get a
TerrafugiaForget flying cars. Meet the drivable plane.A Massachusetts startup is building the Transition, a two-seat aircraft that, with the press of a button, is ready to rule the road.
(Business 2.0 Magazine) -- Carl Dietrich was born long after the Jetsons first flew from the Skypad Apartments to Spacely Sprockets, but that won't stop him from trying to turn us into a nation of Georges and Janes - albeit ones with standard two-car garages.
The 29-year-old aeronautics Ph.D. candidate at MIT is also CEO of Terrafugia (from the Latin for "escape the earth"), a Somerville, Mass., startup building the Transition, which Dietrich says is not so much a flying car as a "roadable aircraft." That is, a two-seater plane with fold-up wings that you drive home at the end of your flight.
The design won Dietrich the prestigious $30,000 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize in February. But Terrafugia is no dorm startup: The company is in talks to raise $2 million to $3 million and has hired two McDonnell-Douglas veterans in its quest to build a drivable prototype by 2008.
Ready for take-off, but where?
They aim to get the first Transitions to market by the following year, at a retail price of $148,000. The plane is tailor-made, Dietrich says, for the neglected "short-hop market" of 100- to 500-mile jaunts - a market that's only going to grow as airlines abandon low-margin short routes.
the specs -
http://www.terrafugia.com/specsheet.pdfI imagine it must pass automobile and aircraft certification.
I don't imagine that it would do much on the highway since one would presumably be flying rather than driving at highway speeds.
1500 ft takeoff distance (STOL).
Perhaps he could adapt it to water too! Air - land - sea!
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