DARPA is developing a craft that is to be used by highly trained soldiers in combat situations, not by average Joes like me for grocery runs-and that's a key point. The dream of the personal commuter flier has never really died.Īnd now that DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency-the same bunch of quirky geniuses who helped develop the Internet-is involved, isn't it reasonable to assume that we might all soon be achieving liftoff? Well, not necessarily. Even today companies like Moller and Terrafugia are still working on prototypes. In 1973 an engineer, trying to make good on Ford's promise, tested the Mizar, a vehicle that was half Cessna, half Pinto (yes, Ford's notorious disco-era clunker). Go to any good library and peruse the covers of mass market technology magazines like Popular Science from the 1950s, '60s and '70s, and you'll see flying cars. What's most remarkable about the idea of the flying car is how enduring it is. A combination airplane and motorcar is coming. Responding to an apparently skeptical reporter, Henry Ford in 1940 said: "Mark my words. Even the father of the automobile industry was sold on the concept.
Legendary airplane manufacturer Glenn Curtiss tried to develop the "aerobile," a hybrid plane-car that could be driven on regular roads or fly like a conventional airplane. In 1943 publicist Harry Bruno predicted that right after "the last shot was fired in World War II," the conventional auto would quickly be replaced by the personal helicopter. In the March 1938 edition of Harper's Monthly, another writer, imagining the year 1988, foresaw families storing their private aircraft on the roofs of their homes. In 1913, for instance, science writer William Kaempfert predicted that there would be hovering "aerial policemen" directing sky traffic for thousands of personal airplanes. The flying car seemed the next logical advance in personal transportation-and a step we were expected to make soon. Think about it: In 1900 no one had flown in an airplane and almost no one owned a car, yet by 1915 America's roads were rapidly filling up with Model Ts, and gallant World War I aces were fighting it out in the skies over Europe. Moreover, both were developed relatively quickly. The twin strands in the flying car's DNA are, of course, the automobile and the airplane, both of which were developed at around the same time, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The mass-produced flying car is, after all, an idea that has been "just around the corner" for more than 100 years. If history is any guide, however, it's far more likely that our Hondas, Chevys and Toyotas are going to remain stuck to terra firma for the foreseeable future.
0 kommentar(er)
