Anurag Jain's Blog
Saturday, April 23, 2005

Personal Aviation

Lotsa stuff happening on the personal aviation front. What is Personal Aviation? PA is a concept and practice of making aviation as affordable as today's cars. Last week or so has been quite hectic on PA activity.

# First off is Air Scooter. From /. : "CBS News has an article, images, and a free streaming video clip of Elwood (Woody) Norris' invention of a working flying machine, AirScooter. He asked one of his test pilots to demonstrate it for 60 Minutes on a hilltop outside San Diego, California. It can fly for 2 hours at 55 mph, and go up to 10,000 feet above sea level. This week, he will receive America's top prize for invention. It's called the Lemelson-MIT award -- a half-million dollar cash prize to honor his life's work, which includes a brand new personal flying machine. Woody Norris' and others' inventions are for NASA's 'The Highway in the Sky.' It is a computer system designed to let millions of people fly whenever they please, and take off and land from wherever they please, in their very own vehicles."

# Second news is about JetPods! manufactured by AvCen

# And then, there's Personal Helicopter!
Via AvWeb: "The CarterCopter prototype has been flying off and on for a few years, but was sidelined by a wheels-up landing and then by an in-flight fire. SkyCar inventor Paul Moller says his futuristic vehicle will fly like a "magic carpet," but so far it has test-flown only while tethered to a crane. But it probably comes closest to the Jetson-style flying car that people imagine the future should bring. Michael Kanellos, of CNET News, speculated last week that flying cars could be the next thing to attract the attention -- and the assets -- of the high-tech billionaires and entrepreneurs who have been funding much of the new space industry."

# And lastly, the SkyCar

I guess Calvin's grudge is finally going to be taken care of!



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