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Progress on Flying Car
Toronto Star
Software, GPS give flying car fresh momentum And a Canadian is idea's big dreamer Paul Moller worked on Avrocar saucer TYLER HAMILTON TECHNOLOGY REPORTER A Canadian transplanted to California could become the first person to turn the 86-year-old dream of "the flying car" into a commercial reality. Paul Moller, founder and president of Davis, Calif.-based Moller International Inc., has spent more than 50 years of his life trying to drive his vision up and forward. Next spring, Moller — who turned 67 last Thursday — plans to test fly his M400 Skycar over a man-made lake in front of investors, reporters, and vehicle manufacturers from around the world. The candy-apple red Skycar is a "volantor," meaning it can take off and land vertically. Moller's company Web site says it all: "From your garage to your destination, the M400 Skycar can cruise comfortably at 350+ mph and achieve up to 28 miles per gallon. "No traffic, no red lights, no speeding tickets. Just quiet direct transportation from point A to point B in a fraction of the time." If the spring demo works, it could be the prototype's major step toward commercial production. A flying car, you say? Images that come to mind include Dick Van Dyke in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, made by the people who brought you James Bond. Airborne autos also made appearances in the Jetsons, and sci-fi classics such as Star Wars and Blade Runner. Real-life pursuit of flying automobiles stretches back to 1917, when aviation pioneer Glenn Curtiss unveiled something called the Autoplane. A nice try for its time, it never really took off. And while Henry Ford's "sky flivver" did take off in 1928, production got nixed after a friend of Ford's who was piloting one model died in a crash. Nine years later, Waldo Waterman developed the Arrowbile — essentially a car with detachable wings and a rear propeller. Waterman ran out of money, as many inventors do, so the project eventually got its wings clipped. In 1946, Robert Fulton decided to switch gears on the concept. Instead of sticking wings on a car, he decided to create a small plane with detachable wings, prop and tail that could drive on roads. Called the Airphibian, it was actually government-certified. But like Waterman, Fulton ran out of funds. The list goes on, and dozens of patents related to flying cars have been filed over the years. These include the two-door ConvAirCar in the 1940s, plagued by high cost and negative publicity surrounding the crash of a prototype. Around the same time, Moulton Taylor was developing the fibreglass Aerocar, another government-certified creation that, at one point, caught the attention of Ford before fading away into history. Moller says past attempts were doomed to failure because their design required a runway for takeoff. "You can talk about a flying car, but it still typically involves an airport, and that takes it out of the hands of 95 per cent of the people," he says. "You really have to have something that can take off vertically, and if it can, it's got to have this large amount of power capability." Perhaps the most significant development in this direction came in the mid-1950s, when Avro Canada, makers of the famed Avro Arrow jet, won Canadian and U.S. funding for development of the troop-carrying Avrocar. The British were also interested in the project. The Avrocar looked saucer-like, similar to the UFOs in Plan 9 From Outer Space. It was 18-feet in diameter and three-feet thick. Three turbojets powered a huge fan at the bottom-centre, giving it the ability to rise vertically. It was designed to go nearly 500 kilometres per hour but never got past 60 km/h. Around this time, Moller was a student at a Calgary trade school working to get certified as an aircraft and engines mechanic. As part of his program, he spent the summer of 1957 working at the Defence Research Board outside of Quebec City, where he was first exposed to the secret Avrocar program. It wasn't Moller's first introduction to the "flying car" concept. As a young boy he was fascinated by the way hummingbirds flew. At 15, on his father's chicken farm outside Trail, B.C., Moller attempted to build his own personal helicopter. His dad once used the tail rotor to cool 100,000 chicken eggs when the power went out on the farm incubator. "In any case, the experience at the Defence Research Board allowed me access to some of the technology," he says. After nine years and $10 million, the Avrocar failed to deliver on promises and got scrapped. Shortly after his time with the government, Moller got a job at Montreal-based Canadair Ltd. (acquired by Bombardier Inc. in 1986), where he worked on missiles for the Avro Arrow fighter jet before the politically sensitive project got cancelled and he was moved to another position. While in Montreal, he decided to test "how smart or dumb I was" by enrolling in graduate courses at McGill University in 1960, at the age of 23. McGill was a turning point for Moller, who cites aeronautics professor Barry Newman, who died recently, as "probably the most significant player in my life." Moller just wanted to take a few courses, and asked Newman for some enrolment advice. But the two had a "meeting of the minds," and Newman managed to squeeze Moller into the school's graduate program even though the young mechanic had no prerequisite undergraduate experience. Three years later, during which Moller spent his nights in Montreal building a 6:1 model of a vertical-takeoff aircraft in his apartment, the young visionary walked out of McGill with a PhD in aerodynamics. "I learned a lot then about what was important for the final aircraft," he says, adding that his experience with the Avrocar taught him, among other things, what to avoid. "We realized if you want to go fast you can't do it in a round shape. That's something Avro should have known right off the bat, unless you're from outer space. It's got to have an aerodynamic type of configuration." Moller says he might have never left Canada had he found a teaching job at the University of British Columbia. "Canada was good to me, I owe a lot to Canada." But he graduated from McGill at an awkward time of the year and the only job he could find was at the University of California at Davis. There he taught 22 aeronautical engineering courses between 1963 and 1975. He has called California his home ever since. Real work on the Skycar concept began in 1965 when Moller developed the XM-2, a wobbly, two-engine hovering aircraft that got mere inches from the ground and couldn't go anywhere else. But his pursuit of a mass-market volantor only gained momentum, and through the years he has managed to raise over $75 million (More than $200 million adjusted for inflation) and build several prototypes toward realizing his goal. "If you've got a little imagination it's not hard to get there," he says, though struggles at times to raise money often sidetracked his efforts. He was required to develop and sell other products, such as his popular motorcycle SuperTrapp muffler, to fund the project. "It wasn't a straight path." The latest incarnation of the Skycar is the M400, built with eight engines that swivel 45 degrees in the transition from vertical lift to horizontal thrust. It's a slick-looking machine, made to wow an audience that wants to believe. Moller says there's not as much controversy anymore over whether Skycar will work. Skeptics have since turned their attention to the question of safety and infrastructure, and whether the world is ready to build highways in the sky and risk having flying cars crash into each other or lose power and fall through residential rooftops. "There are these unbelievably supportive people out there, and then there are these naysayers that are just as adamant in another extreme," he says. "It's surprising how some people, with all we've accomplished in the last 10 years, they still have problems envisioning a highway in the sky." In his view, it can all be handled with some sophisticated software, GPS satellites, and intelligent systems that automate driving and traffic logistics. Such a complex system of air traffic management would make current air-traffic control systems look simple, and no doubt, we're still decades away from a society of three-dimensional driving. That said, well-off people who buy luxury items today are likely to be the first to place a Skycar order. Don't be surprised if California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who owns several military-style Hummers, puts down his $100,000 deposit on the first generation of Skycar, which is expected to cost $1 million when available. First, however, Moller needs to successfully fly the M400 next spring. Last fall, the machine had its first unmanned flight, done with a remote control and kept in position by safety lines. With the manned test, Moller has made every effort to minimize the danger. Not that he's averse to risk. "I have broken everything," he says, referring to his days as Canadian national go-cart champion, playing hockey in Montreal, riding motorcycles in California and playing racket ball. He's broken his neck, dislocated his jaw, and busted his ankle, among other fractures. But Moller International has a 30-year track record of safe test flights, and the founder wants to keep it that way. Besides, with talks going on behind the scenes with Bombardier, General Electric, and other military manufacturers that could potentially license his technology, it's best to have a clean show. Not getting any younger, Moller is determined to make it happen. "Our position is good if we can just convince the rest of the world to come along." |
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