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The dream of flight is as old as civilization itself. While we are a long way from a Blade Runner-esque world of flying cars, that has not stopped people from trying. We highlight some exciting developments in personal aviation.
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For some time now, movies, books and television have long been drawing their vision of the futurescape for us. They once promised tiny mobile telephones and televisions, numerous spacecraft, super fast computers that fit on a desk, as well as bionic prostheses and all other notions of personal flying vehicles, as seen in popular culture icons like the Jetsons, Back to the Future, or Blade Runner.
Many of these prophecies have indeed materialized. Just take a look around at the music- and video-playing mobile phones we now take for granted in everyday usage, and the indispensable laptops we work on while commuting. Spacecraft now take astronauts into orbit on a regular basis, and a paraplegic mountain climber is making plans to ascend Everest with the aid of a robotic prosthesis in cyborg-like fashion. By the standards of the sci-fi movies of yesteryear, it does appear that the future is indeed, now. But the one promise with arguably the greatest expectation seems to have derailed: that of personal aviation in the form of flying cars, and with that, all other notions of personal flying vehicles, as seen in popular culture icons like The Jetsons, Back to the Future, or Star Wars.
Of all that was envisioned for the futurescape, the notion of the personal flying vehicle seemed to hold the most promise, and yet it is this very vision that has struggled to become reality. It has been over a century since the Wright brothers first flew their self-powered aircraft in 1903, but we are no closer to having flying-mobiles parked in our garage, ready for the next trip to the grocery store. Since the first patent for a flying car was issued as early as 1918, and Glenn Curtiss’ Autoplane made a very short flight a year later, we’ve seen few inroads made towards perfecting a flying car design that fills the skies with dual-purpose vehicles.
Not that we haven’t tried. As with many innovative endeavors of this kind, would-be inventors of the flying car have met tragic ends test-piloting their own creations. Leland D. Bryan of Milford, Michigan designed, built, and flew three different versions of his Autoplane before he died in the crash of his Roadable III in 1974. Most other conceptual designs did not even manage to leave the drawing board, and even fewer proved practical upon developing actual prototypes.
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