As someone who did a pilot's license, real flying is pretty complicated at the moment by the time you've checked 20 things, radioed air traffic control etc. To get a movie flying car like experience I think you'd need self driving car type AI to deal with that stuff. Which could happen before long.
Flying cars are one of those things that make sense until you think about them carefully and with the benefit of hindsight. I wonder what our "flying car" is now in 2016.
Privacy? Democracy in USA? Democracy makes sense, until you notice that the sheer power provided by data and the speed it pivots gave citizen too little time to upgrade their democratic process. I'll even throw the hypothesis that the Snowden files would have happened, no matter how solid were the democratic traditions, culture, institutions.
What doesn't make sense? The Transition looks fairly OK, though it probably only suits flying to places that are small and don't have rental cars.
Flying car now is a better idea, if they're automated. More complicated flight systems are no problem for software. And safety will be far better than humans. Though if we get fully automated roads/cars, the speed improvement might not be so big. (Automated roads might be able to go at what, 200Kph? More on highways?)
That should finally be close? Just add drones and self driving cars together. Soon we will have drones to deliver larger stuff than a small package from Amazon, so all the basic parts will be there.
Take a drone which can carry two people's weight and put a transparent box with a door on it. Add small wheels and some minimal parking capacity. Add a parachute for emergencies. (Note that there won't be a long educations for pilots. You just choose an address in Google Maps. If the drone can land vertically you might have to select a flat area at the destination, but it should be negotiated (along with parking fee) before going there.)
Instead of flying cars I'd rather have the cheap launch capacity of the Shuttle, which must have set some record when it was ~ two orders of a magnitude more expensive per pound than promised. :-( With so low launch costs we would finally get real giant space telescopes and an industrial infrastructure outside the atmosphere.
wolfgke|10 years ago
tim333|10 years ago
As someone who did a pilot's license, real flying is pretty complicated at the moment by the time you've checked 20 things, radioed air traffic control etc. To get a movie flying car like experience I think you'd need self driving car type AI to deal with that stuff. Which could happen before long.
drumdance|10 years ago
rangibaby|10 years ago
tajen|10 years ago
MichaelGG|10 years ago
Flying car now is a better idea, if they're automated. More complicated flight systems are no problem for software. And safety will be far better than humans. Though if we get fully automated roads/cars, the speed improvement might not be so big. (Automated roads might be able to go at what, 200Kph? More on highways?)
berntb|10 years ago
Take a drone which can carry two people's weight and put a transparent box with a door on it. Add small wheels and some minimal parking capacity. Add a parachute for emergencies. (Note that there won't be a long educations for pilots. You just choose an address in Google Maps. If the drone can land vertically you might have to select a flat area at the destination, but it should be negotiated (along with parking fee) before going there.)
Instead of flying cars I'd rather have the cheap launch capacity of the Shuttle, which must have set some record when it was ~ two orders of a magnitude more expensive per pound than promised. :-( With so low launch costs we would finally get real giant space telescopes and an industrial infrastructure outside the atmosphere.
kaybe|10 years ago