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It looks like Lilum Aviation is now hiring http://lilium-aviation.com/#jobs
This is the company that has announced via the Telegraph a vertical lift flying car in two years.
Oh and there's something in there about a personal electric jet, with vertical take off and landing, a top speed of 250MPH and a range of 300 Miles.
But really, a job designing a real flying car, how cool is that?
From the article:
Personal aeroplanes which can take off noiselessly from the back garden, will be available within two years, engineers have claimed.
Lilium Aviation is designing an electric two-seater aircraft which takes just 20 hours to learn to fly, and can travel at speeds of 250mph.
Crucially, the small aircraft, which weighs just 25kg[sic], can take off vertically which means it does not need to fly from an airport, but could be parked outside a house or in a garden.
The company says the design will 'open the door to a new class of simpler, quieter and environmentally friendly planes' and will be available from 2018.
"Our goal is to develop an aircraft for use in everyday life," said Daniel Wiegand, CEO and one of the company's four founders.
"We are going for a plane that can take off and land vertically and does not need the complex and expensive infrastructure of an airport.
"To reduce noise and pollution, we are using electric engines so it can also be used close to urban areas."
(Score: 2, Disagree) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday May 10 2016, @05:37PM
Flying cars won't be practical until we can create a craft with about the same ability to fly as a real bird. We need much better AI, more forgiving, flexible, tough, and lightweight materials-- it's no big deal if birds bump into each other, and much improved efficiency. The way we fly now is hugely energy intensive, basically a brute force method of pouring on the power until the dumb and pathetic fixed wing designs that are the best we can manage today can't help but lift the plane off the ground. The multiple rotor helicopter style is more controllable with current technology but even more energy intensive.
Ask why we don't build more canals and travel more by boat? In one respect, boating on a lake is similar to flying in that the craft need not stick to a narrow track. However, another similarity is energy use. Plus boats are expensive, slow, and have limited feasible routes. Railroads pretty much put canals out of business. Maybe an amphibious vehicle could work? Our favorite method of supplying cities with water is to build huge reservoirs, why not commute to work by road and lake where convenient, avoid some rush hour traffic?
Perhaps a biologically based aircraft could work. I figure the technology to do that is many years away, perhaps decades, perhaps centuries.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Tuesday May 10 2016, @06:13PM
"Bumping into each other" like birds does not scale. Nor do flapping wings: you would be tossed around like salad, assuming the craft held together. As well as that, it does not matter how tough and lightweight the material you make an aircraft from, in the end a human sized cabin must be shoved through the air at a specified speed, and that's where most of an aircraft's energy goes.