Sigh. On one hand, you have to give the brains behind Moller Skycar (guess who) credit for not giving up. On the other hand, enough already. The dream of personalized airborne transportation is a fund-raising MacGuffin. The company’s latest salvo in the BS wars: Moller Skycar Goes to War! Or, as the press release puts it, “Moller is pleased to announce today that its Skycar technology has gained ground within the military for its use in high-tech, demanding battlefield applications like those in Afghanistan.” Apparently, one Lieutenant Colonel James Thomas, 304th SB, 3rd Expeditionary Sustainment Command, recently issued white paper entitled “Winning an Asymmetric War with Skycars.” Google loves the story, but offers-up no such report or background on Col. Thomas. Still the press release, quotes from the heretofore unknown document:
Poor and unimproved roads and rugged terrain severely limit the use of the MRAP. The Moller Skycar(R) provides a more cost effective, highly maneuverable, lethal and safe platform for the 21st century soldier to dominate and win in an Asymmetric Warfare Environment. The Skycar(R) will become the MRAP vehicle of Afghanistan. The ability to safely and rapidly employ soldiers on the battlefield enables us to exercise economy of force on the battlefield, doing more with fewer soldiers.
I’m no military expert, but I can’t see how a [theoretical] Skycar is going to do much of anything for soldiers on the ground, given that it’s a [theoretical] four passenger vehicle. (Although the company claims “the Skycar technology has the ability to be both scaled up to a six passenger, M600, or scaled down to a one passenger, M100. This allows a cost efficient vehicle size to accommodate a variety of military, paramilitary, and commercial transport missions.”) If you want rapid deployment, what about an V-22 Osprey? Oh wait . . .
How about a horse or a mule?
Is that a crane in the background?
Just think of the Moller as the latest in the government’s decades-long efforts to shore up our ailing defense contractors – 600 billion here, 600 billion there, sooner or later you can come up with some overpriced weaponry…
I wonder – what makes this (and the other one whose name I forget) flying contraption a CAR? OK, it has wheels. Anything else?
I’m sure all these inventors started as honest guys with an idea and a lot of time on their hands. But after a while, they become blind to the sheer idiocy of their pursuits. The lucky ones just end up disappointed and broke, the unlucky end up in jail or the loony bin.
All this doesn’t consider that an AK-47 or RPG shot would take it right down. According to Michael Yon’s reports it isn’t safe to drive vehicles anywhere due to the IEDs (he had to take helos to go to another FOB that was only 4 miles away and took three days to get there) and helicopters don’t spend any time on the ground except for quick pick ups and they are out of there. I can’t imagine these things would ever have enough armour to protect the driver or occupants or fly fast enough or be manuverable enough to not get shot down in a heartbeat. Things are dangerous enough for our guys and gals and our allies over there without this POS getting them killed or hurt.
All this crazy thinking is Hanna-Barbera’s fault…
I’d like to see it fly for an hour or more at altitude and not tethered to a crane. This video looks fake to me.
Twotone
# Bertel Schmitt :
September 1st, 2009 at 9:34 am
Is that a crane in the background?
Yep. All flying tests of the Moller SkyCar have been tethered; it has not conducted any free-flight tests, as far as I know.
RF hits the nail on the head: the V-22 was developed specifically to bring this capability to the conflict area.
From Wikipedia: The Sustainment Brigade is designed to provide Command & Control for combat service & combat service support units. It can be adjusted in size to support anywhere from 1 to 10 Brigade Combat Teams (BCTs). A sustainment brigade has a joint capability that allows the Army to better manage the flow of logistics into the Area of Operations (AO) and provides support to other services for common logistics like fuel, common ammo, medical supplies, repair parts of wheeled vehicles, and so forth.
The point being, the 304th SB is not a ‘tip of the spear’ unit. I would be interested to hear about what the “trigger pullers” would have to say about their equipment and materiel needs, if only as a counterpoint to Lt. Col. Thomas’ white paper.
I remember seeing this on the cover of popular mechanics in 1994. They already had it under construction. Seems like ~16 years aught to be enough time to actually do a test flight if it’s so safe.
Regarding battle damage- the thing has 8 rotary engines- two in each nacelle, so it should be fairly damage tolerant.
The Army trys not to buy anything that can’t run off of heavy fuel though- it complicates their logistics.
carve- Moller has been peddling this concept for closer to 20 years, he’s a crackpot who cannot get his contraption to do more than wallow about on the end of a tether. The V22 has been mentioned, but the Harrier also has been in operation for decades and does the same thing, not to mention the F23 which is also going to be a VTOL aircraft in one of its iterations. The fact that Moller’s been toying with this concept vehicle for so long and has yet to achieve vertical flight says its a flawed design that will never do anything more than you see on the video.
I disagree on damage tollerance one shot to fan or to the controls of that fan and you’ve bought the farm. The V22 can transfer power from one engine to another to keep both rotors turning.
http://www.urbanaero.com/Urban_Main.htm
Urban Aeronautics’ X-Hawk, from Israel, will be in production before Moller does an actual flight test.
Urban Aero has already done hover tests with a proof-of-concept prototype. They are currently doing powertrain tests on an actual prototype “mule”, doing some minimal hovering to make sure that everything was under load. They hope to start actual hover tests by the end of the year.
That thing will kill more people than Alqueda
The M100 would be unneccesary as a single soldier could just don his jetpack. lol
^ :) or hop on his personal hovercraft.
You mean like the Orbitz Hovercraft? I want one of those!
It’s amazing he’s still thrashing that thing around…
The Moller has been in development for so long that it’s completely out of date… years before it achieves untethered flight… (if it ever will).
The Terrafugia Transition has gone from concept to flying prototype in just three years. And it will actually go on sale in the near future.
A useless piece of kit itself, unless you’re a hobbyist… but much less vaporware than the Mosler.