Flying Cars Ready To Take Off

By: Rebecca Leung

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(Chris Matyszczyk/CNET)

It's called "The Highway in the Sky," and here's how it works: In a NASA animation, pilots focus on one main screen. It's very much like a videogame. Keep the plane inside the box, away from other vehicles, and the plane's computers automatically guide them towards their destination. They can even follow the highway down to the ground.

"What is different between what you're looking at here and what there is in a cockpit of a commercial aircraft?" asks Simon.

"Well, here's what's in the cockpit of a commercial aircraft," says Holmes. "So I can either use that to figure out where I am and how fast I should be going, and how high I should be, and all of those things, or I can look at a fairly intuitive picture of a highway in the sky."

It's a $130-million program that can also help pilots fly in bad weather. Even if it's dark and stormy, pilots can use the screen to see what's outside. It's a technological breakthrough that will ultimately allow more people to fly than ever before. And NASA says it will draw on modern day satellites and global positioning systems to track the flying vehicles -- to prevent them from bumping into each other. Holmes believes all this new technology has reinvigorated the race to build the personal flying machine of tomorrow.

What kind of inventions are people working on today? "If you can imagine it, someone's trying it," says Holmes. "Everything from machines that can fly vertically that are easy to use. Easier to use. Some that can go way fast."

The Skycar is the latest attempt to build a real flying car. It's been described as a cross between a Ferrari and a Batmobile. Its inventor is Paul Moller, of Davis, Calif.

When its four sets of rotary engines tilt up, the car can blast off up into the sky. But Moller's only working prototype is tethered to a crane -- just in case it falls. Moller says the gasoline-fueled Skycar is designed to cruise at 300 mph, at an altitude of 20,000 feet.

"It's an experience like none other. I mean, it is truly the magic carpet experience," says Moller. "You get in this vehicle, there's no vibration, takes you up and what's most exciting is your kind of being lifted up from below almost like anti-gravity, and you have this perfectly smooth experience of lifting up. A real magic carpet experience."

Moller says the ride could be described as mystical. But when is this vision going to be real? "Somewhere between 10 and 15 years, you're going to see numbers of these vehicles out there being used," says Moller. "First, you're going to see them well before that in a military, paramilitary, police, drug addiction, border patrol type of capacity."