http://www.avweb.com/avwebflash/news...e221008-1.html
Borrowing from nature, looks like a centipede.
http://www.avweb.com/avwebflash/news...e221008-1.html
Borrowing from nature, looks like a centipede.
Professor Ilan Kroo has pretty high credibility for whatever it's worth. He led the team that developed the SWIFT glider, which still represents the highest performance for a foot-launched "hang glider". It has a better glide ratio than some enclosed sailplanes and gliders.
Now as for the feasibility of actual, working, reliable, housewife-safe VTOL performance from a flying car, well... Google can afford to waste a little money. At least they didn't give it to Moller
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I, for one, am ready for it. In fact, I've been waiting for it my entire life!
Note to the young 'un's: Back in the 60s, when we thought we could do anything (and did), we were "promised" that a flying car was "just around the corner".
Must've been parked out front of our Mars base... lol
Googles design looks like something Moller came up with.
As it turns out, the project has nothing to do with Google - that rumor was based on conjecture by a writer who stumbled across the patent drawings and made the logical leap...well, I don't know why, other than the fact that Zee.Aero and Google are both headquarted in Mountain View.
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According to an email response by the head of Zee Aero to the writer, that seems to be correct. He is a professor of aeronautics at Stanford and a NASA scientist. But this much appears to be clear: There are quite a few very high priced employees already with the company and the website is currently posting 10 senior engineering jobs so someone or some company(s) with major financing is backing this start up. I think it's great that private enterprise want's to continue to invest in and grow GA, I just wish this investment was made to support something more conventional(read useful) and less Jetsonian.
For years, Google founder Larry Page has wanted to advance the commute-by-aircraft concept to practicality. In his vision of this personal project, Page and like-minded people could take off from home and fly to work. Not being someone to accept the boilerplate of why six decades of shared effort in the same direction failed, and having the resources to do something about it, Larry began connecting with Stanford aero grads and hanging out at the various Electric Aircraft Symposiums held in the Bay Area. A couple of years ago it became clear that something was up, and it is nice to see part of what that might be about.
Zee.Aero was started by Kroo and at least one of his former students, for whom it is named. Page may or may not be the money behind it, but there were several nice chats among the aero innovators in the room during at least three of the events I attended, wherein this seemed to be the only logical deduction.
Larry, Ilan, Christina, et al will be getting a call to suggest that perhaps we should have a more serious discussion. I share (a version of) the VTOL vision and I'd like to see such initiatives developed in consideration of all the options, which include things that are not in the prior art nor known to the public. All the really good ideas out there require a talented team of equal stature to bring to fruition, and obviously that is what Zee.Aero appears to be building.