Dude, where's my flying car?

Transportation has been on my mind lately.

Since I'm back to driving in the Chicago area on the regular, I'm once again becoming acquainted with its egregious traffic. What's especially fun is the amount of aggressive tailgating that seems to have developed in the past year or so. I'm talking about someone coming in from behind at high speed and nudging the nose of their vehicle within an uncomfortable distance of my tailpipe. And all this happening while I'm at a comfortable, but not unsafe, cushion above the speed limit. I take it in stride as yet another among many indicators that society is crumbling. It has me, however, dreaming of an alternative. Namely, what if I could just fly above it all?

Yes indeed...where is the flying car I was promised all those years ago?

My first recollection of the tantalizing concept of a flying car came from, I think, the James Bond movie, The Man with the Golden Gun. In retrospect, it looks rather clunky.

Then came the "Spinners" of one of my favorite films, Blade Runner.

We have developed more and more of the dystopian aspects of Blade Runner every day. Am I asking that much to at least have the flying car to come along with it all?

I know, I know.

A Spinner probably wouldn't be any ease for my frustrations. A casual viewing of Blade Runner confirms that. Just take a look at the skies over future Los Angeles. The air lanes are as congested with flying cars as the the asphalt counterparts. I probably wouldn't win for losing. Plus if fiction tells us anything, it's that flying transportation will be as regulated as the ground-crawling variety.

Is there any hope for an actual flying car? Well, a few prototypes for one were unveiled at the Geneva Motor Show earlier this month. One of them is called "Pop Up Next." It's a modular construct, consisting of an electric car with a quadrotor copter assembly mounted on the roof. Another, the "Liberty Flying Car", seems more of the gyrocopter variety. No telling if these things will ever see the light of day in regard to mass production.

But wait! There's another development that might not only revolutionize transportation, but alternative energy as well.

A Canadian firm called Hempearth has created a plane made from and powered by hemp. Why? To hear the company's CEO say it, it's because hemp is sustainable both as a building material and a fuel. “This is the kind of future we all want here on Earth,” he says at the link. Might the same premise be applied to a flying car? I don't see why not.

Speaking of alternative energy, one way to benefit the environment is to get more cars off the road. That means, in part, mass transit. Maybe the "flying car" kind of thinking is just the ticket to make public transportation super cool for the masses. Would you mind riding the bus if it were flying? I didn't think so. The question I had to ask though is whether or not anything even remotely like that is in the offing. Here's what I got from a quick Google (apologies for the nature of the source).

As you can see, not exactly "flying" and thus a deceptive headline.

"And if a double-decker bus crashes into us..."
-The Smiths

Not tough to see why writers populated futuristic stories with flying cars. It seemed like a natural progression after all, didn't it? We had cars, we then had planes, and why wouldn't we want to put them together? Certainly it was a timeserver in the 1950s  and early 60s as we believed in progress and SCIENCE! (That last word to be shouted and punctuated in the manner of Thomas Dolby.) Alas, as I once heard William Gibson say, "We forget just how often science fiction gets it wrong."

Another pipe dream, perhaps. I am condemned to shuttle to and fro on cracked streets as frustrated and insecure men try to pretend they're on the NASCAR circuit in an effort to feel better. I swear it's a circle in Dante's Inferno.

If I do get that flying car, may I request this weaponized dieselpunk version designed by Jomar Machado?

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