Flying cars

How many of you have seen the “Back to the future-II” Or “Minority report” films? In these films, they showed that in the future, may be in year 2015 or 2050, people use flying cars for their daily commutation as like how we use normal cars on roads at present. It’s not just in that movie; flying cars are the norm for almost all futuristic films. Now, we are in Mid-2012, do we see any sign of this going to happen even in near future? What are the difficulties in making of these crazy cars? I reckon time's up for roads, with their mile-long traffic jams and pedestrian crossings. How great would it be to just take to the skies, where we could avoid traffic jams by simply flying over the other cars? Isn’t that cool? But still why we could not able to achieve it? Is it very expensive to produce these cars? Many questions to be answered, let’s explore and try to find the answers.

What is a flying car?

A flying car, as the name implies, is a vehicle that can be flown in the air and used on the roads. That means, it obviously has to have the basic characteristics of an aircraft (like propellers) and a car (like road tires). It would have to be light enough to fly in the air and strong enough to move on the road. Because a flying car would have the ability to land and drive, it would have to be able to take the impact of hitting the road and then moving on it uninterrupted, smoothly. Besides, it would have to be installed with additional safety features before being released for the public use. Actually the first flying-car experiment had started in 18^th century; however that was a big failure. After that many experiments started towards it. Let’s see the brief history.

Brief history of flying cars

The first working flying car prototype was built in 1917 by Glenn Curtiss. The Autoplane was a small craft at only 27 feet long, and could only carry a payload of 710 pounds. But the Autoplane never achieved sustained flight. It made a few hops, but it was destined to go down in history as the flying car that never really flew.

Here is the table with all different flying cars attempted in the last century.

S.No	Name	Inventor	Year	Comments
1	Autoplane	Glenn Curtiss	1917	The Autoplane never truly flew, but it did manage a few short hops.
2	Aerobile	Waldo Waterman	1937	A lack of funding killed the project.
3	Airphibian	Robert Fulton	1946	It was the first flying car to be certified by the Civil Aeronautics Administration. Despite his success, Fulton couldn't find a reliable financial backer.
4	ConvAirCar	Henry Dreyfuss	1947	Plans to market the car ended when it crashed on its third flight.
5	Avrocar	Molt Taylor	1949	Failed to go mass production due to lack of more advance orders.
6	Mizar	Henry Smolinski	1973	During a flight test and the vehicle crashed, killing its inventor.

These inventors never managed to develop a viable flying car, and some even died testing their inventions. However, they proved that a car could be built to fly, and inspired a new group of roadable aircraft enthusiasts. With advances in lightweight material, computer modeling and computer-controlled aircraft, the dream is very close to becoming reality.

The inventors of the early flying cars worked more on adapting a car to fly in the air while the recent inventions of flying cars have been in adapting an aircraft for asphalt roads.

Basic elements of a flying car

Whatever may be the case, a modern personal air vehicle should contain a powerful engine, which is capable of lifting the vehicle up and at same time able to drive on road. Most likely, it should contain double engine as a back-up. It must also have wings or aircraft blades for flying, but those wings should easily be detachable or foldable. Another important thing is, the material used in flying car as it should be lightweight and strong to sustain the damages during the travel.A flying car will have to be run on Eco-friendly, safe and inexpensive fuel, for better success in the market.

Most crucial point is the safety. The main reason aircraft manufactures haven't invested much in trying to offer low-cost private aircraft has probably got to do something with safety issues related to flight. Air accidents are more dangerous and fatal than road accidents. So if the inventors of a flying car are aiming the market of the masses, they will have to make it safe. For that, they will have to include features like safety cages, air bags, parachutes and/or crush zones, etc. Because of all the requirements needed for it to work, a functional flying car might seem complicated and difficult, but it is certainly not impossible. Let’s see what modern inventors are offering to us.

Modern Flying Cars

After almost a century of investigation on flying cars by earlier inventors, there are still some obstacles to overcome, including receiving the approval from the FAA. Nevertheless, the dream of flying cars are close to being finished by the modern inventors and the cars would fill the skies in next few decades.
( Courtesy : How stuff works and Wiki )