Flying to replace driving?

[Dunenewt]

Heading skyward to beat gridlock

By Maggie Shiels

Technology reporter, BBC News, Silicon Valley

The solution to gridlock on our overcrowded roads is to take to the air in a plane-car hybrid that will revolutionise the way society works.

This vision of the future twenty years hence was revealed at the 2008 Electric Aircraft Symposium held a stone's throw from San Francisco airport in California.

Plotting the next frontier in green technology was Richard Jones, a technical fellow at Boeing Phantom Works.

He said "Today I am talking about making aviation available to everyone as a daily means of transportation. Transportation changes society."

"When they dumped the horse and cart people took over two continents. 150 years ago steam turned America into a nation. Today 50 per cent of the world lives in urban areas thanks to the car. And in the last 50 years, the aviation industry has made one world thanks to the airplane."

Future transportation

When your 100mpg (miles per gallon) car is stuck in traffic and a 100mpg airplane whizzes overhead, you're going to be jealous.  Boeing's research group is designing a hybrid aimed at travelling up to 300 miles at a time. It will use precision navigation systems that would allow the average 'driver cum pilot' to fly without special training thanks to a computerised 'flight instructor' built into the cockpit.

This Mr Jones believes could make the compact plane easier to drive than a car. "People will probably be reading a newspaper rather than flying the vehicles."

He said that they will be powered using electricity and /or batteries making them the "cleanest transportation of the future."

This sneak peak at the world twenty years from now was eagerly welcomed by the assembled group of engineers, scientists, venture capitalists and chief executives who were brought together by the CAFE Foundation, a non profit organisation that promotes personal air travel.

The organisation's President Brien Seeley said that there were good sound reasons for believing that such a hybrid will be an everyday part of life. And with an estimated 1.2 billion cars expected to be clogging up the roads by 2030 he said that it is a no brainer.

"When your 100mpg (miles per gallon) car is stuck in traffic and a 100mpg airplane whizzes overhead, you're going to be jealous."

Personal aviation

The symposium was told that the environmental need to find an alternative to the combustion engine is long overdue and growing ever more urgent as fuel prices top $120 a barrel and passengers get hit with crippling surcharges for taking to the air.

Dr Ben Santer who is a physicist with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory told BBC News "We know beyond a shadow of a doubt that we are changing the chemistry of the earth's atmosphere by burning fossil fuels in cars and airplanes."

"If we don't want to have really serious changes to our climate then we have to figure out other ways of doing business."

The CAFE Foundation believes the solution is obvious. Mr Seeley told the BBC "The electric aircraft promises to solve these problems and produce a real enlightenment of aviation with new technology and a rebirth of popular general aviation and personal aviation travel."

But there is no reason to wait for Boeing's hybrid vehicle according to a Slovenian company called Pipistrel. By the end of the year it plans to deliver the world's first commercially produced, two seater electric aircraft to customers.

Their Taurus Electro can climb to 6,000 feet after taking off using a 30-kilowatt motor.

Recharging the glider's lithium-polymer battery is meant to take about as long as charging a cell phone. And weather permitting, the glider can travel 1,000 miles a day.

Pipistrel's head of research and development Tine Tomazic says they already have over a dozen orders for the plane.

"We are doing it now. We are flying the world's first two seater self launching glider powered by electrical means, powered by batteries."

"We have seen tremendous demand from existing owners who fly the internal combustion powered version and we think the market potential for the Taurus Electro is just huge."

Efficient plane

That of course is open to question given that the sticker price for the basic model starts at around $132,000 or

[Edric O]

I'd much rather see a greatly expanded and improved public transport network instead of flying cars. We should be moving away from private vehicles altogether, especially within cities.

[Dunenewt]

I know they didn't work in The Simpsons, and in the films they usually get blown up, but I'd like to see more Monorails.

[Dante]

I seriously doubt that this will work.

But on the bright side, if it does then it will be a sharper learning curve. The air will be full of good drivers, and the ground will be full of bad ones. >:D

[Dunenewt]

Haha, yes, very true!  Hopefully one day I'll get a Private Pilot's License.

[Egeides]

I'm surprised the article didn't mention Moller. They're the pioneers.

I don't know how anyone would have an idea of how much time for that to develop. But even when it'd work solidly off-paper (that'd be great!), I guess the ground would safely keep its own advantages. And looking at how much time it took just for electric cars to be adopted by big companies... Boeing might just be playing catching-up with the pioneers who have just started to produce.

[Edric O]

I know they didn't work in The Simpsons, and in the films they usually get blown up, but I'd like to see more Monorails.

Yes, I'd like to see more trains in general, of any type. They are the most efficient means of transport. They should have trains that run on magnetic cushions through vacuum tubes - no friction at all, and no limit to the speed that can be achieved!

[D2k Sardaukar]

Flying costs way more energy than driving and with the current fuel methods it's going to be or too heavy (batteries) or too expensive (oil). Perhaps hydrogen will be an option, but it will only be cheaper as oil if it's of course not made out of oil, but like renewal energy resources.

[Dunenewt]

Yes, I'd like to see more trains in general, of any type. They are the most efficient means of transport. They should have trains that run on magnetic cushions through vacuum tubes - no friction at all, and no limit to the speed that can be achieved!

You mean maglev trains right?  They're extremely expensive, but I would like to see a lot more of them.  The theoretical top speeds are limited by things like air resistance, drag, etc, but I've read that if a nuclear tunnel borer made a hole, then due the tunnels it creates, maglev trains could travel over the speed of sound.  Current maglev trains run about 300mph I think.

[Edric O]

You mean maglev trains right?  They're extremely expensive, but I would like to see a lot more of them.  The theoretical top speeds are limited by things like air resistance, drag, etc, but I've read that if a nuclear tunnel borer made a hole, then due the tunnels it creates, maglev trains could travel over the speed of sound.  Current maglev trains run about 300mph I think.

Yes, I did mean maglev, and the issue of air resistance is precisely why I suggested making them run inside vacuum tubes. Of course, that would make the costs astronomical, but I can dream. ;) And besides, they would pay for themselves - eventually.

[Dunenewt]

Whether or not they can pay for themselves would ideally be irrelevant, as they are so beneficial to the environment, I suppose.

[SandChigger]

They should have trains that run on magnetic cushions through vacuum tubes - no friction at all, and no limit to the speed that can be achieved!

Well, technically...you won't be able to get one over 299,792.458 km/s.  ;)

Flying costs way more energy than driving and with the current fuel methods it's going to be or too heavy (batteries) or too expensive (oil). Perhaps hydrogen will be an option, but it will only be cheaper as oil if it's of course not made out of oil, but like renewal energy resources.

Pssst! Clams! Think bioengineered mollusks!  ;D

[Dunenewt]

Well, technically...you won't be able to get one over 299,792.458 km/s.  ;)

Why's that?  They flew the first hydrogen powered plane.  We could always have nuclear planes...

[Khan]

Is that not the speed of light?

Well the real limiting factor is the stress that the human body can take. Although automated cargo trains could be very fast indeed.

[Dunenewt]

The speed of light can vary though, but I think you're right in what he is referring to.

[Edric O]

Well, the speed of light in a vacuum is a constant, having the value SandChigger posted. It is true that light can move slower in a non-vacuum, but that is only because atoms get in the way, absorbing and re-emitting photons, which slows down the progress of those photons a little.

[Dunenewt]

Didn't they find out recently that the speed of light varies?

[spicy]

thats a good thread newt for a change .. strange i was thinking the same thing a while ago

you wont even believe what gave me the idea ... its actually flying helos in bf2 heh

i said to my self fuk i want a plain like this its small and so easy and can land on

a top of a tree in seconds

then this led me to think that in the future it will be the way to move and i think

the crafts will be a vertical like helos and small hover engines or if they invented some

anti gravity filed and it wont go so high in altitude or in speed so it wont crash

so bad if something went wrong with the breaks heh  just few meeter's up to pass the traffic

will do

[Dunenewt]

Landing on a tree doesn't sounds so good to me.

[SandChigger]

Didn't they find out recently that the speed of light varies?

I haven't heard anything like that recently. Do you have a URL or news source quote?

[Edric O]

Didn't they find out recently that the speed of light varies?

The fact that the speed of light is constant for all observers and all frames of reference is the basis of the entire Theory of Relativity. If anyone could prove otherwise, it would be the greatest scientific discovery in over a hundred years. It would be all over the news.

So, no, I'm certain nothing of that sort has happened.

[Dunenewt]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_light

[Egeides]

Some scientists have slowed light down by making it pass through extremely dense materials. I suppose it's the same as this "slow" light (I'd be slower in there too :P).

[Edric O]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_light

That article just talks about the effect I mentioned before - light being slowed down by passing through a medium (as opposed to vacuum). The speed of light in a vacuum is still an absolute constant.

[Dunenewt]

Ah okay, but it is possible for things to go faster than the speed of light, and has been done.