Intercity-flying/driving commuting coming in reality

[freebeard]

Where's my Flying Car ? - Prof Simon

He does a good retrospective*, and then runs the video clip.

I'm left wondering what the difference is just abaft the front wheel wells on the left and right. The latter has a dark panel with a hatch above it, the former has no hatch but a raised scoop for air intake.

*Except.... He mentions the Ford Levacar not needing a highway? It was a hovercraft than ran on a polished steel roadbed at an altitude of something like a hundredth of an inch.

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by some_other_dave

Like I said earlier, the airship thing is a great idea. A neutral-buoyancy craft doesn't have to fight gravity. But to get to neutral buoyancy, most craft will have to be large enough that severe weather is a severe problem.

-soD

That’s not a small problem. It reminds me of renewables to replace conventional electricity generation. It’s excellent when conditions are perfect, but conditions are hardly ever perfect.

There is efficiency of fuel, and there is efficiency of time, payload, schedule, versatility, etc.

Perhaps we don’t have airships because we’ve got a huge blind spot, or more likely it doesn’t strike the right balances of all the factors.

[freebeard]

Needs materials science, aerogels, etc. And non-traditional airframes.

duckduckgo.com/?q=festo+flying+robots

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_qhMVNw7O4

[AeroMcAeroFace]

I saw aerogel, and someone make a chocolate mousse using a vacuum chamber to get a much airier mousse. I always think, all we need is something like aerogel that doesn't diffuse air in and then we can have a vacuum airship. A material that is vacuum bubbles suspended in a lightweight material. Probably higher mass than a helium airship but maybe more buoyant per m^3

Potentially greater buoyancy, no flame risk, no risk of helium price... inflation.

[redpoint5]

Nothing is lighter than hydrogen I always thought, so balloons should contain nothing. Eliminates the fire danger too since nothing doesn't burn.

[freebeard]

An aerogel is just air plus a structural material that is likely heavier than air. I think they tend to be brittle.

They might serve as an infill material for a tougher shell, then you could replace the air with something lighter. Useful for light-weighting struts and beams.

redpoint5 -- A partial nothing is more achievable.

[AeroMcAeroFace]

yes, brittle and porous. But something like that that wasn't porous and could hold a vacuum, it may not be possible, it is possible in my mind

[Piotrsko]

Not only do lifting gasses have to be lighter than the equivalent air, they have to be significantly lighter so they can carry other weights. Should be a DUH moment there.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by Isaac Zachary

Helicopters and autogyros are less fuel efficient. But a well built autogyro (also airship) has the advantage over a fixed wing aircraft of not being able to stall.

Airships have the potential of being more fuel efficient. But I guess there are fixed wing aircraft that are pretty fuel efficient too.

My dream aircraft would be an airship covered in lightweight solar cells.

1) with a gyrocopter, pay attention to doppler radar advisories.
2) A friend's dad was a very experienced, high-time gyrocopter pilot, however, bought the farm in a micro-burst downdraft.
3) Seems like Leonardo DiCaprio's Howard Hughes dialogue about the Lockheed Constellation, in The AVIATOR, foreshadowed the demise of the airship: Once a fixed-wing could fly 'above the weather', the smoothness and efficiency of large airships would lose ground to the speed of heavier-than-air travel. The Concord SST would be an extreme example.
4) People really bit on the notion: 'time is money.'

[redpoint5]

Heavier than air travel isn't all that inefficient, either.

Fully loaded commercial aircraft can get 100 passenger miles per gallon. Scale the size, and efficiency can increase from there.

Getting 100 MPG as a passenger while traveling at 600 miles per hour isn't too shabby.