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Flying Cars

Air Scooter

One of those people, who are building machines you’ll be
able to buy, is an inventor named Woody Norris. He has received America’s top prize for invention. It’s called the Lemelson-MIT award to honor his life’s work, which includes a brand new personal flying machine. Correspondent Bob Simon reports.
It's called the AirScooter, and self-taught inventor Woody Norris says it goes on sale later this year.
Flying Cars - Gadget Freek

One of his test pilots to demonstrate the AirScooter for 60 Minutes on a hilltop outside San Diego, Calif. It can fly for 2 hours at 55 mph, and go up to 10,000 feet above sea level.

Aerocar
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A lot of inventors have tried to cash in on personal flying machines. One, built in 1956, was known as Molt Taylor’s Aerocar. You could detach the wings and haul them behind you. But they failed to catch on because they were too expensive and hard to fly in bad weather.
More important, there was no way to really manage all the potential traffic from millions of them buzzing around.

NASA has come up with a plan to make personal flying machines a reality

NASA have built something called “The Highway in the Sky.”Bruce Holmes is one of NASA’s chief strategists and has served in the White House, where he worked on the future of aviation. He showed Simon a flight simulator, a new computer system that can be put into any new airborne vehicle. He says it will make flying easy, and will manage all the new traffic up there.It’s called “The Highway in the Sky,” and here’s how it works: In a NASA animation, pilots focus on one main screen. It’s very much like a videogame. Keep the plane inside the box, away from other vehicles, and the plane’s computers automatically guide them towards their destination. They can even follow the highway down to the ground.

NASA says it will draw on modern day satellites and global positioning systems to track the flying vehicles -- to prevent them from bumping into each other. Holmes believes all this new technology has reinvigorated the race to build the personal flying machine of tomorrow.

Skycar

Flying Cars:1

The Skycar is the latest attempt to build a real flying car. It's been described as a cross between a Ferrari and a Batmobile. Its inventor is Paul Moller, of Davis, Calif.
When its four sets of rotary engines tilt up, the car can blast off up into the sky. But Moller's only working prototype is tethered to a crane -- just in case it falls. Moller says the gasoline-fueled Skycar is designed to cruise at 300 mph, at an altitude of 20,000 feet.
"You get in this vehicle, there's no vibration, takes you up and what's most exciting is your kind of being lifted up from below almost like anti-gravity, and you have this perfectly smooth experience of lifting up. A real magic carpet experience" ,says Moller.
But when is this vision going to be real? "Somewhere between 10 and 15 years, you're going to see numbers of these vehicles out there being used," says Moller. "First, you're going to see them well before that in a military, paramilitary, police, drug addiction, border patrol type of capacity."

For instance, Moller thinks it will be able to save people from burning buildings

Carter Copter

Flying Cars - Gadget Freek

In Olney, Texas, a brand new contraption is even making cows turn their heads.
It's called the CarterCopter, and it has a large top rotor and small wings which double as fuel tanks. Propulsion is generated from the tiny secondary propeller at the rear of the plane. It can take off and land vertically like a helicopter, but can fly as fast as an airplane.
The possibilities are staggering. Instead of flying on a regular plane from JFK to LAX, the speedy CarterCopter will let you fly from a helipad in downtown New York to a helipad in downtown Los Angeles, skipping that time-consuming drive from the airport to your home.
Carter says he will initially sell the vehicle for about $300,000. He’s even got plans to give his next prototype, which appears in his promotional video, the ability to fold up its wings and drive off like a car.

Springtail

Flying Cars - Gadget Freek

If you’re interested in something smaller than the CarterCopter, then you want a bizarre looking contraption called the Springtail is the jetpack for the 21st century. It’s a million-dollar prototype that flies using two large ducted fans.
(CBS)Harry Falk and his team at Trek Aerospace are still testing its vertical abilities. And to protect their investment, they’ve also tethered it to a crane. When it takes off, it’s loud and generates a lot of wind, but the team says it’s designed to fly for two hours, at 90 mph, at an altitude of 400 feet.

Although Falk was nervous, AirScooter inventor Woody Norris was eager for Simon to fly. Norris arranged for Simon to take his $50,000 invention out for a spin. First, his team tied the machine down to the ground. They didn’t want Simon flying away forever, until he felt comfortable taking off evenly.
On Simon's first try, he lifted off, but couldn't hold it even. So he tried again, and again. On his tenth attempt, he finally did it.

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