Yes, ladies and gentlemen. The geniuses at M.I.T. have developed and repeatedly tested an actual flying car!!!! This is incredible but true. Students at M.I.T.'s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics have been working on this project for four long years, and last month saw their vehicle take flight!
At 7:40 a.m. on March 5, the winged car taxied down a runway in
Plattsburgh, N.Y., took off, flew for 37 seconds and landed further down the
runway -- a maneuver it would repeat about a half dozen times over the next
two days. In the coming months the company, a Woburn-based startup called
Terrafugia, will test the plane in a series of ever-longer flights and a variety
of maneuvers to learn about its handling characteristics. - ( Science Daily )
Here is an image of the flying car following it's "chase plane."
Amazing! Check out the stats on this bad mo-fo.
The street-legal Transition is powered on land and in the air by a recently developed 100 hp Rotax engine that gets 30 mpg on the highway using regular unleaded gasoline. As a plane, its 20-gallon tank gives it a 450-mile range with a 115 mph cruising speed. The pilot can switch from one mode to the other from the driver's seat, simultaneously folding up the wings and shifting the engine power from the rear-mounted propeller to the front wheels in about 30 seconds.
That is just amazing. The best part is that the FAA has recently created a new class of flight vehicles, Light Sport Aircraft, and a new class of pilot's license which takes only 20 hours of flight training to achieve! The vehicle in the above image is the "proof-of-concept" vehicle. Production of these bad boys is slated to begin soon and the first models for sale will be available around the end of 2011.
Here is a video showing a test flight of this amazing new vehicle.
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