Cars Hit the Skyway
For All of US
Where the rubber meets the road is the most resisitance.
The Grand Cherokee Jeeps get 15 MPG, as does the M400 Skycar.
Which would you rather fly in? The future is here today.
How about it GM?
Katman
By Chris O'Malley (8/16/99)
Flying one's own personal airborne vehicle must be one of the most enduring, most lustily coveted technological fantasies. For a few, like the dreamers at Moller International of Davis, California, materializing that whimsy is a lifelong quest.
Moller recently revealed a bit of news about its latest vision-turned-reality, the M400 Skycar, and the rest of the world got excited. This, after all, is about our long-sought freedom to take wing where we want and when we want, just as we do with our cars. This is about the beginning of the end of the automotive revolution and the start of the self-actuating aviation age. This is about two skycars in every garage!
Fly Me Home
Or is it? The facts of the matter write a different tale, for now and for the near future of personal aviation. It will likely be several years before the first personal skycars are cleared for takeoff at most airports, and even then only as experimental aircraft. It will be even longer before you will be able to park one in your garage or to take off and land at your house. Oh, and currently, the Moller M400 Skycar will cost you $1 million ($995,000 plus $5,000 to put your name on the waiting list).
Still, this new vehicle may mark a turning point in personal aviation and transportation. For all of its present impracticality, the M400 Skycar is the first viable personal aircraft that could be used the same way we use cars today. In other words, it is the closest we've come to realizing the Jetsons dream.
Remember Elroy?
If that futuristic cartoon classic has you envisioning something resembling a personal helicopter, you'll have to recalibrate. The four-passenger prototype M400 Skycar, along with its single-passenger cousin, the M150 Skycar, looks more like an airplane than a helicopter, albeit a highly stylized, bright-red airplane. But it works like a helicopter in that it can take off and land vertically. The ability to maneuver this way is the single most important operational feature of an aircraft intended to land in a driveway or to take off from a backyard.
The M400 Skycar is a fascinating piece of technology. It has four enclosed engine compartments, or nacelles, each employing two rotary engines (the engines are similar to what are used in cars such as the Mazda RX-7). These engines power fans that produce the airflow needed for flight. When the airflow is directed downward by deflection vanes, the Skycar can take off vertically like a helicopter. When the airflow is directed outward, the Skycar flies like a plane. This is no small feat of engineering. It took the British many years and billions of dollars to devise a conceptually similar (though far more advanced) system to power its vertical-takeoff and -landing (or VTOL) Harrier fighter jet. Bell and Boeing have been working on a VTOL propellor aircraft for the U.S. military, the V22 Osprey.
http://www.moller.com/skycar/m400/
All Common Law Rights are reserved explicitly without prejudice
UCC 1-103, 1-105, 1-207.
"NOTICE OF DISCLAIMER"
I am not a lawyer and I do not give legal advice! Let me make that perfectly plain, clear and mutually agreed, that, and I repeat, I am not a lawyer and I do not give legal advice! This is my private opinion; I am only sharing information! Notice to agent is notice to principle and notice to principle is notice to agent. For those who would violate my privacy by intercepting this private communication, I fully reserve all of my absolute (sovereign) natural (natural by law) "creator endowed" inherent Rights! I also choose to exercise my Right of remedy In the event that any party attempts to use this writing in any proceeding of any kind! I make no claims as to the accuracy of the information! I could be wrong about all of it! Hereinafter "disclaimer". From now on until further notice the "disclaimer" is presumed in any further private or personal or public or official communication from me to you. "Disclaimer"
Open to suggestions, improvements, and comments.
Questions and Comments: Email Katman
The Complete Patents of Nickola Tesla - Textbook Quality
