Just found this.
tinyurl.com/2o47tr
It's bad enough with muppets right, left and centre. Are we now going to get them dropping on us??
Mind you, this dos look good. Pie in the sky I reckon though.
Mike
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I have seen a couple of designs for flying cars and believe it or not there are companies investing in resource to look at this technology seriously.
Not in our life time though.
Having said all that 50 years ago who would have said we will all be driving round in cars with stuff like Radar controlled cruise control, CMBS, ABS, EBD etc etc and family cars that are as powerful as what were racing cars back then and cost a fortune to make.
I remember my dad telling me 20 years ago - you know what son - in the future you will have telly's you can hang on the wall !!!
I told him he would have to stop smoking that funny stuff.
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I am 53 years old. Since I were a wee lad able to open the first page of the beano, i have read about and seen "artiists impressions" of the flying car that just about to be the next big thing. If i get to be 106 I suspect the flying car will be the next big thing still.
As pendles said, its probably the only thing thats not come to fruition. Look at star treck, and see how much has a: happened b:is now considered possible.
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We already have the technology to make flying machines that use anti-gravity, and we also have free energy resources that would stop dead this crisis we're all facing at the moment with fossil fuels and other related problems. Our government chooses to keep this information from us as they believe it would be far to risky if this kind of technology were to fall into the hands of terrorists.
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We already have the technology to make flying machines that use anti-gravity and we also have free energy ................................
You keep a good watch out for those black helicopters hovering silently overhead won't you, and remember to turn as many corners as possible to throw them off your scent ;o)
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Ok look at the practicalities of this. Someone makes a car that can fly at a reasonable cost. All well and good.
However, the restrictions on when and where you could fly it would be beyond most car driving muppets and they'd be dropping out of the sky, infringing controlled airspace and flying in the wrong weather. You couldn't just take off and land from the nearest carpark.
Gyros are difficult to fly and have increasingly tightened regulations on their operation because the CAA basically doesn't like them. A friend of mine flies one and every year there is something new that has to be complied with. Oh and another thing, they're not particularly fast.
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We must be somehere near the peak of flying generally - you can't run aeroplanes on renewables unless you count biofuels which are already becoming politically questionable.
Time to have another go at airships?
I read a lot of sci-fi as a youth, and whilst some of the technology has indeed come to pass, the one they got totally wrong was leisure. The premise of most of these visions of the future was that the machines would do all the work, and people would only have to work about 2 days a month. What happened to that? When I was a kid my father could support the family on an average wage - now more often both adults have to work - where's the progress in that?
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Damn it TU, you're one of them aren't you..........arghhhhhhhhhh;-)
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"The premise of most of these visions of the future was that the machines would do all the work and people would only have to work about 2 days a month"...............
Exactly right. I remember being told just that when I was at school. It would have been the mid 1970's; I was at 'senior school' and someone had recently invented 'silicon chips'. These were going to be put into our cars and machines and robots would make things. This would mean that we could all go onto a two day working week and have five days off. We were to spend the vast amount of free time going to Alton Towers and having fun. The leisure industry was going to boom. We would of course receive five days pay for two days work. For some reason nobody realised that what we would actually get was mass unemployment instead.
Me and my mate 'Fatty Finch' used to watch 'U.F.O.' and 'Space 1999'. To believe those popular TV programmes, by now we should all be gliding around in totally silent cars with gull wing doors. All buildings will without exception have automatic sliding doors. We should be living on the moon. All young women will be walking around in very short white dresses and they will all have purple hair. (at least the last bit nearly came true!)
I reckon the flying car as a concept will be about as successful as 'a house on the moon' concept of thirty years ago.
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and all those poor misguided fools who bought betamax
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and all those poor misguided fools who bought betamax
and Alan Sugar's green-screen nursery computers...
Viable flying cars have been made. There was an American one you were supposed to be able to buy. But the car was a three-wheeler and of course you had to attach the wings before it would fly. I doubt if it was all that good either as a car or a plane. And the legislation must have looked a bit of a minefield to the authorities.
As a topic drift, does anyone know offhand what the American car made in the late forties, powered by a big, slow-running aircooled Lycoming flat four aircraft engine installed low down and far back, was called? Must have been an interesting drive, but far too quirky of course for the US market. There are still a few examples in collections.
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Could you be thinking of the Tucker? This had a flat 6 horizontally opposed aircooled engine I think, was apparently well engineered and built, but obviously unable to compete on price with Detroit's volume makers so the company didn't survive long.
Edited by Pugugly {P} on 01/01/2008 at 20:43
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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Tucker_Sedan
Fascinating innovative car, doesn't answer the question though.....
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Here's a picture of one!
tinyurl.com/2fgznj
Loads of info on the genre here;
tinyurl.com/yrep4m
Mike
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Cannot resist.... sorry.
After seeing the replica Chitty Chitty Bang Bang doing rides on our street today (someone with more money than sense hired it) then how about this for the flying car:
www.starcarhire.co.uk/movie_tv_chitty.htm
When my wife heard it she immediately said it was Chitty Chitty Bang Bang! It had a distinct (and probably artificially created) noise. It has a Ford V6 + Borg Warner Auto I think ;-)
Happy New Year All!!!
As a serious reply. I remember at Uni a wealthy friend's parents were approach to invest in a flying car. It all looked very serious and plausible.... that was in 1990 though ;-) I'd hate to think what would happen if we took the poor drivers (and good drivers) and turned them into pilots!
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Guess what Chitty Chitty Bang Bang really refers to. Put it like this it wuld turn the film version into an 18 rated one !
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It had a distinct (and probably artificially created) noise. It has a Ford V6 + Borg Warner Auto I think ;-)
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Some details about the car and the number plate.
chittygen11.com/about_chitty.htm
>>PU
Yahoo has a coy answer with a little note at the end...
Have you got it yet? If not, ask your dad or grand-dad.
Source(s): Ex RAF
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"Have you got it yet? If not, ask your dad or grand-dad.
Source(s): Ex RAF"
I am slightly intrigued now.... and my father and both grandfathers dead for a while. One GF died in World War II towards the end and othe before I was born.
Is this something to do with Fleming? Sorry to steal thread. I posted about CCBB because it raised a smile for me this lunchtime.
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And my wife knowing the film knew the car as "a" Chitty Chitty Bang Bang without looking at it.... because the car made a sound that sounded like "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang". You'd have to hear it to realise.... something (not the Ford V6) was making the noise of the film car ;-) even Ford V6 in the late 60's weren't that noisy!
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EDIT: My post vanished and so I pasted and carried on... then duplicate! Anyway I wanted to add...
And yes I can think of the obvious bawdy version of a song with the main themes being a chit to leave base and "bang bang"....
Edited by rtj70 on 02/01/2008 at 00:46
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>>Some details about the car and the number plate.
chittygen11.com/about_chitty.htm
My father who is now in his 80's who was a toolmaker worked on this car (and a few other creations of Alan Mann).I remember going along to see it at various stages of manufacture.Other vehicles he was involved with were a radio controlled tractor for Ford and Lady Penelope's pink car.
Edited by Pugugly {P} on 02/01/2008 at 14:56
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Must have been the Tucker, thanks fordprefect. I thought it was a flat four of about four litres, not a flat six of nearly ten(!). Must have been fabulous on the road.
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I knew I could not take this site seriously when I saw all the "celebrity" gossip down the right hand side of the page!
If flying cars were going to happen in this way they would have happened in the 60s!
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Molt Taylor did in fact manage to certificate a flying car of sorts in the 50s. It would, I assume, have been much more sesible and cheaper to buy a proper car and a proper aeroplane. in any case you still would have to learn to fly and comply with the appropriate regulations. Link en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerocar_Aerocar
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