Don Terrill’s Speed-Talk

gruntguru wrote: ↑Sun Dec 05, 2021 5:25 pm Good point Boot. I imagine a mass market flying machine would need an inbuilt sensing system to detect the weight (and balance) before allowing a take-off attempt.

Already being designed.
These projects are much further along than has been publicised.

I would imagine it already has a built in "dyno"

With the proper ramp a car at speed will "fly". There must be a proper ramp for landing to avoid damage. It is only a ballistic trajectory not flight. I did it and consider it foolish although the car suffered no damage.
Controlled flight in a "flying car" is not new. Molt Taylor built and sold flying cars 70 years ago.
You removed the wings to drive on the ground. Cars are cheap and heavy.
Airplanes are light and expensive. The "flying car" was an airplane you drove on the ground with its wings removed.
As such it buzzed and was very expensive to operate as only an expensive A&P mechanic could work on it and you are using expensive airplane gas and wearing out expensive airplane parts instead of cheap car parts.

LOL, people can't even stay on the road, let alone be let loose in the sky. Go ahead and build them, the idiots will still find ways to crash them all over the place..

Self driving vehicles will save people from themselves.

Same goes for flying cars, the difference being that autonomous control systems will be standard kit from a very early stage.

Super_Stock wrote: ↑Sat Jun 18, 2022 6:37 am LOL, people can't even stay on the road, let alone be let loose in the sky. Go ahead and build them, the idiots will still find ways to crash them all over the place..

no doubt. if there is a way, stupid people will find it.

The great thing about self driving cars is when people hack the system to override or bypass the programming, they will at lest still be on the ground. When it happens in the air it will risk lots of other lives. We almost had a drone get hit by one of our airplanes the other day. We had over 100 passengers on board. A flying vehicle holding a person would destroy an airplane, and all the people in it. Maybe these flying cars should only be offered to people with a pilots license?

Paul

We've all seen how some cars end up looking ( and running), imagine if they could fly too...Well, get off the ground at least..