ITS HAPPENING FLYING CARS

but does it come in manual?

This.

I don't understand the fascination with flying cars.
People can barely fucking drive properly and now you want them flying?

Mfw I'm a frenchfag living by Airbus Industries so I get to see every new prototypes just above my house

It will never happen because people can't be trusted to maintain a fucking car that needs new oil and filters once in a while, let alone a complex flying vehicle that will probably need constant pre-flight checks and rigourous maintenance so it doesn't fall out of the sky and set a building on fire.
Not to mention all the horrible things that can happen when you stop funnelling vehicles into a common space designed for vehicles (the road) and leave them the freedom to roam around wherever they want.

I mean, I suppose you would need special training to operate one, but at that point I can see it more as a commercial "taxi" service rather than something for everyone to buy.

That's exactly what it will be. AI controlled autopilot with a backup remote system in case of emergency. The vehicles will fly in groups to ease air traffic, along designated known corridors. Likely will have different tiers, with big bus-like ones cramming hundreds at a designated stop, to top tier luxury limo-style ones for private parties.

the faa doesnt maintain peoples planes they just regulate them

The issue is most facilities are still rocking WWII radar systems. FAA don't give a flying fuck.

Autopilot is already there, aircraft are already fully capable of going from takeoff to landing unassisted, the only hurdle left is the same one automated trucking has to deal with, parking/taxi/etc

Can't fucking wait. Bring it on. I live in Austin, fuck traffic.

It would be a disaster if in the future I'd be made public. People suck at driving and i don't wanna imagine them flying.

Spoiler alert:

This is what the prototype will look like,

Watch those props bro.

This. People can't fucking travel on a 2 dimensional plane properly why would we add in a third.

The biggest problem with drivers is that licenses are given out to every retard and their mother at the cost of a blowjob. 90% of bad drivers would never be allowed in a cockpit much less given a license, and a good majority of the last 10% will get humility beaten into then during training hours.

I suppose that's true. I'd have to imagine these would probably be heavily automated as well.

I wonder what would happen to recreational aviation if the future turns to heavily use flying transportation.

anyone who thinks this will ever happen in our lifetime is retarded.

What's wrong with this design?

...

It has no wings, it can't fly with the props pointing fully forward like that.
It would have to fly like a drone, i.e. with the props or the full body slightly tilted forward, making it more similar to an helicopter than a VTOL plane

People already are too dumb to operate a car and rather text while driving and you want them to fucking FLY cars?

FUCK

NO

An object does not have to have wings to fly.

The props are providing both lift and thrust

You could have 2 different liscences I guess. "Standard", which only lets you fly in 100% autonomous mode, and "Professional" which lets you have some manual control over flying. The latter would have much stricter requirements.

See also, lifting body aeordynamics

This actually looks plausible but if its electric it won't fly for more than an hour.

Props pointing forward only provide thrust, some of that thrust can be used to keep the vehicle in the air if they are tilted upward, again, like all drones fly.

It would have to go pretty fast to provide body lift, I seriously doubt those tiny props could provide the necessary power for body lift to have any noticeable effect.
And even if they could somehow have that much power, the transition from vertical take off to forward flight means it would have to start from zero horizontal speed (and similarly low air speed), thus having zero lift and requiring a good portion of the thrust to be sacrificed for staying up rather than going forward.
So either the thing goes up very high and then starts going into freefall to get up to speed (even though I still think the speed required for it to fly with no wings would be prohibitively high) or it simply has to fly like a drone and never point its prop forward for any significant amount of time.

Tl;Dr: such a small craft doesn't have the power to use body lift, it needs wings to fly like pictured here .
makes much more sense

I suppose that's the reason why there is not a single aircraft in service today that uses lifting body aero , barring a few vehicles meant for spaceflight.

Only reason is lack of fuel storage.

I would imagine the first ones will be actually owned by airlines/airports and maintained by them, and used as a premium pick up/drop off service for high tier customers

Private owned ones will be a ways off but you can avoid the "people don't maintain their shit" issue by taking their responsibility to maintain away and giving it to a party that has every incentive not to fuck it up

Also see these being extremely heavily automated.

All a flying car is is taking the hardest possible type of aircraft to design and build, the VTOL, and adding yet another fucking feature in requiring it to have sufficient ground mobility to be called a car.

I see a few models being built and sold as aircraft flown with an aircraft license, but by and large they will be near-entirely automated vehicles requiring a completely different license that pretty much only lets you drive it, with flying as fully automated as possible.

Only reason is because they need to go fucking fast to work, which is why all lifting body aircrafts have been historically rocket-powered (and couldn't take off on their own) or used for orbital re-entry, where you dip in the atmosphere at Mach 25+ and then you can't land like a plane anyway because you have no wings.

If you bothered to read past the second paragraph of the wikipedia article about lifting bodies, you would have seen that fuel storage was a problem for the design of the space shuttle, not all lifting body aircrafts ever.

And if you bothered to even look at the pictures, you would have seen by yourself that this is not a lifting body aircrafts by any stretch of the imagination.

The only real and useful application for vehicles exploiting lifting body mechanics is for orbital and suborbital flight for reusable vehicles, which is literally the only field that is still actively studying them.
For everything else, conventionally winged aircrafts, helicopters, drone-like configurations or a mix of the three are the only practical ways to navigate the sky at a commercial and private level.

>drunk flying
>rams through your 12 floor apartment
cool

i cannot wait until isis drives this through a crowd of people

WHOEVER SAID THE FUTURE WASNT AN EXCITING TIME LIES

>The props are providing both lift and thrust

lol maybe in your dreams m8
props don't generate any lift that supports the airplane they are attached to
especially on a wingless airplane

I didn't read the wiki article, my friend. I am pretty sure I remember reading in some military aviation history book (of the dozens I've read, bit obsessed) that they stopped developing lifting body fighters due to lack of fuel storage capability. I could be thinking of something else though, I have been known to get information crossed in my head.

Because traffic fucking sucks.

I imagine 99.999% of these 'flying cars' will be totally autonomous, where you can do nothing more than plug in your desired location and it'll take you there. Given the maintenance requirements on these kind of vehicles, I doubt you'll have full ownership rights either, just so they're serviced and repaired properly.

because the idea of it is cool

they don't care about other people flying, they just want to fly themselves

ducted fans do produce lift

i think they would be much like planes where you have to declare your destination etc and you would be restricted to certain part of the sky
like a private plane

what is a helicopter

turbine are really small
turbine would have to be at least pointing at the sky

A vehicle that never points its rotor parallel to the ground, because props don't generate vertical lift when horizontal

Something even harder to pilot than the airplane

>Why do people want innovation?

Here is your (you)

Helicopters are, in many ways, much easier to pilot. Infinitely easier to land.

It's not going to fucking happen for mongoloids like you.

If it does, you won't be allowed to fly it. A computer that isn't a slow, stupid money will do that.

I wonder what would happen to recreational driving if flying cars are the future

>miles and miles of empty roads for constant hooning
FUND IT

The idea of it is cool, but in practice it's fucking stupid. Much like the idea of mechs being used in a military setting is cool, but in practice also fucking retarded.

>grasping at straws

Yep, I even used to frequently ride in helicopters headed out to oil rigs for work. By the time flying cars would be viable for mass production, you would most likely be replaced by automation for work anyways. :^)

>single person flying vehicle
That is called an aeroplane

>A vehicle that never points its rotor parallel to the ground, because props don't generate vertical lift when horizontal

The duct around the rotor is what produces lift

That sounds really similar to these things I saw in the sky once but I just can't remember whay it was called... UFO?

Quadcopters?

Yes, a duct as big as almost two full sized wings, not a duct as big as the propeller

Its been done dude

>still has wings
>still has traditional control surfaces
>As big as conventional plane
>scrapped because too slow
>successors ditched the ducted fans because wings work better
>None of the successors have ducted fans anymore

Yeah, I totally see how that concept can be successfully applied to a craft as big as one person, with absolutely no wings or control surfaces and with four tiny ducted fans that are probably electric.

Totally the same thing m8

Hey, you know what the x22 in your picture became? Pic related

That thing was such a clusterfuck to design too and they had lots of problems

Reminds me of my favorite saying about the V22.

It's not a very good plane
and it's not a very good helicopter
and for a brief, asshole-puckering moment it's neither