Klein Vision’s AirCar, a Flying Car Prototype, Completes Maiden Flight | Hacker News Reader

Klein Vision’s AirCar, a Flying Car Prototype, Completes Maiden Flight

robbreport.com

41 pointsprostoalex21 comments

I'm sorry to bring a cart of wet blankets but this is not a good idea. It must do nothing well because of conflicting requirements between air (low weight and constant speed engine), road (heavy gear like collision protection, transmission, road tires, etc), and lugging all that Transformer magic around. You have to drive to an airport in order to fly to another airport with limited range, and then drive again.

Personal door-to-door aviation is here already: multirotors with what's basically drone software are going to explode in range and utility. The regulations will need to catch up. Kurt Moller had it right but couldn't execute on the vision.

Who said that it NEEDS to do it "well"? The fact that it can do it at all is great!

This may not be for everyone, but it is exactly how progress is made and mankind moves forward ...

I've got some bad news:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roadable_aircraft

It's been done. It's a stupid idea.

It's been "done" is the worst reason to stop working on anything.

Think - it can be "made better". Again - that is how mankind progresses forward ...

Not only that, but I don’t want to put my airplane at risk of a fender bender that leaves it unairworthy 600 miles from home.

Solution in search of a problem is what I see.

Powered lift aircraft will be unable to provide widespread personal door-to-door aviation. Even if the flight control, endurance, and regulatory problems can be solved they can't safely take off or land anywhere near trees, tall buildings, or overhead power lines.

Same applies to winged aircraft.

I'm fine with having dedicated landing pads, much like we have dedicated parking lots.

Right. Some of the drone delivery services are going this route. Set up a pad with a little clearance and the machine will spot its marker. You don't need a ton of clearance.

It's far different than a 1000m runway with all the support infra.

I wish them success but this is unlikely to be commercially viable. The trouble with flying cars is that the design compromises prevent them from flying or driving very well. When potential customers see the high price and performance limitations they will decide to purchase a cheaper, higher performance regular airplane instead. And then just rent a car at the destination airport FBO.

Not having to worry about weather on the return leg could be a huge benefit. Most private pilots are not IFR rated and in many parts of the country weather can be a major problem, getting stuck somewhere is not fun and can lead to poor decisions, especially with passengers.

It's unclear if that will justify the cost though.

I wish them success but this is unlikely to be commercially viable.

I think that depends on why people buy them. Koenigsegg, the supercar company, manages to make a decent profit producing and selling cars that have production runs of less than a hundred units, and they're only moving up to 300 units on the latest model. I think you can run a viable automotive business selling a tiny number of cars to very wealthy collectors.

In the case of Klein Vision, those will be aircraft collectors as well as car collectors, so maybe the market can sustain them.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koenigsegg#List_of_models

I don't really see how a flying car can pass all the necessary safety requirements to be a production vehicle, including noise and pollution emissions.

I'd guess many places allow for exemption from some or all road vehicle standards under some kind of special-interest vehicle registration?

Might be a cool toy for the rich though, and still a fun concept to see developed.

Yeah and it will likely be the cost of a brand new combine, the utility of which is to harvest the monocrop arrangements that will feed millions of people during its operational lifetime.

It is good to be pursued as a concept for future civilization organization (I guarantee the people working on flying cars at least had the opportunity to watch "the Jetsons" as impressionable children). And even if it is emissionless, I agree the noise pollution would be a huge issue (if propulsion relies on atmospheric pressure change - Musk on Rogan says a system somehow using powerful magnetism would wreak havoc on many other things).

But noise would be an issue for the conventionally structured, compacted neighborhood where driveways are probably less than 100' from each other. Real estate restrictions come as things like forgiveness of terrain between home and town and the location relative to good roads that lead to concentration of activity. Road construction meanders such that it is minimally invasive (and/or less expensive for earth-movers) and compliant with the group of scattered private land owners called on to host the road.

You cannot go somewhere on this planet unless you want to hike, fly (flat land for long runway), drive, or wait for a road to be necessary/bid/drafted/cleared/graded/paved/painted (enough productive tax payers must need the road for the idea to even be heard in the chambers of elected officials).

Neighbors live within earshot of each other's loud, necessary machines because their acreage is limited as a satellite to a city/town and zoned as residential - utilities, sanitation, telecom, post, all have a place to corral centralized services.

The mass production of commercial VTOL transportation (we already have the similarly priced helicopter, also "hand crafted" in small batches as safety/quality measure) will fundamentally alter the sprawl of civilization. We will be able to cheaply develop neighborhoods in remote areas, without the need for a grid (isolated inter-neighborhood grids will be commonplace at this point). I'd imagine the construction logistics of this would come in the way of material&tool-laden storage containers ferried by delivery craft with payload capacity akin to the Chinook.

A 50 mile commute home from work across a mountain range could be a half hour, although high wind speeds are rarely sufficient to halt ground transportation. Parking lots would not be nearly as large (wasteful) in cities expected to be built around the concept of a 100 mile radius [scattered] metropolitan area. Roads could exist for travel within a city of concentrated activity, because flight should be limited to minimum distances of a few miles because the "last mile" or "local miles" would be congested and chaotic with that third dimension of frequent takeoff/landing at random vectors, plus the concentration of work and play that is the heart of the reformed city (Car Culture Cancelled or Concealed) would be where the decibel level matters most.

An autopilot would be a minimum requirement for this. The alternative would be that everyone has to become a pilot, which at some level will be necessary even with an effective autopilot if only to understand terminology because we will begin to discuss travel intent "as the crow flies", so heading/altitide/airspeed parameters replace fast lane etiquette, right on red, and most importantly... STOPPING during a journey at any point. Never again would you need to swipe past another incoming 2000 lb vehicle going your speed in the opposite direction a mere 3' away.

We are both replying to a flying car article, and I've seen multiple here on HN over the years, so they exist and many people are working on it and interest is there. As you say, it's a luxury at this point and I wonder if a bottleneck is technological limitation and/or risk-adverse actuaries and lawyers somehow reigning in power over time thus grooming a fearful society across several decades.

First, the trend has been towards dense cities, not rural living/suburbs for centuries, as they can provide so many benefits (jobs, retail, culture, leisure, community, etc) efficiently.

> Parking lots would not be nearly as large (wasteful) in cities expected to be built around the concept of a 100 mile radius [scattered] metropolitan area.

And where exactly would all those VTOLs land and park?

I agree that dense cities are more efficient because of the benefits you listed (except leisure to me can be solace in a random place at least 1.5 km from any loud disturbance, where there is a high chance of a random animal jumping out of the bushes, freeze, and also try to figure out what I am), although some hemispheres are reacting to a routine virus mutation with an abrupt imposition of rule that allows us to observe more specific undertones throughout the dialogues of those who are required to "hold a leash" which opens the channel for Permanent Social Distancing which influences the canvas' of the enlightened city planners of a region that can now adopt a Pandemic-Proof Sprawl Standard (I'm speaking in the format of "Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't" where he sometimes elaborates on how human traversal stains the pristine landscapes he catalogues).

The slime mold spread sequence [1] suggests that this organism operating "freely as single cells, but can aggregate together to form multicellular reproductive structures" can only "leap" to new resources after it restrains its "exploration" growth. In the video, watch at 1:33 to see this occur, and once this weaker growth detects the resource, it begins to direct growth towards where the "highway link" is made between both resource concentrations. This allows interchange between both spreads, and it does not waste energy on a new path as it consumes the resource.

There is friction in all motion, and tires on asphalt (the most recycled material in the world because bitumen is like solder for aggregate & additives which can be refreshed at new angles or widths according to friction coefficient it is rated for) are to wheeled freight&passenger as bearings and propeller alloy decay would be to airborne travel (ground friction is only encountered during brief touchdown - not constant wear). The small size of the hydrogen/helium atom could occupy an updated resource loop as lifting gas for freight exclusive. Low friction motion vessel without infrastructure requirement between destinations, but corrective thrust to counter high winds for static hovering (large, mobile tower crane) - wear & tear might occur in frame? Hemp fiber of historically woven sails somehow sealed to contain (leak is inevitable, but Those Pesky Low Altitude Hydrogen Leaks become water vapor "in a cloud today and a lake next week") such a small atom is a cheap throwaway material in a supply chain where accidents are mildly expensive and a wildfire hazard for "hosting" territory underneath - but guaranteed safe because all operation is performed remotely (final "Fourth Strike" failsafe would be for onboard computer to have subroutines for known/established "dead zones" safely distanced enough from all known human or wildlife activity where it can ground itself or self destruct [2] because fly-by-wire human control has been severed by equipment error or Carrington Event). Hindenburg (et al) images in gradeschool textbooks instills early association with danger & airships (standardized education describing an era where up-and-coming sci fi authors are just beginning to imagine the future Automaton, and Marconi/Tesla have only recently sent first radio waves).

The low friction automated lifting gas shipping lane could contest conventional freight modes at low altitudes (hydrogen lift capacity reduces with altitude? Long distance kerosene emissions are exhausted >40k feet high where the air is thin and fuel expenditure is low so emissions per mile are drastically reduced - these emissions will eventually "fall" out if stratosphere whereas small hydrogen induced water vapor emission will be light enough to remain and act as greenhouse gas).

Common friction within all modes of travel occurs in the process that generates circular motion.

Since ammonium nitrate is so energy dense at room temperature (as Beirut has recently shown us) and not required to remain under pressure/liquid while in storage, I've wondered if steam generation via controlled release (granule? Oxygen atmosphere/supply required) could be a relatively simple supply loop using conventional, refined technology. But ammonium nitrate is a heavily regulated material (Night Moves), which is why VTOL flying shipping traffic becomes a question of political will (truck drivers are now drone operators with certified complete understanding of the airship). It is the same reason the US does not recycle nuclear waste as France does (Carter Administration eliminating plutonium from power plant supply chain after letting spent nuclear fuel sit in mineral water for 3 years). You can put cameras on a Bridge leading to city Roads and automate HD cameras (or any aperature that can direct a focusing device onto steady line of citizen traffic flow - you cannot make it cheap for the everyman to have unfettered travel without strict accountability. The user giving up all control at any point in flight with no option to override.)

Fordlandia was attempted in the name of rubber - to secure a supply of material guaranteed to erode at a certain rate (70-100k km per set recently?). Zooming into a map of any populated region will show the scattered towns orbiting a dense hub of activity - a portion of the local labor pool must always be available to refresh the guaranteed decay of rubber/bitumen/rock (gas tax).

Roads would still be relevant only where there are expected to be large concentrations of people. This becomes illegal airspace for loud over head flight takeoff/landing vector or silent hovering hydrogen filled blimps (wind turbines that saturate a horizon are are seen by some as an eyesore).

[1] https://youtu.be/GY_uMH8Xpy0

[2] https://youtu.be/pq7BHFuiBdY

Hydrogen rises so fast that it forms water vapor in the stratosphere and this can be a problem [1]. Would there be a way to keep it in troposphere?

"Merely mixing the two gases at room temperature, however, won't do anything, like hydrogen and oxygen molecules in the air don't spontaneously form water. Energy must be supplied to break the covalent bonds that hold H2 and O2 molecules together" [2]

[1] https://www.nature.com/news/2003/030609/full/news030609-14.h...

[2] https://www.thoughtco.com/making-water-from-hydrogen-and-oxy...

Once that slime mold in the video appropriates local resources, it suspends its spores to be available to air currents ("Ready to Spring into action when the good times return" - 2:40)

And it briefly goes dark and calm "moments" before the Suspension.

The design looks great to me! I guess there could be a poor person's version where you manually attach the wings.

wings are surprisingly tiny. I wonder if wide body is actually providing some lift there.

What's glide ratio of this roadable aircraft?

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