Awesome Stuff: Flying Cars, Hover Bikes And Ultrasonic Levitation
from the float-away,-float-away... dept
For this week’s awesome stuff post about interesting crowdfunding projects, we’ve got three campaigns that have to do with… leaving the ground behind in some form or another. I’m not sure any of them are practical, but let’s not let reality get in the way of fun ideas.
- The OverDrive Flying Car
- Hoverbike
- Ultrasonic Levitation
That’s it for this week. Feel free to go outside without too much worry about flying cars and hoverbikes zooming around just yet…
Filed Under: awesome stuff, crowdfunding, drones, flying cars, hover bikes, ultrasonic levitation
Comments on “Awesome Stuff: Flying Cars, Hover Bikes And Ultrasonic Levitation”
Unless human carrying flying vehicles for public operation are autonomous only, I don’t want to see them.
There is barely a day that goes by where there isn’t a car wreck somewhere along the path to or from work.
People can’t help but get into accidents. Now imagine that at flying altitudes.
Re: Re:
Don’t worry too much; the proposed flying cat might look good on the drive with its wings attached, but I suspect it would have an accident before it got off the ground. As the nose comes up in rotation, and it rotates about the back wheels the propeller’s geometry is likely going to be modified by contact with the ground.
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Many automobile drivers are poorly trained in the practice, are too easily distracted and then attempt to divert responsibility after having caused an “accident”.
If this scenario were replicated above our heads, much damage to person and property would ensue.
The problem with all the flying car ideas is that they try to turn the car into a plane, complete with wings. Which means that it will need to take off and land like a plane, using a long, empty, smooth stretch of ground. Such areas are in short supply outside of airports.
As for the hoverboard; I’m surprised that nobody has tried to build a working version yet using magnetic levitation. Build an indoor arena with powerful electromagnets under the entire floor and build the boards with strong magnets in them. You switch on the electromagnets and the board levitates. Sure, it would be hard to balance on such a board, but skilled riders could probably adapt. I mean people can ride those crazy skateboards with just one wheel at each end and you can’t even step onto those with it wanting to tip over. The big question is if it could be made powerful enough to levitate a person.
Re: Moller International
Every time I see the flying car concept brought up, I never see any mention of Moller International. They’ve been working toward this goal for decades now, with millions of dollars of financing, and a realistic view of the logistics and laws that would actually apply.
http://www.moller.com
I misread the summary for “The OverDrive – Ultimate in Personal Transportation”. Thought it said “Kook Starter.” Now I’m thinking that might actually be a better name, one that fits these projects. Maybe Kickstarter needs to make a spin off?
re: Overdrive. Listen to the scale model video and tell me that whackjob didn’t overdub the sound of a full sized plane motor.
Why the hell can’t we just have small, cheap personal quadcopters – much like the cheap drones you can buy? eg.. a full size one of these: http://www.brentfordrc.com/281-thickbox_default/ares-ethos-qx130-ultra-micro-rtf-quad.jpg
Re: Why
“Why” is because batteries.
I’ve looked into this. Batteries suck the proverbial monkey balls.
They just don’t hold enough energy to keep something with any reasonable payload flying for more than about 15 minutes.
(45 minutes absolute tops if the payload is nothing but batteries).
Until batteries get a lot better, or there’s another lightweight, high-power-density way of getting electricity, we aren’t going to see practical person-carrying quadcopters.
(And, really, you want a lot more than 4 props in anything carrying a person – you want enough so the thing will keep flying if 1 or 2 of them breaks).
I’m hopeful about fuel cells, but then I’ve been hopeful about them for decades and still nothing much has happened.
Flying/hovering car
What they need is to adapt drone technology with light weight car frame and have a hovercraft that can get me over the latest traffic jam. Of course… if everyone has them, then we just have a massive air jam instead.