My Old Blogs

In this modern world many people believe that our government is corrupt, unfair, or sluggish.  I concur, with the addition of, it tries, but there is so much "fat", or unnecessary crap.  The subject of many jokes center around our governments inability to respond to anything in a timely manner.  This is true, but there has to many laws that have been voted in, that were good in theory, but in reality hurt the US more than helped.  For example, a law was proposed in California would have this special chemical added to gas that would supposedly help reduce the hydrocarbons released into the air.  sounds good right, but as it turned out, after it became a law, it was discovered that the additives didn't have any affect.  So I'm not sure if this law is still in effect, i believe it is, but its laws like this that muck up the system.  Another law that recently passed in the Congress was regarding a simple matter, it ended up being 700 pages, and someone had tacked on a small law that significantly benefited a certain group.  Also the paperwork for bankruptcy is sent, in full, to every person who owes that company money, even if its only one thing.  The bankruptcy paperwork can be over 1000 pages for just a small business, imagine that getting sent to 500 people.....one reem of paper, to 500 people.

I don't know how you feel about this, but this is outrageous to me, so what should we do about this you say?  My idea, the Bureau of Logic, a government agency dedicated to injecting common sense and logic into the government.  They would not be allowed to receive "gifts" or "bonuses" from any group for any reason, a fixed salary.  They would be spread around in every city, and have different specialties, some would be engineers, some would be financial experts, and so on.  The point of having different specialties would be so that a desk jockey or pencil pusher wouldn't be telling a high-rise engineer how to lay out the floors or a car designer how to place the fire extinguisher.  Another requirement is that they have some practical, real world experience, like a 30 year veteran car mechanic Will have a practice, down to earth way of fixing something, whereas a mechanic will have the superior method, but it will cost many more man hours and much more expensive.  I'm sure every one of you know how that is, someone who has no practical knowledge of how something is done telling you how to build something without breaking the bank.

There are too many building codes to even comprehend, but there is one, regarding emergency doors that could use some common sense.  The code requires there be a door every X feet, which is a good idea, but one building in my area, due to its size, ended up with 2 exit doors at one corner of the building, 2 feet apart, no divided, exactly same outside, but the building code required it.  In this case a BOL inspector would say "OK, so there is one there, we don't need another", and possibly save the construction some money.

Another just random rant/idea is I believe that all laws proposed should have a maximum page limit, perhaps 2-4 pages, I mean hell, the Constitution was less than 10 pages, and it set up an entire government, laws now days are just ridiculous.

Ever since man has had cars, he has dreamed of having flying cars, because, well, we want more.  There have been several semi-successful flying car designs over the years, they were all flops though, due to cost, or reliability, but recently a company by the name of Terrafugia has succeeded where all the others have failed.  The aircraft has taken its maiden flight, all 37 seconds and 3000 feet of it, but it was still a flight.  Before I talk more about this airplane, I'm going to give you some history.

The first experimental with "roadable aircraft", or flying car if you will, started just after the Wright brothers had invented the airplane,  and the first patent was to F. Longobardi in 1918.  Before the first patent was issued, Glenn Curtiss, the Wright brothers rival, had a design for a flying car.  His design used the wings from his Model L Triplane, with a wingspan of 4 feet, and it used a twin boom rear section with the engine in between them.  He was the first to have a flying car, but his design never flew, and was just abounded.

The first successful flying car was the Arrowbile, made by Waldo Waterman, in 1937.  It had an airspeed of 110 MPH, and a ground speed of 55 MPH, which was respectable back then, but only 6 were ever built, and one is in storage in the Smithsonian, and one more is alleged to still exist.

No flying cars have ever made it to production, but one, the Aerocar, almost made it to production, but when not enough orders came in, the plan was scraped.  the Aerocar was a single seat, high wing pusher, the wings folded and came off, and you would unbolt the propeller and they would go on a trailer behind it.  It was the most practical of all the designs, but being only one seat, and requiring a pilots license killed the potential market for it.

There is, however one more that would be revolutionary, but it has been in the research stage since 2003, and has not made any real progress since then.  It is revolutionary because of its VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing) configuration, with 4 computer controlled ducts with 2 fans in each, allowing a stable ride.

Now back to the Terrafugia Transition.  It resembles many low wing aircraft, to an extent, it uses two vertical stabilizers and a pusher configuration, as well as a horizontal stabilizer in  the front.  It has Bi-fold wings that stay attached.  Now you may be thinking, cool, flying car, what does it take to get one, well, it requires a sport pilots licence, which requires approximately 20 hours of flight time, and its going to run you about $200,000, so there not for anyone.  It flies approximately 100 knots, 430 pound load capacity, burns 5 gallons per hour (30 miles per gallon approximately in car configuration) and it has a 20 gallon fuel tank.  It also comes with a modern glass cockpit, meaning that it has a large LCD display with all the information on it, not many little gauges, these on their own can run you $30,000 easy, so if you look at similar airplanes with similar performance and instruments, it actually isn't too terribly much more.

If you think about how many accidents there are on a 2D road, due to people being distracted, being aggressive drivers, being drunk, and so forth, imagine it in 3D.  Its true that there are less plane crashes per day than cars, but also the number op people flying is significantly less, but if everyone who had a car got a flying car the steaks would go up dramatically.  Think about this, if you get in a fender bender on a road, you can pull over and call someone, but in an airplane you cant just pull over.  I'm not trying to say every person would be a bad pilot, but you get those people in a rush, and they would ruin it for everyone.