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from the Bring-on-Korben-Dallas-and-Leeloo dept.
Uber on Thursday laid out a vision for on-demand aircraft that can whisk commuters to home or work in a fraction of the time it would take on the road.
The ride-sharing giant assessed the feasibility of what it called "vertical take-off and landing" vehicles in a 98-page white paper, inviting innovators and entrepreneurs to take flight with the idea.
San Francisco-based Uber said it will be reaching out to cities, manufacturers and others about the concept.
"Just as skyscrapers allowed cities to use limited land more efficiently, urban air transportation will use three-dimensional airspace to alleviate transportation congestion on the ground," said the white paper, authored by Uber chief product officer Jeff Holden and product manager Nikhil Goel.
"A network of small, electric aircraft that take off and land vertically will enable rapid, reliable transportation between suburbs and cities and, ultimately, within cities."
Diagrams in the paper showed aircraft bodies of various designs with propellers that can rotate to allow for vertical lift-off or landing, then move into position for flying forward.
Perhaps Vitalstatistix was onto something.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Monday October 31 2016, @01:11PM
Which they won't anytime soon, because it turns out that flying cars are a really dangerous idea. Do you really want the morons who are driving around drunk and weaving all over the road flying around and weaving every which way in the sky? You do that, and you'll have people routinely crashing into the 4th floor of tall buildings.
For those with dreams of turning the Earth into Coruscant, just remember that took a government importing things from across an entire galaxy to make that even remotely work.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by driven on Monday October 31 2016, @01:46PM
Agreed, and I will add (as I have said for years): flying cars won't be a reality until they are completely computer driven. Present day seems a lot closer to such a reality.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday October 31 2016, @06:15PM
AND ... The computer can object to flying until some diagnostic code has been addressed.
People drive all the time in cars that they'll fix tomorrow. Because they don't have time today, something's urgent, and that light has been on for three weeks already anyway...
Well, it's not quite the same if you're flying. But people will still think the same about the priorities of dumb engineers who throw random unjustified error codes at them.
Ain't gonna buy no flying car if it can leave me stranded because of a warning light!