Twenty two years
ago, a modern day flying car was built and operated by a certain Canadian
engineer. He revealed that such an idea need not be a concept and flew his M400
at an altitude of 20 meters. Catering to modern day transport dilemma (a
growing concern even in 1989) he opined that a vertiport shall provide
solutions to urban transport. This is at the cost of rising petrol prices, ear
tearing noise levels, safety risks, low fuel economy and a whopping initial
market price of one million dollar a car. Paul Moller's Skycar never became
legal and imagining someone paying a million dollars on a flying experiment,
they would rather spend that on a McLaren.
In 2004,
BBC published an article titled 'Flying cars swoop to the rescue' deriving an
alternative use of the car- plane. A resourceful piece from the article -
"When you try to combine them you get the worst of both worlds: a very
heavy, slow, expensive vehicle that's hard to use," said Mark Moore, head
of the personal air vehicle (PAV) division of the vehicle systems program at
Nasa's Langley Research Centre in Hampton, US. NASA aspired to develop
sustainable means of smaller capacity planes. They aimed to develop technology
such that small sized planes would fly as silent as a motorcycle, by 2009. All
of this is indicative of efficient alternative source of dual passenger air
travel.
Flying Cars of the Past, Present, and Future
Today,
after decades since the thought of a car plane conceptualized and watching
Chiity Chitty Bang Bang, a tech firm, Terrafugia, based in Woburn,
Massachusetts is on the way to selling its first commercial road plane -
Transition. With tests already taken place, this is no concept and aims to go
on sale by end of 2012. The model aims at promoting air travel and specifically
to those who wish to acquire a pilot’s licence. As the name suggests the model
would work as an airplane and an automobile, hereby a pilot would not have to
change vehicle during flight or on road. No wonder, already 100 Transition
models have already been booked. Overlooking fuel economy of 14.9 kilo meters a
litre on land and a range 643 kilo meters in air, companies must pay strict
attention to safety measures.
Development
in the field of safety standards in air travel, automobiles or
"flight-mobiles" in the twenty first century is largely going to advance
through sensor technology. We must realize that even though these vehicles are
designed to run on petrol, personal air transport is proving to be take form in
a big way. The American companies have paved the way and found a practical
solution to an alternate source of transport. Hopefully such engineering
marvels sustain and are seen in significant numbers in a year from today.
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