Reply To: Wealth of Nations, and Economics of Abundance

[Rematog]

Breakable wrote: Please read a little more about the
http://www.moller.com/newm400.htm
Mileage from 20mpg. Somewhat comparable to a normal car.
And yes, they are trying to fully automate it so you would not need to do anything else, just define the destination.
And of course you should not need a pilots license, and drunk flying should not be a problem 😉
at least most of the time for the rest – there are parachutes installed

I looked at the site you posted a link to and saw nothing about “totally Automated”. What I did see was “you will require a “powered-lift normal (read Helicopter) category pilot’s license”. It goes on to say “our intention that the Volantor will EVENTUALLY EVOLVE into a completely automated…” (my emphsis). This is pie in sky wishing, not any kind of near future capability.

By the way, while I’m not a helicopter pilot (single engine fixed wing only), I’ve asked fully rated fixed wing and helicopter pilots about how hard it would be for a fixed wing pilot to learn to fly a chopper. He told me it was somewhat different and required good coordination of the controls and more attention to them. Remember, there is an additional control in a helicopter, not present in a fixed wing aircraft, the cyclic, which controls the pitch of the rotor. The air car, as a ducted fan, may not have this, but the tilt of the fans would add some complication.

The milage figure may be somewhat misleading. That is likely a “cruising” fuel consumption. I read years ago that the P-47 Thunderbolt (a very large World War II pistion engined fighter) got 3 mpg. This was based on fuel use of 100 gallons per hour at 300 mph cruising speed. I would bet that the 20 mpg figure does not include low speed flight, take-off and climbing (uses lots of fuel) or hover/land. Look at the total horsepower, figure a gallons per hour at full power for 10 min say to take-off and reach altitute, then 5 more minutes for landing, for a total of 15 min full power fuel use for no distance traveled, then start thinking of anyting less than city to city travel, at it will amaze you how much fuel it uses.

But, if you can afford a $500,000 price tag (the web site you linked to gives this as the price of series producion) you can afford the fuel.