Glass - Flying cars : the true story

In 2002, I read an article in the Driving section of the New York Times about Molt Taylors 1949 Aerocar, a funny-looking but oddly appealing little automobile with a flight-conversion option. Taylor thought that the technology for automatically converting the family car to an airplane could be as simple as raising and lowering a mechanical convertible top with the press of a button.

The notion of a flying car parked in every garage struck me as the best/worst idea ever. Cars break down and drivers miscalculate and make mistakes that are catastrophic enough even when they dont happen overhead. Still, think about pressing a button and transforming your cars trunk to a tail with a spinning propeller... about telescoping wings that extend and click into place overhead... about pulling back on the steering wheel and driving right into the sky!

Whether it was a brilliant idea or a colossally bad one, I had discovered that a flying car isnt just a commuters daydream or a rollicking tall tale for the modern age. I saved the article about the heroic little car that seemed to defy common sense and stashed it in my sketchbook.

By the time I unfolded the yellowed newspaper article about Taylors dream car and reread it, Id discovered that Taylor wasnt the first inventor to build a flying car. He was one in a still-unfolding long line of visionaries. Their timeline extends back to Gustave Whitehead in 1901 and Trajan Vuia in 1906, and continues forward, with the speed of digital innovation, to prototypes such as the Carplane and PAL-V ONE. Each prototype is a testament to the unfaltering belief that the real compromise is being restricted to driving cars that cant fly.

I have tried to convey the enthusiasm of inventors who felt certain that they had devised the right prototype at just the right historical moment to successfully introduce automobile drivers to flying cars. To maintain the storys momentum, Ive left out some worthy efforts. One of the most notable was the 1971 AVE (Advanced Vehicle Engineers) Mizar, a combination Ford Pinto and Cessna Skymaster built by Henry Smolinski and Harold Blake. On September 11, 1973, just months before production was scheduled to begin, the right wing detached and the Pinto plummeted to earth, killing them both. Though the innovative use of a mass-produced automobile was so promising that the Mizar nearly went into production, I decided that the malfunction and resulting deaths unnecessarily repeated the pattern of flying cars as a cautionary tale.

Despite tragic headlines, rational critics, skeptical insurance companies, and nervous homeowners, flying car inventors and enthusiasts pursue their engineering ideal, pinning their hopes on new computer navigation technology that reacts faster than humans and doesnt get distracted, sleepy, or intoxicated. An autonomous Toyota Prius developed by Google has reportedly been driving itself safely around San Francisco, with human supervision, since 2010. Autonomous vehicle technology is being developed for flight as well. Once the Pentagon unveils an automated aerial system to convert a Humvee for flight, can a family car transformed for computerized flight be far behind?

aeronaut aviator; originally referred to a balloonist.

ailerons tilting surfaces in a planes wings that make the plane roll to one side or the other.

airplane a self-powered heavier-than-air flying machine.

airship a lighter-than-air aircraft with a steering mechanism.

altitude height above sea level.

angle of attack the angle at which a wing meets the wind.

biplane a plane with two sets of wings, one above the other.

bumper a metal or rubber barrier at either end of a motor vehicle, meant to absorb impact in a collision.

elevators tilting surfaces on a planes tail that make the plane dive or climb.

fixed-wing aircraft aircraft with wings that do not move.

flying wing a plane with no tail, shaped like large wings.

fuselage the main body of a plane.

glider an unpowered fixed-wing aircraft.

Global Positioning System (GPS) a navigation system for locating a position accurately using radio signals from satellites.

landing gear an aircrafts wheels.

lift an upward-acting force produced by wings, rotor blades, engine thrust, or a lighter-than-air gas.

lighter-than-air craft an aircraft kept aloft by a large gas bag lighter than the surrounding air.

monoplane a fixed-wing aircraft with one wing across the top or one wing on each side.

navigation steering a course.

pitch movement of an aircraft that tilts the nose up or down.

radar a system for locating aircraft by sending out bursts of radio signals and detecting reflections that bounce back.

retractable wheels wheels that fold up inside the aircraft.

roll the banking movement of an aircraft in which one wing rises and the other falls.

rotor a set of rotating blades.

rudder a control surface in an aircrafts tail fin that swivels left or right to turn the plane in a particular direction.

seaplane a plane with floats that allow it to land on water, sometimes called a float plane.

spin an aggravated stall resulting in a corkscrew downward path.

stall a loss of lift that occurs when an aircraft is flown at an angle of attack greater than the angle for maximum lift. If recovery from a stall is not achieved quickly by reducing the angle of attack, a secondary stall and a spin may result.

CHAPTER 2

Gustave Whiteheads Condor

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CHAPTER 3

Trajan Vuias Aroplane-Automobile

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The flying... 10 million years: Flying Machines Which Do Not Fly (New York Times, October 9, 1903), quoted in Moolman, Road to Kitty Hawk, 149.

I have... two wings: Trajan Vuia at www.ctie.monash.edu.au/hargrave/vuia.html.

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1906... France: Stiles, Roadable Aircraft, n.p.

CHAPTER 4

Glenn Curtisss Autoplane

Now if... have something!: C. E. Glass, The Personal AircraftStatus and Issues, NASA Technical Memorandum 109174 (1994), 9.

CHAPTER 5

Felix Longobardis Combination Vehicle

There are... build them: Alice Fuchs, Report on the Aerocar, Flying (September 1957), 57.

CHAPTER 6

Henry Fords Flying Flivver

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Mark my words... will come: Bob Sillery, A Plane-Car for the Man of Average Means, Popular Science (March, 2000), 74.

CHAPTER 7

Waldo Watermans Arrowbile

Now if... have something!: C. E. Glass, The Personal AircraftStatus and Issues, NASA Technical Memorandum 109174 (1994). 9.

a flying tool shed: James R. Chiles, Flying Cars Were a Dream That Never Got Off the Ground, Smithsonian (February 1, 1989), 146.

CHAPTER 8

Harold Pitcairns Autogyro

Inventor Cierva... aviation: Leon Clemmer, Horsham Township (Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia, 2004), n.p.

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CHAPTER 9

Joseph Gwinns Aircar

, 2002.

CHAPTER 10

Buckminster Fullers Dymaxion Omnidirectional Human Transport

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Zoomobile: Michael John Gorman, Dymaxion Timeline, 1927, hotgates.stanford.edu/Bucky/dymaxion/timeline.htm, 2002.

Freak Auto: Patrick Cooke, Sappy Motoring, Forbes FYI (Spring 2001), 73.

CHAPTER 11

William Bushnell Stouts Skycar

Simplicate and... lightness: J. A. Greenberg, William B. Stout and His Wonderful Skycar, Mechanix Illustrated (November 1943), 45. Whether Stout invented this phrase or adopted it is not known, but engineers have been quoting it ever since.