars look at drones. When radio controlled aircraft were just a hobby there were hardly any rules but now that anyone can buy a drone, there’s all sorts of regulations. I live four miles from an airbase (RAF Coningsby) and am even more restricted.
RF spectrum is a commons issue; there’s no sensible way to stop someone using it on any individual’s property but not their neighbour’s; delegating the management of it to our lackeys in Gov’t is therefore a sensible way forward. I suspect airspace is nearer that in management terms than preventing someone herding their cattle through your back garden…
I doubt the hardware will be the limiting factor. Have you seen how most people drive in a 2-D world? Imagine that stupidity, negligence, and incompetence translated to 3-D?
The insurance costs will be what kills the concept.
I join with those disappointed that so many see the problems as a problem rather than a very soluble problem. We have cars – and rules of the road and driving tests and laws on speeding and a lot more. Once upon a time (it does indeed seem like a fairy tale, though it was merely decades ago) we had less regulation and (as the price of not having some of those regulations) a higher road fatality rate. Many die each year so we can drive cars under our current regulatory regime. IIRC, several times that number died annually many decades ago so we could drive under an on-average less regulatory regime.
I have a relative who owns a light plane, has a flying license, has passed navigation tests, knows how to file a flight plan, etc. – and has to drive quite some distance to the airport where he keeps it (so also has a driving license). Other people have autogyros, powered hang-gliders – and of course drones. I expect it is in effect already current law that early adopters of this will have to have a flying license as well as a driving license. I can only hope (against the trend of the times – and of some in this thread) that their experience guides the way in evolving the law, not some fussy bureaucrat’s fear-filled anticipation of how terribly terribly dangerous it could be if not swiftly regulated out of existence.
Personal flying cars.
Because Segways worked out so well in already crowded arenas.
And space stations have ONLY had to move, because “space junk”, HOW many times?
The parking on the tarmac at Davos, and Sundance, is MISERABLE!
But with an eperienced pilot, like Harrison Ford……
Yes. And yes. Or John Denver.
@Niall Kilmartin,
I expect you realise this, but on the practical level, of course your relative would still have to drive to the airport, so I’m not sure what he’d be gaining by owning a flying car. He’d also need a rather big garage to park it in. But that’d be his choice.
Yes, but at least I can choose how I use the roads, and I don’t have to go to sleep at night right next to a road. Amateurs in planes flying willy-nilly is a different kind of problem, and I’m not even persuaded on a practical level. If it were a VTOL car/plane which had robust electronics to guide it to its destination and a well-tested and redundant power source, we could rule out a lot of the practical, mechanical and human factors, at which point it might start to look attractive. But at present it just seems like a pipe-dream fuelled by sci-fi, comics and boyish fantasies. And I’ll maintain that position until precisely the point when I can afford one of those things.
@Tim the Coder
Crashing a ton of metal & fuel into their house and family at high speed is surely such an infringement?
Sure, but so is flying your car over my property without my permission, or without following the rules I set up. I, for example, think the rules of the road (on the ground) can perfectly well be justified since the government owns the roads. Were the roads, or some of them, privately owned, it would be perfectly legitimate for the private owner to set the rules and demand, with enforcement, that they be obeyed. As with most things, chaos in the air would reign only because the air is treated as a public space.
Another is spectrum allocation. Or there’s anarchy.
I don’t agree. The solution to spectrum allocation is simple — privatize the spectrum. If it was in private ownership it would be used in a vastly more efficient way. Instead there are vast swaths of spectrum massively underused, and innovation in wireless is held back by FCC regulation.
(BTW, completely OT, the evolution of the spectrum is why I believe that SETI is a complete waste of time. SETI looks to remote stars to see their radio emissions and see if they contain a signal, but as spectrum use evolves it does so in two ways: it decreases in transmission power, and it squeezes all the entropy out of the signal to maximize bandwidth. So in any advanced civilization using radio the signals would be both FAR too low power to be detected, and even if they were, they would simply look like random noise. Unless a civilization was specifically sending out a “Hello we are here” signal they simply would not be identifiable.)
This seems apt.
Good post and good comments.
Nothing to add.
@Fraser Orr
“The solution to spectrum allocation is simple — privatize the spectrum”
Exactly my point.
Option 1: Government control allocates/sells spectrum to private owners, and provides government sponsored gunmen to enforce said allocation
Option 2: Whoever has/seizes any spectrum defends it with their own gunmen. Anarchy.
If you wish to avoid international anarchy, you must have some central coordination and control, with means to enforce your will.
Libertarianism without limits is the anarchy of the gunman.
I would agree there is much inefficiency in spectrum allocation, but anyone has their biases, and who’s to say my biases are right?
Amateur Radio? Mere hobbyists? Yet worldwide this is accepted as valid for building a technical skill of value to the community, and providing an emergency communication net. The military? Kumbyah! Radio Astronomers, pah! Heating food!!!!!!!!
The first UK mobile telephony allocations were awarded by a “beauty contest” at nominal cost: which bidders would best create a thriving mobile telephony business for the country’s benefit?
Later, Gordon Brown sold 3G spectrum on the “most dosh I can get to piss up the wall”, and set back 3G rollout by 5 years.
Who was the most wise?
We can argue about the criteria, but without such criteria, the biggest transmitter wins, and any mobile station, without the megawatts, including ambulances, can go hang.
And that’s before the neighbours start complaining with their armies…
So some control and enforcement is essential, and the highest bidder isn’t necessarily a good idea…
But back to the aircars. There are only 3 options:
1. Existing rules, PPL. VMC. Product liability. CofA, DA on every flight, Result: nothingburger. This is the existing position.
2. Anarchy. Anyone can go, crash into other traffic, get caught in low cloud, crash into buildings, commercial jet liners, politicians, kill other people. Like the V1’s, but without a war. Landowners start suitable AAA defence.
3. Total automation. All flights under central robot control with full traffic/airspace avoidance (still loads of crashing from adverse weather and mechanical failures).
Always assuming such a gargantuan system could operate correctly and not be hacked. And the result: Big Brother pre-approves every flight.
Only Option 1 is Libertarian I think.
And on option 3, how long after the crash of such a robot-car into Mr Opposition Politician’s house will it be claimed to have been a government assassination?
And how would you know it was not?
The Jetsons go to Arkansas and meet Hillary?….
Wouldn’t it be libertarian(ish) to set up flight rules and an ATC system (on the theory that this is one of those things we do better en masse than individually) while at the same time working feverishly to ensure that any exercise of government power is indeed done for the public good and not for the favored bidder or the politician’s campaign funds or “friends”?
To me, one major libertarian position ought to be the constant and ruthless enforcement of the agent/principal relationship in government. The agent works only for the principal’s benefit. To accomplish some task most efficiently AND eliminate the waste and friction of theft of power and money by the mandarins seems smart.
@Tim the Coder
Option 1: Government control allocates/sells spectrum to private owners, and provides government sponsored gunmen to enforce said allocation
Option 2: Whoever has/seizes any spectrum defends it with their own gunmen. Anarchy.
Sure, there is a difference between anarchocapitalists and people like me. I am in favor of men with guns enforcing people’s property rights, including any rights vested in an spectrum I buy. But the government should stop people breaking into my house or camping on my lawn, but they have no business deciding what I do in my house. Similarly, the problem is that that government doesn’t sell the spectrum, they lease it with mega conditions attached, usually to politically connected lobbists as if central planning ever worked.
If you wish to avoid international anarchy, you must have some central coordination and control, with means to enforce your will.
Because international organizations are even more efficient than national governments? Countries have the right to defend their borders, and so have a right to prevent adjacent nations violating the rights of spectrum in their country.
I would agree there is much inefficiency in spectrum allocation, but anyone has their biases, and who’s to say my biases are right?
We have a mechanism for the efficient allocation of scarce resources. The market is extremely good at automatically allocating resources in the best way possible (which isn’t to say optimally) So who is to say a market’s bias for the spectrum is right? Everyone — the market consolidates the prefrences of everyone and finds a best solution.
Amateur Radio? Mere hobbyists? Yet worldwide this is accepted as valid for building a technical skill of value to the community, and providing an emergency communication net. The military?
Sure, if these things are important usages of the spectrum let them pay for them. The military wastes VAST amount of spectrum.
We can argue about the criteria, but without such criteria, the biggest transmitter wins, and any mobile station, without the megawatts, including ambulances, can go hang.
And that’s before the neighbours start complaining with their armies…
That isn’t true. If you transmit on the spectrum I own then I have the right to demand that the men with guns shut you down, just as if you take up residence in my parlor I’ll be calling the cops to escort you outside. (Actually that isn’t true, you seem like a really decent, intelligent guy, so I am more likely to give you a beer and discuss this stuff face to face, I’m sure I would enjoy that.)
@Fraser Orr
Likewise, I’m sure I’d enjoy sharing a beer, this is exactly the sort of discussion we have down t’pub. When allowed out.
I guess we should thank Mr Ed, whose OP prompted such discussions on the compromise between liberty and central controls. The ‘commons’ isn’t new of course, but spectrum (and airspace over one’s property) raise interesting variations.
While generally being a fan of market forces for optimum allocation, I am not convinced this is solely the answer: hobbies, charities, volunteering and similar demonstrate non-financial drivers and benefits. And if everything is down to price, the deepest pocket has a monopoly. Oh, dear, a topic for another day & another beer…
Flying cars are a litmus test for me. (Or the prospect of any technology, really, being in the hands of the dirty lumpenproles.)
It’s like environmentalists and nuclear power.
Are you really serious, or not?
We had flying cars, in the 1950s.
A traffic jam would be interesting.
Terry N
It would take a government to create one in the sky, and it wouldn’t last long…
But, out there, is a libertarian imagining runway pricing and auctions for landing spots in real time as the fuel runs down. :-0
Two caveats:
But unlike drone-taxi prototypes, it cannot take off and land vertically and requires a runway.
Tim, we already have helicopters- the original VTOL. And they aren’t flooding the skies over cities, replacing cars.