What is Digg?48 Comments
- ichbinladen, on 10/12/2007, -1/+17There's no reason Moller shouldn't be able to get investors onboard, if he has produced a working prototype. He's just a bad businessman, all around.
I read he has 40 acres of almonds because he thinks almonds are the key to long life, and he doesn't want to die before getting credit for his flying machine. - JHawk24821, on 10/12/2007, -2/+16And don't even get me started on women drivers.
"In other news today, yet another commercial airline crashed when it rolled to avoid a M400 that was weaving about aimlessly with it's turn signal on. The flight data recorder indicates that the last thing the pilots said before crashing and killing themselves as well as hundreds of passengers was, "Makeup! I could see the *&^%$ driver putting on makeup! AHHhhhh....." The driver of the M400 was not injured, and as far as we can currently tell, is completely unaware she caused the accident."
(commence flame war) - endtwist, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14What happens when it runs out of fuel?
- JHawk24821, on 10/12/2007, -2/+15You crash. Sorry, couldn't think of a witty comeback.
- ryan_merket, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14I wonder if my neighbors will care if I line our street with landing lights.....?
- iTorrey, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13The only problem with your expert analysis is that these cars will not be flown by people but by software. There will be virtual lanes in the sky and the computer will keep you in them and from hitting other cars.
- JHawk24821, on 10/12/2007, -4/+13The reason this will never take off (pun!) - when an irresponsible drivers crashes a car, you loose 1 life, possibly a few if he/she injures someone. Now, take that same driver, give him free range in 3D space, and accelerate him to nearly 300 mph - viola! Recipe for disaster. I can't fathom a future where you are scared to walk outside because you are afraid of the neighbor's kid flying into you at 300 mph!
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10we've all been watching Moller with anticipation for years. goddamnit I want one. WTF can't he get any investors? can't he just take them up for a ride?
- JHawk24821, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9iTorrey - The only problem with your expert response is that software is only as good as the _people_ that wrote it. Just recently a train that was being controlled with software crashed - and a freaking train just goes where the track tells it to! Imagine a aircraft that can go any direction. . .
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8nah it's cool it's VTOL
- ChileanGoD, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8You press your OnStar button...
"Onstar service, how may I help you?"....
"HHHHHHHHHHHHHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELPPPPP!!!"
"Humm.. I can see here in my system you're falling like a stone. Do you want me to deploy the parachutes or send help to the exact place you're going to crash?" - speezer, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8big parachute
- ChileanGoD, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7is there any video recording of this ***** actually flying?
- dilbertland, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6There is a reason that he can't get investors. Anyone taking a serious look at these realizes they will never become common place (even though I really wish the idea was viable). One of the biggest problems is that they are flying bricks. These's aren't like airplanes that have nice glide ratios when the engine quits, they will drop/tumble to the ground if there is a mechanical failure - and there will always be a mechanial failure. Even helicopters can autorotate, these can't do that. For as long as it's been around, the fact that the very guy who built it won't fly it without a teather should say a lot.
Of course there's also the fact that many people consider Moller little more than a scam artist for quite a while now. It's not like he's never had any investors. - dilbertland, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5And just to follow up on his business practices. The website says he is selling it off to lower some of the company's debt and he's also giving up his 1.5million salary....1.5million salary!!! That's for running a company that hasn't sold a single vechicle in 20 years...and can't even demonstate a functioning one beyond a couple of hops of a few feet while attached to a teather. You can imagine that some investors might see that as being taken advantage of....
- flamingmb, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5now all they need to invent is flying bicycles for this flying car to cut off!
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Where's the link to the actual eBay auction?
- ashlvsya, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Flubber included?
- MasterFunk, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4It's really no big deal anymore, now a days we have cell phones to call someone to tell them we are on a Zepplin somewhere. But back in the old days when my Dad first started flying, he ran out of gas this one time in Cloud City, without a phone. Yeah you might say now, "Hey Cloud City looked nice in that movie" but let me tell you, few things were more scary than getting suck in Cloud City late at night in the early 70's...
Wait a second, I don't remember getting high?! - FelixSchmelix, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Moller is a scam artist. This thing has never been close to 275 mph or 36,000 feet. If you buy this you probably end up with a ***** fiberglass body on a kludged frame with a few wankel engines. Moller has done nothing but get in trouble with the SEC with his sky-car project...
All of this is aside from the fact that his design is *****. Traditional aircraft design gives us REAL airplanes that go faster with less power. But they don't like like something from Buck Rogers... - sinurgy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4This thing has been around forever and I've seen the same stock footage over and over and over. Please, has ANYONE ever actually seen this thing fly? Oh and by fly I don't mean hovering at 4ft while teathered to the ground. I didn't think it can fly a block muchless reach speeds faster than a McLaren F1. It's damn sweet looking though, I'll give it that!
- iTorrey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3JHawk, you're changing your argument now.
You said "Now, take that same driver, give him free range in 3D space", this simply isn't happening. This is not how it works. Now your argument is 'Give a computer programmer free range to program a car to fly in 3D space'. I'm willing to bet that with good, tested software/hardware, LESS people will die every year in fatal automobile crashes than die now.
It's not like they'll just get a few guys in a room and write some code one weekend and that is what will run everyone's car. And actually there have been many a project where vehicles move on their own and steer clear of obstacles and reach their destination. Is the computing power there right now? Maybe, but probably not yet. Will it be by the time they actually get around to this? Yes. And a lot of this IS based on computing power. - tutivlahos, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2What about hacking the chip for free flying (auto-pilot:off).
Scary! - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I have never seen this car fly, from all the documentaries that I have seen, the car is just sitting there bluffing away. Is there any video of this thing flying out there?
- JHawk24821, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Perhaps my point did cross the center line, however let me offer some rebuttals to your response as well:
"I'm willing to bet that with good, tested software/hardware, LESS people will die every year in fatal automobile crashes than die now."
Perhaps, but I am not talking about automobiles. Removing the human element (at least as much as is possible considering, as I mentioned before, that all software is written by people) from a situation does lower the failure rate, but it doesn't remove it. Hardware will continue to fail, software will continue to crash - all the while causing accidents (or at least delays) in whatever mode of transportation they happen to be controlling. Less is a good thing when you are talking about fatal accidents, don't get me wrong, but I would take a pilot that knows what he is doing over a plane filled only with passengers anyway.
"It's not like they'll just get a few guys in a room and write some code one weekend and that is what will run everyone's car. And actually there have been many a project where vehicles move on their own and steer clear of obstacles and reach their destination."
It's not like Microsoft just get a few guys in a room and wrote some code one weekend and that is what runs on everyone's computer, but it's still the most frequently compromised operating system out there. Give me a piece of paper and a pencil, and I can make a document just like someone with a laptop could, although slower and with a few spelling errors. However, when the electricity goes out, and they run out of batteries, I can still write.
Putting our lives in the hands of computers is a tricky choice, although it's getting easier all the time. One thing we certainly are not ready for is a single passenger flying car that does so without user intervention. No thanks, I'll let you be the first to make that trip. - priceless721, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1i say ding ding here right
- SuckMyDigg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Holy crap that's almost an exact replica of drawings my dad used to do years and years ago! Awesome!
- TheG2, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Reason this will never become common place:
People can't handle 2D when they are driving now without accidents, and he wants to add another axis...ah ha ha ha ha. I can just imagine walking down the street having to run for my life as cars come falling out of the sky. - Jonny5alive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The only problem with his flying car is that he can't make it fly.....
Sure it can hover 6ft off the ground but he hasn't got anywhere near making it fly like a plane yet. - MOJIRA, on 05/17/2008, -0/+1I've seen the Moller stuff a long time ago and I always thought it was meant to replace helicopters and private jets, not cars. Which to me sounds great because helicopters can be unstable and private jets are I'm sure very expensive and limited to... airports...
Until computer AI/software and vehicle hardware become more in sync you won't see flying vehicles. There's no way in hell we'll drive them on our own - the number one killer in the US (after cancer I think) is car crashes. - Bokista, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Randal: See? You're what's wrong with this country, hell, with this world. You're always thinking about you're own comfort level, never thinking about the rest of us. This country was built on sacrifice and nearly thirty years of living a life full of selfish foot pampering and inter-gender intercourse has made you too soft to throw your hat over the wall for the good of mankind. And what's worse is; not only do you ruin it for the rest of us with the flying car, but you completely blow the notion of American nobility in the process. The children of the world have no heroic figure to emulate, so the future of mankind continues on it's downward spiral into entropy and mass extinction, until all that was once great about the human race lies buried in the primordial stew, to which we'll most certainly return, thanks to you and your refusal to reach for the stars. And you'll forever be remembered as the sad footnote in the book of life, the wimpy little scumbag who could have breached the chasm of becoming and being, but instead opted to cover his own ass and foot in the process.
Dante: ALRIGHT! I'll go through with the deal. I'll let the German scientist hack my foot off, then him and his friends can have their way with me, all for the flying car.
Randal: You'd do it with a bunch of guys just to get a car? I thought I knew you man... - Conwaysb0718, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1wait... how is that not an airplane?
- raid517, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I've been reading about this thing since the mid 1980's. I still haven't seen one that works.
- vdog, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I can't see flying cars being made available to John Q Public, but I can see them being used by those with the infrastructure to train the pilots (drivers?) properly, the money to pay the insurance premuims, and maintain the vehicles in A1 condition- large corporations, rescue services, the police, and the military.
I used to work at a petrol station, and with the number of drunks, speed freaks, borderline road-rage freaks, and people with no water in their radiator nor oil in their sump (at least none that I could find)- the thought of those people wizzing by above my head freaks me out.
Oh, and while I know the number of actual car bombs is quite low, could you imagine one that flys? - synapseattack, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"Real" software sucks... I never install it in any computer. Guess I don't get to watch this.
- JHawk24821, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1From the Moller M400 official website - http://www.moller.com/news/media/
- chi1thook, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0For changing the oil does Jiffy Lube have a fly through policy?
- Tysto, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I can't believe Diggers would fall for a Moller Skycar story. This asshat has been working his patter for 40 years, cribbing from major aircraft designers and science fiction, and has never produced anything that actually flies. This world has prop planes, jet planes, helicopters, gyroplanes, hovercraft, blimps, and more that actually fly. Christ, Goodyear invented airplanes that were INFLATABLE and they WORKED, and that was 50 YEARS AGO. This guy has worked 40 years and is always 3 years and 3 million dollars away from full-scale production.
- JimNtexas, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1The 'Skycar' is a nice fiberglass knock-off an old kit plane from the 70s called the BD-5 .
The BD-5 was also hyped by the media, and also never amounted to anything.
The difference is that the BD-5 flew. Hundreds were ordered, but few were ever built. It flew badly, it killed some people, and most of them crashed, but it did fly.
None of this person's 'skycars' has never flown off of a tether, and in my opinion it will never fly off of a teather.
Moller's real talent is the ablity to smooth talk reporters into running stories about him. He is a master of manipulating the press. He just hasn't any luck in building airplanes. - shandar, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0This is what happens when hundreds of programmers and engineers has been working for years to design a failsafe computer system that will fly a plane: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jg1uyRJjqaQ
- smcgrath, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Why did I read this headline and instantly think of:
Say some German scientist comes up to you and he says “I
have invented the flying car. I’ll give it to you on one condition.” - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2You beat me by a minute :/
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -5/+2"There's no reason Moller shouldn't be able to get investors onboard"
Hell, all he needs is one unattended 6-year old with "Buy It Now" on eBay, and he's rich. - nreynolds, on 10/12/2007, -8/+5it doesn't. IT JUST DOESN'T.
oh, by which i mean the final version (if it gets made) will drive itself so no need to worry about running out of gas, i'm sure it'll land itself if it's running low. - flamingmb, on 10/12/2007, -19/+3I like poop.
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