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Hovercars cruising in digital airspace: the daily drive reinvented



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Published Date: 15 March 2008
By Dennis Bushnell
CIVIL aeronautics is in the midst of becoming a “mature” industry, with all the drawbacks that this entails. For decades, technological advances have been essentially incremental, and the industry remains largely focused on long-haul transport aircraft, with an emerging small jet component and a legacy of general aviation markets and products. But it has become increasingly clear that the industry cannot survive in this form.
The problems bedevilling the industry include pollution from emissions, increasing competition (particularly from communications technology, which has made business travel less necessary), air-traffic control inefficiencies and delays, expanding noi...



The full article contains 599 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
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1

Neil,

Glasgow 15/03/2008 11:57:06
I don't agree about the mass passenger air industry being in trouble - we would all like like to be in businesses "troubled" by 10% annual growth.

While the idea of personal aircars is pretty cool & he is right about needing an automated system to prevent crashes, I think a better system would be automated rail & overhead monorail systems. It would currently be technologicly possible to have such a system which, without drivers, would be inexpensive to run Stops could be as common as bus stops, but the traffic far more regular & flexible & it would be possible to hail a cab which could go to any other stop in the city or connect to an intercity automated railway.

This wopuld be far cheaper & hassle free than conventional cars (or indeed aircars which would require enormous maintenance). For those concerned about peaking oil monorails, but never aircraft, could be run on electricity.
2

Douglas,

Bathgate 16/03/2008 00:34:31
Neil, you do know that other people can read this don't you?
3

Neil,

Glasgow 16/03/2008 12:46:31
Do you have a point to make?
4

truthsleuth,

16/03/2008 15:20:46
A bit like nuclear powered watches, Zero Energy Thermo Nuclear Appliance (ZETA) everyone having helicopters, the freedom of the motor car, rope ladders to the moon, perpetual motion.
For heavens sake don't tell this to governments they will grab anything to delay haveing to ,make the hard decisions.
5

Hmm ...,

10/05/2008 12:33:11
... sounds Utopian - but the present availability to the wealthy of private helicopters mirrors the introduction of the motor cart - and we can see how popular that got!

The trouble is that our willingness to develop roads to accommodate the increasing use of the car is not likely to be met by the present kind of government, regardless of fuel availability - Labour wants to squeeze us all onto mass transit - trams and buses - which go where they recognise a convenient need, not where we actually want to arrive at.

We need a change of government and of government's concept that it is there to regulate us, not meet our needs.

On last week's performance, we may now be embarking on the way to get it!

 

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