A science fiction go-to, the flying car, is about to become a whole lot less fiction and a whole lot more science. The U.S. Defense Department is working on a flying car that can carry four soldiers into combat. The machine is being designed for vertical take off and landing, and will fly up to speeds of 120 knots, drive up to 80 miles per hour on road and 30 miles per hour off road. It’s going to be designed to be simple enough for any Marine to fly, no pilot training required, and it will carry enough fuel to stay aloft for two hours.
Apparently the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, DARPA, thought that just deciding to invest in flying cars wasn’t going to get them mocked enough – they’ve decided to name the machines the Transformer.
Thankfully, by Defense Department budget standards, Transformer is a pretty small investment. The project only has a six million dollar budget this year. Most of which was used to gather inventors and present them with the specs of what DARPA wants. A workshop was held on January 14th in Washington DC for about 150 representatives of aerospace businesses, including Boeing and Raytheon. Whoever comes up with the winning design and scores the contract is supposed to generate a prototype in four years.
There have already been some test flights of vehicles that take off vertically, then fly like a plane, but none of them are quiet enough, or light enough, to suit DARPA. NASA is already developing their own prototype, a one man machine called the Puffin. The Puffin is powered by two propellers and driven by an electric motor and lithium ion batteries, it will be ready to test in March.
The big challenge of the Transformer mission, however, is making something that can fly like the Puffin but can also drive like a Jeep. For every pound of ground transportation equipment such a vehicle would need, you have to add another five pounds of flying gear. In five years, we may be seeing vehicles like the Puffin and the Transformer in civilian use. Sci Fi fans rejoice!
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