We’re Going To Get Our Flying Car
Baby boomers have been whining about this since the turn of the century. Well, we’re about to get our wish. Sort of.
According to Sharon Gaudin at IDG, we’re about to get our flying car. Terrafugia Inc. is currently creating a prototype of The Transition, a 19-foot, two-seat "roadable light-sport aircraft" that is both road-worthy and air-worthy.
I know you’ve got to start somewhere, but the prototype kind of misses the point. "We’re not going to have a flying car, as people think of it, for a while," chief operating officer Anna Dietrich told IDG. We don’t have the infrastructure to deploy roadable planes. We need runaways instead of roads, and the FAA is likely to demand drivers have a pilot’s license. Typical government buzz-kill crap. Actually, since you’ll need a pilot’s license and you’re restricted to airport take-offs and landings, there’s no real benefit to The Transition over traditional small airplanes which seat twice as many people, except you won’t need to take a cab to the airport.
The flying car will be available in 2009; they’ve already taken orders for about 40 of them. This means there will likely be more Transitions in the air than there ever were Tuckers on the road. The machine will sport an anticipated price of $148,000; chrome detailing will be extra.
(Thanks and a tip of the hat to Rick Oliver.)
Wasn't there already something like this in one of the Roger Moore James Bond movies?Besides, I always thought the Jetsons' version was much cooler.
Actually, the plane in the Bond film was a real jet that could be built from a kit, and it wasn't roadable, but could be (and was) hauled in a horse trailer with a fake horse's butt hanging out the back. (Well, actually, the trailerability was bogus, as the real plane's wings couldn't be folded, just like the autogyro Bond flies in "You Only Live Twice" is real, but the version that travels in three large suitcases and gets assembled on the spot was movie fakery…) While i don't think the Bond jet was a BD-5J, it resembled one – bascally a lawn chair with wings, a windshield and a jet engine attached; around 600 MPH maximum airspeed. (Some Google-fu suggests it was an "Acrostar", with a top speed of 514MPH)