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The Trouble With Flying Cars: The Two T's
Aug. 4th, 2016 11:21 amI wrote this as a follow-up to my original post where's my flying car? but the site decided they didn't want it. So, waste not, want not, you get it.
Flying Cars – The Two T’s
I recently had a chance to take a short flight over downtown Chicago in a small aircraft, an event that got me thinking some more about flying cars.
I flew on a very typical summer day in Chicago – mid 80s Fahrenheit (around 29 C), spotty fair-weather clouds at 2500 feet (760 meters) and a 10 knot (18 kph) wind. It would have been a beautiful day for a drive in a car.
The flight, at typical flying-car altitude of 1800 feet (550 meters) was bumpy. Really bumpy, as in I was twice offered an air-sickness bag, riding down washed-out dirt road at speed bumpy. This is the first “T” that challenges flying-car advocates, namely turbulence.
It’s not like turbulence is a new problem. The Lockheed Constellation, one of the first truly comfortable airliners, was designed specifically to fly at higher altitudes, avoiding the turbulence and weather of the lower atmosphere.
Although this low-altitude turbulence is worse in summertime, it can occur during any sunny day. What’s happening is that the sun is heating houses, parking lots, roads and lawns, all of which reflect heat back into the atmosphere differently. Thus the lower atmosphere is full of small columns of air rising and falling depending on what’s below them. During my flight, we were briefly over Lake Michigan, and I was told to expect more turbulence. I didn’t note any, but the bottom line is that any flying car will have a bumpy time.
My flight also exposed me to the second big issue with flying cars. The direct route from my pilot’s hanger to the downtown area is directly over Midway Airport, Chicago’s smaller (but still very busy) commercial jetliner airport. As it happened, we were allowed to fly directly over the middle of the airport, which yielded the memorable sight of 737s landing and taking off directly below us.
This was the second “T” of flying cars – traffic, as in air traffic control (ATC). Chicago, like most big cities, is full of restricted airspace, including two major airports, sports stadiums, and the President’s personal residence. If you want to fly in Chicago, you really need to talk to ATC. Unless of course you want to get ran over by a 737 or shot down by an F-16, in which case feel free to do as you please.
To a certain extent we had to cooperate with ATC for them to even see us. The plane I flew in was built in 1963, which made the mid-2000’s suite of radios stick out like a sore thumb from the old-school analog gauges. One of those radios was actually an IFF transponder - a device that, when pinged by radar, replies with information. As we approached Midway, one piece of information we were sending was the number “1200” which told ATC that we were flying under Visual Flight Rules. The first thing we were told to do was to change that to 5151 so that ATC could keep track of us.
For true flying cars, i.e. cars that anybody can use, ATC would have to develop new procedures. How would one handle a pilotless car? How would one handle traffic control for thousands of additional vehicles, pilotless or not? It’s a non-trivial problem.
Flying Cars – The Two T’s
I recently had a chance to take a short flight over downtown Chicago in a small aircraft, an event that got me thinking some more about flying cars.
I flew on a very typical summer day in Chicago – mid 80s Fahrenheit (around 29 C), spotty fair-weather clouds at 2500 feet (760 meters) and a 10 knot (18 kph) wind. It would have been a beautiful day for a drive in a car.
The flight, at typical flying-car altitude of 1800 feet (550 meters) was bumpy. Really bumpy, as in I was twice offered an air-sickness bag, riding down washed-out dirt road at speed bumpy. This is the first “T” that challenges flying-car advocates, namely turbulence.
It’s not like turbulence is a new problem. The Lockheed Constellation, one of the first truly comfortable airliners, was designed specifically to fly at higher altitudes, avoiding the turbulence and weather of the lower atmosphere.
Although this low-altitude turbulence is worse in summertime, it can occur during any sunny day. What’s happening is that the sun is heating houses, parking lots, roads and lawns, all of which reflect heat back into the atmosphere differently. Thus the lower atmosphere is full of small columns of air rising and falling depending on what’s below them. During my flight, we were briefly over Lake Michigan, and I was told to expect more turbulence. I didn’t note any, but the bottom line is that any flying car will have a bumpy time.
My flight also exposed me to the second big issue with flying cars. The direct route from my pilot’s hanger to the downtown area is directly over Midway Airport, Chicago’s smaller (but still very busy) commercial jetliner airport. As it happened, we were allowed to fly directly over the middle of the airport, which yielded the memorable sight of 737s landing and taking off directly below us.
This was the second “T” of flying cars – traffic, as in air traffic control (ATC). Chicago, like most big cities, is full of restricted airspace, including two major airports, sports stadiums, and the President’s personal residence. If you want to fly in Chicago, you really need to talk to ATC. Unless of course you want to get ran over by a 737 or shot down by an F-16, in which case feel free to do as you please.
To a certain extent we had to cooperate with ATC for them to even see us. The plane I flew in was built in 1963, which made the mid-2000’s suite of radios stick out like a sore thumb from the old-school analog gauges. One of those radios was actually an IFF transponder - a device that, when pinged by radar, replies with information. As we approached Midway, one piece of information we were sending was the number “1200” which told ATC that we were flying under Visual Flight Rules. The first thing we were told to do was to change that to 5151 so that ATC could keep track of us.
For true flying cars, i.e. cars that anybody can use, ATC would have to develop new procedures. How would one handle a pilotless car? How would one handle traffic control for thousands of additional vehicles, pilotless or not? It’s a non-trivial problem.
