23 November 04
Almond Butter and Flying Cars
Tucked away on a court in Davis that I pass by twice a week when I go to my Spanish class lies the research facilities of Moller International. Paul Moller, the inventor behind this company, has been developing a flying car called the Skycar. This vehicle is planned to be the size of a large automobile, will have a top speed of 350 mph, will have a maximum range of 750 miles, and will get better than 20 mpg. The list price for the first Skycars to roll off the line is set at a mere $995,000, dropping to $500,000 once 200 are produced. Let’s hope the Skycar fares better than the Flying Pinto.
For those of you who are looking for foods with life extension attributes so as to reach the day when Skycars are commonplace, Mr. Moller also sells organic almond butter from his ranch near Dixon.
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Excuse me, but this post brings out the professional transportation planner in me.
The Skycar would be a human, cultural, and economic catastrophe. Surely auto accidents already kill enough people in two dimensions. If Skycar accidents happened only as often as auto accidents, the carnage falling from the skies would make most of urban America way too scary to live in.
Logically, liability insurance for such a thing should be orders-of-magnitude greater than for the 2-d version that we already know, since you can wreak vastly more destruction in 3d. I can only hope that the realistic liability insurance costs for such a vehicle will render it impractical for public use.
If this idea gets much further, city governments need to recognize the threat and begin banning it to help squash the market.
Not that I feel strongly about this or anything :)
Peace, Jarrett