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What's next for the Moller Skycar
Moller has worked with the FAA to develop certification standards for powered lift vehicles - certification of the Skycar is expected within a few years.
Greater engine efficiency will permit the Skycar to carry a 20% greater payload, approximately 240 lbs - one additional passenger or more luggage.
Greater engine efficiency and lighter electronics will permit evolution to a 6-passenger vehicle (but not larger - 6 passengers pushes the limit of this technology) - the larger vehicle could carry more cargo instead of more passengers, or be modified for rescue, ambulance, as well as military uses.
Noise cancellation technology and advanced fan design can be employed to provide additional noise abatement.
Lightning strike and de-icing remain to be addressed, but many potential solutions are available from other aircraft experience.
About the authors
Henry Lahore became interested in the Moller M400 skycar while working in a preliminary design team in Boeing Defense & Space Group, where his job as a systems engineer was to investigate new technologies with potential military and commercial markets that would be viable in a 5 to 15-year time horizon. Prior to that he worked on autonomous air, ground, and underwater vehicles.
He initiated an investigation of the Skycar design which concluded that the concept was not only feasible, it was elegant. Although Boeing has not broken with their long-standing policy of ignoring small aircraft, Henry has continued to be very interested in the Skycar.
Henry believes that the Skycar mass transportation proposal is realistic and inevitable. He hopes his efforts will enable it to happen years sooner than otherwise. He is on the technical advisory board for Moller International and working at Boeing.
Henry's wife, Judy Lahore, wrote up the original Skycar presentation while she was a technical writer at Boeing, and continues to be very interested in the concept.
V - QUOTATIONS
Mark my word: A combination airplane and motor car is coming. You may smile. But it will come . . . .
— Henry Ford, 1940
The roads to support them [autos], inadequate though they are, cost as much as a small war; the analogy is a good one, for the casualties are on the same scale.
— A. C. Clarke, Profile of the Future, 1984
The automobile is the paradoxical example of a luxury object that has been devalued by its own spread. But this practical devaluation has not yet been followed by an ideological devaluation.
— Andre Gortz, as reported in USA Today, Sept. 1989
Cars confer on their owners virtually limitless freedom as long as their numbers remain limited.
— Michael Renner, Worldwatch, June 1988, pg 46
Cars are an urban thrombosis . . . that slowly deprives the city of its lifeblood.
— Kirkpatrick Sale, quoted in Worldwatch, June 1988, pg 46
The high speed rail is a plan for the economically illiterate.
— Herb Kelleher, Southwest Airlines CEO, quoted in Railway Age, April 1991, pg 49
Why is it so difficult to replace the auto? Cars do the best job of transporting us and our belongings from exactly where we are to exactly where we want to go at the time, velocity, and route of our choice, in privacy, and with relative security from assault or bad weather.
— Judy Lahore, 1991
The auto, when introduced, was 5 times as fast, and as convenient as, the horse; as soon as it became affordable, people gave up the horse - the Skycar is 5 times as fast, and as convenient as, the auto; therefore...!
— Judy Lahore, 1991I have been very impressed with Moller's work, he knows what he is doing, and has been systematically and correctly addressing the technical issues. . . . It's really a breakthrough for the type and concept, and it has merits from a cost standpoint that show promise to be a future personal transportation system. — John Zuk, Chief, NASA's Office of Civil Transport
Every country that had developed the affluence to afford individual mobility opts for it.
— David Cole, Audubon Magazine, May 1993
If the telephone industry were operating at 1900 levels of productivity, it would need 4 billion workers to do today's job. — EastsideWeek, July 7 ,1993
Show me a man over thirty who regularly takes the bus, and I will show you a life failure - quote from a mass transit official. — Edge City, pg 130
The best way to predict the future is to invent it. — Alan Key
The physical layout of our society requires cars. No mass ground transit arrangement can rival an automobile's comfort, privacy, and flexibility of route and schedule. (the most-used public ground transportation - even among the poor - is the taxicab). — J. Baldwin, "Green Cars", in Garbage, June/July 1993
The best invention makes you forget how you ever lived without it. — Anonymous
The forces to bring about the change in personal transportation are already present and well known: clean-air regulations; the local and global pollution from fossil fuel engines; the finitude of petroleum supplies; growing concerns about congestion and safety. — Audubon Magazine, May 1993
People will not leave their cars until there is a BETTER alternative. — Anonymous
