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what do you mean by this? A homemade airplane isn't the same as a flying car. I guess it could work if you live in a very rural, but the problem with airplanes is that you need a long runway both to takeoff and land, plus clear airspace. That makes them impractical for anyone living in a city. A flying car could theoretically fit in your garage, take off/land vertically, and fly carefully enough to avoid collisions in the sky.
A Sopwith Camel fits in a garage and can take off and land on a piece of uneven land 300m long. And that's with 1910s technology. Central Park is 13 times longer.
The reason we have long runways for planes these days is because they are optimized for speed and drag, not lift. Which means they have weak landing gear and swept wings.
We had flying cars, we have the technology, they're just illegal to operate.
300m long is more than three football fields! That is an absurd amount of space for anyone in a city, where we fight over parking spaces that are about 3 meters long. The one @ToaKraka linked sounds better, but 75m is still way too much space for most people. You also need enough space in the sky for othem to fly without running into someone else, which can happen at any angle in three dimensions. It could work for a select few, but... we already have that, with private planes and helicopters.
Besides, if we're going this route, why not bring back zeppelins? The Empire State Building was designed with a spire so zeppelins could dock on top, as were several other buildings of the time.
I mean if we're talking theoretical numbers, in STOL competitions the world record for shortest landing is a little over 9ft, in aircraft that look very much like WW1 fighers or WW2 recon planes: high lift extremely light tuboprops. That part of the problem isn't really that difficult, it's more of an engineering and architecture problem than anything else.
The safety thing is the real reason, but valuing that over flying cars is parochial to the modern societies we live in. It's a cultural rather than physical limitation.
You might be joking but people keep saying that will happen since we solved most of the technical issues and helium isn't that expensive anymore.
The problem is that they're slow and their only advantage over planes is fuel efficiency and thus range. Making them only really suited for large scale transport where they don't have enough of an edge over boats or rail.
Helium's gotten cheaper? I thought there was a huge shortage after they finished selling off that absurdly massive strategic helium reserve.
I guess I just meant cheaper than a century ago, but I hadn't heard about the US reserves finally being fully sold this year. I guess I should come to the Motte more often for more helium trading news.
But yeah probably no zeppelins anytime soon. Winged aircraft wins again.
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See also the autogyro/gyroplane/gyrocopter, developed in the 1920s, which can use 75-foot (25-meter) runways.
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