"If cars could fly...."

This is cool:

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/30/if-cars-could-fly/

The company has FAA approval so they are going to start making these things. $194,000 for a 450 mile range.

If I hear of a flying car crashing in St. Louis, I’ll send you a nice gift basket in the hospital

I’m saving for one. I’m only $193,000 short!

if we pool our money, it could drop easily to $192,747.43 in NO time

That’s not a bad cost for a new plane (yeah I know it’s insane, but it’s average.) But who on earth would want to drive something that ugly and expensive down the road?

Or you could get this for 120k new. A real airplane (with a whole-airframe parachute!).

My true airlust is for the Cessna Corvalis Turbo (formerly the Columbia 400). The Skycatcher, the Cessna equivalent to the Piper Sport, is made in China. No thanks.

Pretty cool. A nice first step. I think for small plane enthusiasts, the idea of a plane you can fold up and drive home from the airport is just awesome. No need for hangar storage, you can just drive it, fly it, and drive back home.

Just don’t take it over 88 miles per hour.

Yeah, I think that’s the appeal. And it has a 450 mile range, so you can use it for short trips too, land, and drive to a hotel or a friend’s house.

Did the inventor have to let a German scientist hack his foot off before said scientist’s friends had their way with him before he could get the schematics to the flying car?

Gah, I’ve been thinking about taking lessons (the muni airport is 1000 feet from my house, and that’s a good thing. Never really hear planes after 5, and it has a top notch french restaurant in it) and this is really pushing me. The ability to hop to New York whenever I want would be pretty awesome.

H.

And I’ll send the carplane a nice gift gasket.

GA is fun and I would highly recommend you take lessons, but you’re pretty much always better off jumping on Jetblue or Southwest or something if you actually want to go somewhere.

I just don’t see how this kind of thing can work. With roads, you have people funneled in specific places, with lanes, etc. How would you do that if everyone is trying to fly to work? It would be a disaster, and the worst part is that any wreck endangers people who are just sitting in their homes, presuming they are safe.

There are lanes in the sky, too. You just can’t see them. :)

It is fun. It is exhilarating. It is truly awesome to pilot a plane on your first solo flight. It is also a very expensive hobby, unless you own your own, get a great deal on a package for training, split a purchase with a group, or have a very good friend who will let you use their plane or rent it to you cheaply (good luck.)

I would love to go back and finish my private pilot license but I really don’t have the kind of cash laying around for a plane afterward. By the time you get done with rental, fuel, transportation at the far end, etc, you end up spending more than what a quick hop would cost you commercially. Taking people with you helps that scale though.

But it’s a pretty neat thing to be able to hop in a plane with a friend, fly to the beach for lunch and fly back by mid afternoon on a Saturday. I envy the friend I have with a private plane, but I don’t envy the fact it cost him more than my entire house and car put together.

They’re like lines in the sky, actually. Air-lines.

(It’s not a pun, just amateur etymology.)