SpaceShipOne designer produces hybrid flying car Burt Rutan, the famous engineer behind the Ansari X-Prize-winning SpaceShipOne and many other amazing aircraft, has produced a hybrid-electric aeroplane which can also be driven on roads as his final design before retirement. The BiPod features twin fuselages equipped with electrically driven wheels and propellers (though the …
I can see that being amusing. Watching Apple's lawyers try to prove that people would confuse a small fondlable toy with a very large, marginally more expensive, flying executive toy, that is.
On previous results though, said lawyers did manage to convince people that you would confuse an iPod with a device used to pick up dogshit. That might have been an easier task though.
It's the teenage sons. The ones who think your flying car is a chick magnet (well, it probably is). The one who think your flying car is a one way trip to the Mile High Club. The ones who ring you next morning from a police station because they crashed into Big Ben... 50ft up.
That's who worries me.
But I still see a problem... flight controls in one side - pilot sits on the left. Road controls on the other - driver sits on the right. But that means it's not going to work in the states, just somewhere like the UK where we drive on the proper side. And it looks a touch wide for our roads...
Mind you - I can see someone arriving on the M6 at 200mph, flaring for landing, and being nicked for speeding. "Honest, officer, my wheels were off the ground at the time..."
Nonetheless - where do I apply?
nice how all these plane/car concepts are all quite wide... or if your in america with lots of wide open spaces and extremely wide roads then its not an issue.
try the european sizes where you have to park your car in a city that gives you a parking ticket if your marginally over your parking space because the knobhead in their 4x4 takes up too much space behind you (also ticketed but they can afford it!).
can you remove the wings, tail, have enough room for 3 people (and a conversation as well without having to phone each other) and covers for anything rotating (propeller blades/induction fans) so some twat doesnt kill themselves while trying to steal it and then get sued by their moronic relatives by a bunch of ambulance chasing twats at www.wesueeveryoneforfiftypercentplusfees.com
would make entering and leaving a multistorey carpark interesting!
also forget about the road worthy crap, if i have one of these babies, it'll be flying at top speed every chance i get, just some VTOL or hover capability would be good!
pirates cause thats what we'll all be doing... land ahoy!
THINK.
Air cars are inviting disaster.
Just look at the carnage on the road these days. More than a good proportion caused by fuckwits high on alcohol and/or drugs.
Sure, the cynic may say, it only happens to few people. You're more likely to succumb to illness than injury from an RTA, statistically. You don't know anyone that's been a statistic. It can't possibly happen to anyone you know. Really it couldn't.
Well... how many people actually out there do *not* know you?
Personally, I don't relish the thought of drunken flying bombs fishtailing around the night sky on weekends.
But yes, the Rutans are really very innovative. That I completely agree with.
"Personally, I don't relish the thought of drunken flying bombs fishtailing around the night sky on weekends."
Indeed, which is why I shall design a range of cheap mobile SAM launchers to be deployed around your property ;) they will come with automatic and manual modes. The manual aiming mode can be linked to a smartphone of your choice...
First the Shuttles, now Burt?
He is one of my personal heroes, I rate him as highly as Sir David Attenborough; both are at the top of my 'I'd like to have a beer or 6 with them' list.
A highlight for me was hearing him speak at Oshkosh in '96; about the design philosophy behind the 'Boomerang', and a few tantalizing back-of-the-envelope sketches for what became SS1.
I can't imagine Burt sitting around on the back porch drinking beer; I CAN imagine him sitting around on the back porch, drinking beer and still sketching out brilliant designs.
Designers never retire; the creative spark never dies.
Thanks for all the cool planes Burt, and have a great retirement!
to try to knock one more outta the park by tackling the near impossible. Looks like it can handle a minor ding or two better than the terra fugly-o since the control surfaces are protected by bodywork. I wonder if Scaled will just make one good prototype and then add it to the museum of cool?
Sadly it's still an answer to a question only the extraordinarily well-heeled are asking. Driveable aircraft just don't have the potential for any transportation paradigm shift, any more than amphibious cars.
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