DARPA Asks for a Flying Car, Gets a Dual-Rotor Road Warrior Turned Helo

This is so awesome!!

I think you mean, "80 miles per hour on land and 140 miles per hour over land". Switch the two. On another matter, this sure looks better than Logi Aerospace's Tyrannos, which looks like one of those cheap RC airplane/helicopters you can get at Target.

put these inside this http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-space/article/2006-12/semper-fly-marines-space?page=#comments

and you somewhat solve the problem of getting around once you land,

I have seen 2 new aircars this past couple weeks in the news (one from some east coast company and this one) I wonder why they all look so dorky. For the past 8 years I have been watching another Aircar maker closly. http://www.moller.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=49&Itemid=57 check it out looks better than a flying dune buggy or the VW Beetle Airplane I saw last time.

I remember something fishy about the Moller skycar there. One other thing to keep in mind is that the Moller's ducted engines probably make for a messy take-off in places with lots of dirt (i.e. desert). These designs with large helicopter blades would lessen that dust/dirt kick-up when approaching/leaving the ground.

If something like the Parajet Skycar could be retrofitted with the coaxial blade setup, I think the vehicle design would look much better.

http://dvice.com/pics/Parajet-Skycar.jpg

Cool idea nonetheless.

There looks like an awful lot of weight forward of the main rotor shaft. Might need a bit of tweaking.

Since when does putting four wheels on a helicopter make it a flying car?

How many cup holders does it have?

I think it's cool! I'm sure it won't stay this way once it's built. Obviously they would add more armor, but it would be nice to see a 'flying car' finally.
I would imagine the engine would weigh enough to balance out the front, after all it's just a conversion of an existing helicopter. But make no mistake it drives on land and flies in the air so it is a flying car, helicopter base or not...

@Ezra
They look dorky because they're based on sound engineering. Their beauty is in function, not form. Moller has been all bark and no bite for years.

Looks cool, nice strategy: sell it to the military first then, when the technology becomes cheaper or patents expire, sell it to the general public.

I have been following modern roadable aircraft for sometime now, and looking back at some early designs it seems that everyone is trying to take too big of a bite out of this particular problem. overly ambitious designs always end in failure either at the engineering, financial, and/or marketing levels. In the past at early roadable aircraft, I see that even the best designs still fell victim to the market just not being there to support the product. It has always come down to "I want a flying car, but I don't want it to cost more than my Honda." and individuals coming out with 350K$, 1Mil$ cars are going to fall victim to this fact everytime. The only aircraft that I can think of that can answer this particular problem are ultralights, that are not like cars but more like motorbikes. Make a Trike that can be trike on the road and a trike in the air, can reach a top cruise of 100mph on both land and air, and weigh within the light sport aircraft category, and cost no more than the price of crosscountry motorcycle, then you will have a product that has a fighting chance.

The only piece of the puzzle missing is the marketing aspect. If you can pound it into the hoi poloi's head that they are not truly living in a modern civilization unless they have one of these baby's in their driveway, like the marketing strategy of the Ipod.

I know it's not the vision we were promised in the 60's but you have to crawl before you can walk, walk before you can run, run before you can jump, and jump before you can fly. This has been true with the wright brothers and Igor Sikorsky, and Henry Ford and still holds true when you are making such a radical way to fly. When coupling two modes of transporation into 2 vehicles, its always going to take a couple of steps back before you can realize the inital vision.

If you can get the engineering, finacial, and marketing aspects nailed down, then you have something truely amazing to bring to the table.

Cool.

In 2003 I made a proposal to NASA for a Helirocket, that takes off like a rocket and lands like a helicopter, here is a place you can find a crude 3d rendered image I made of the Helirocket back then.

www.shineinnovations.com/6312.html

Ron Bennett

can we make the rotor pitch all the way down to make a boat/car/copter? lol

Good catch militaryman97. Copy and paste error, re: air/land speed. I've changed the copy for accuracy. It can achieve 80 mph on land, 140 mph airborne.

Helicopters are not practical for basic transportation because you would end up chopping each other to pieces and people would get killed getting too close to each other. No thanks it's not practical.

give it some water tight doors that slide back and a little modifications should make it a boat for a some what quiet water assault boat

You are cordially invited to see my StrongMobile Flying Car Project at www.strongware.com/dragon. You can view a 2-minute video of my full-size mockup model and my concept of a Transformer version that meets the DARPA desiradata.
Rich Strong (Major,USAF,Retired)