NASA to inventors: get your flying car on

Ok everyone, you can stop tritely idly asking, "Where's my flying car?" Because NASA's hooking you up with the Personal Air Vehicle Challenge; intended to further advancements relating to airborne vehicular development, the competition's grand prize winner will take home $250,000. But don't worry if you don't think you're qualified to gun for the big money, there are also prizes ranging between $150k and 25gs—still plenty enough to start bankrolling that tricked Hummer Skycar you've had your eye on.

[Via Autoblog]

[hal6000 @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

So does the guy that has been making a Skycar for the past few years win my default?

http://www.moller.com/skycar/

[Matt Rix @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

I assume he's got to actually prove it through a series of trials or something.

[xVariable @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

hal6000: It's not your fault, you did everything you could (har har).

So yeah, let's get on with it already. After all, the aircar is just another step on the road to a *true* all-terrain vehicle - one that transitions from land, to sea ( http://www.amphicar.com/ ), to air, and space, with ease.

Make it so. =) (Would that be a total freak show, or WHAT?!)

[Navras @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

i think that car on the image its not probable to be a flying car,because a flying should have 4 doors and not one and it will be an arquitecture like the vulgar car,i�ve a model of the car that could problably be more interesting to nasa than a muller car.

[Navras @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

i think that car on the image its not probable to be a flying car,because a flying should have 4 doors and not one and it will be an arquitecture like the vulgar car,i�ve a model of the car that could problably be more interesting to nasa than a muller car.

[locknroll @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

Moller wins by default. But he has been making that skycar for so damm long it makes me wonder what he really does in that little workshop.

You would also think that Honda, GM and Ford would have skycar prototypes of thier own, but I suspect the marigns are a little too fat on current automobiles

[Daniel Ross @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

I can't help feeling that to fully develop a grand-prize winning air car will take more than $250K.

[Jes @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

This isn't about flying cars at all! I don't know why the article here on Engadget says that... The only thing that's even remotely similar to "flying cars" is the name of the challenge, "Personal Air Vehicle" but, an airplane is a personal air vehicle. Here's what the article is _actually_ about:

"The Personal Air Vehicle (PAV) Challenge will award annual prizes totaling $250,000 to the teams that can best design, develop, and demonstrate technology improvements in various general aviation aircraft capabilities."

"To win one or more of the five PAV Challenge purses, teams must modify their general aviation or sport aircraft to demonstrate the best performance in five technology areas."

"The intent of the PAV Challenge is to encourage innovation in the amateur and sporting aviation communities to help enhance the general aviation transportation system"

"Fifty thousand dollars will be awarded for two technology developments related to aircraft noise."

"Twenty-five thousand dollars will be awarded to the teams that can minimize external noise measured outside the airplane."

so on, and so forth. NOT ABOUT FLYING CARS!

-Jesse

[Keith Sheehan @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

I'm ready to throw my hat over the wall.

http://www.viewaskew.com/tv/leno/flyingcar.html

[TVtheFleshtone @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

Great, so now I gotta worry about Joe Sixpack ramming his Hummer H4 into my dwelling?

[Zach Boettner @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

Hah! I was excited when I read this, but then I read the article and it doesn't say anything about flying car/skycar/PAV-VTOL/etc. I've been wanting a high-performance, long range, safe, user-friendly VTOL PAV for years. I've given up on the Moller [vaporware] Skycar. That guy's been at it forever. He's even trying to extend his lifespan by eating almonds so that he can see his invention "take off" some day. WTF! We can go to the moon, mars, etc, but can't make the ultimate personal flying machine. Rrrrggghhhh!

[Larry Mittag @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

This set of NASA challenges is part of their Highway in the Sky program. In the short term it is about General Aviation (GA), but in the longer term it is very much about 'flying cars'. The Moeller car has been flying for a long time, but it lacks the infrastructure to support millions of them in the air in a morning commute driven by normal people yakking on their cell phones.
It may seem like not much is changing in GA, but they are going through a real set of changes. The Sport Pilot licensing is making GA available to many more people while the instrumentation has been basically reinvented.
Flying cars are the easy part. Making them usable by real people is the tough part.

[quixote @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

The Dutch are way ahead of NASA. (I know. No surprise.) This is a link to the PALV, (http://www.sparkdesign.nl/en/actueel/20041013palv/20041013palv.html), which looks like an affordable, workable flying biscuit tin. And (http://www.moller.com/skycar/) links to flying car that looks like a Corvette on steroids, made in California.

[G @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

A quarter million is pennies for aviation projects. Prize should've been a million.

[Google Nazi @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

Sorry to say but PALV has no proof what so ever on their vehicle. It seems to be in theory only. Also its the russians who seem to always be ahead of NASA because they keep it simple.

As for a 200k reward, it seems fairly decent but it seems just another way to get people to do their dirty work. As if our taxes weren't enough they expect hobbyists to spend thousands of dollars out of their pockets in a low chance of winning that prize. I don't think its worth it unless you already have the plans on a "sky"vehicle

[simplecase @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

I like the gyrocopter better. Cheap solution to car / flying problems.

[CRWhitehead @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

There was a piece on 60 mins about this a few months ago. There are a number of ppl who are racing to be the first with a plausible working model, though none yet. But really lets be realistic? what is this thing supposed to fly on? Jet fuel? For the masses, right. im sure that will bring the price of petrol way down. And hey since we will be higher up in the atmosphere, maybe our emissions wont stagnate to further global warming. I say we deal with perfecting terrestrial based travel safely and ethically before we go shooting for polluting the skys with our metal coffins first.

[Roblyman @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

"Flying cars are the easy part. Making them usable by real people is the tough part."

You got that right. I shudder to thing of a teenage blonde putting on her makeup, talking on the cell phone while flying through the air at 100 - 250 mph. REAL pilots have problems managing their fuel and avoiding traffic. This scares the bejebus out of me.

[Robert @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

Similar to what the xprize (first one won in oct 2004) http://www.xprize.org was - Build a spaceship and get a cash prize, the cash is an incentive for inventors to build their ideas, as the x-prize demonstrated, the cash reward was far less than the total cost for the project. It is a good idea because it gives normal teams a chance to demonstrate their ideas.

[STP/SaturdayTechPodcast GUY1 @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

I am sick of the Moller car! I have YET to see it truly FLY! OOOOOO - It can hover..... SO WHAT! What about hover to flight and flight to hover conversions? That's the most critical time of flight... transition... do so research on the "Osprey." Sigh... perhaps i'll build a hellicopter with Dubs and try to win the contest....

[otakucode @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

NASA? Interesting that they're the ones doing this. Because whatever is invented will be irrelevant for decades thanks to the asses in the FAA. Why do you think current airplane cockpits look like something straight out of 1955? BECAUSE THEY ARE! The design of airplanes today is mostly the design of airplanes in WW2 and shortly thereafter. The FAA has made it so expensive and so time-consuming to get new designs approved and into the air that no company has any reason to even bother. The Sport Pilot license will be interesting, but once the FAA sees more than a dozen people winging around in some extremely simple, durable, and easy to use contraption, they will put the mighty smackdown on it. They'll decree that it has to take off from airports, file a flight plan, etc, etc. The FAA has so completely insulated the airspace from any possibility of creative competition in the design arena that it has stagnated for half a century. And I doubt they plan on giving up their power any time soon. People in power rarely give it up peacefully.

[Roblyman @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

otakucode
It is not the FAA that has the problem. It is the legal system. It is the lawsuits that have put most small GA companies out of business. Everytime someone crashes a spam can the surviving relatives go after the only entity with money....the manufacturer.

Under the special certification of airworthiness commonly used for homebuilt aircraft, you can build and fly pretty much anything you want as long as you can prove it is at least as safe as the Technical Standard Order(TSO) stuff in a certified plane.

The 1950s instruments work very well and they are reliable. Only in the last year or so have solid state attitude heading reference systems (AHRS) become available as TSO. If you have a better idea on how to enable Joe Public to determine the attitude and flight vector of their "vehicle", go for it. A lot of people have spent a lot of money to figure this out. Glass cockpits are becoming more common, but they still present the same information found in the 1950s guages and are often fed by the same "old" inputs.

Personally, I don't want my next door neighbor flying an aircraft around my house. He would probably fly one of these: http://photos.trailersailor.com/2004/flyingbassboatsmall.jpg

[devid @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

People barely know how to drive on the ground. All I need is another moron to sideswipe me 1000ft above the ground.

[Zach @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

Paul Moller says he is developing life-extending Almond butter so that he'll be alive to see his frickin SkyCar fly. WTF! I've given up on Moller. Maybe Urban Aeronautics (http://www.urbanaero.com) will actually get off the ground some day, but Moller - ha! - he's just a bunch of vaporware.

[Vish Arkalgud @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

Last week, I posted my comments on MIT's
Technology Review Air Car Forum (http://www.technologyreview.com/forums/forum.asp?forumid=289&iPage=1). I have copied core of
my posing here.

Taking cue from Navras' comment below if we try to express definition of "what" a Flying Car should be, here it is:

Normal automobiles that are made suitable or
transformed for flight "on-the-fly" during normal road traffic while in motion and as simple to park while static.

Hence, a flying car is wingless, rotor-free and devoid of any high-powered engines or thrust with the ability of short take-off. It is an automobile first and functions as one at street level. Its ability to fly is an add-on and it shall fly few feet above street to few hundred feet above city blocks with ultimate production costs in the range of high end BMWs & Mercedes. That is, $75,000 to $100,000. It uses normal fuel like any other normal car uses today and produces noise levels in the same range (or slightly more) of such cars and motorcycles.

I have been a serious thinker in this field for a long time and I am sure Dr. Paul Moller indeed a key contributor, pathbreaker and pioneer in charting this new territory.

Accept this. NASA recognizes this today. He recongnized it 20 years ago.

If you look at history, during the transition from 19th-20th century, we had automobiles and airplanes catching the fancy of human beings. That fascination is carried over to next stage during the transition from 20th century to 21st century.

More players are getting in and onlooker comments cover a wide range from awe to real funny ones.

NASA throwing in the towel in terms of a competition makes one thing clear: Flyig Cars are going to be a reality.

Technology to support PAVs are available at this juncture between the centuries. The rest is upto to the invetor/s' clarity.

NASA's competition also means something esle: The best or the most acceptable is yet to come!