Flying cars

[slipstrike0159]

Originally Posted by Cavernio

I think that the people who are against flying cars are not using their imagination enough when thinking about what may be possible. I'm not going to be talking about current hovercars or personal airplanes or helicopters. These aren't used today for obvious reasons. I've treated the question as hypothetical, and I'm imagining doc's car from Back to the Future.
If we could find a way to make fairly quiet, not incredibly polluting flying cars, it would be awesome. The biggest improvement would be the elimination of highways. They're expensive to build, upkeep, keep clean, and they take up a lot of room. By comparison, developing a MAP which requires no maintenance would be great. It actually wouldn't be that bad to make a map either. Here's one possibility:

Altitude could be divided into layers. The bottom one could be for the slowest traffic, middle one for mid-speed, etc. Each layer (however many we'd want) would then be divided into sub-layers for different directions. Since we're restricted by roads, there could be, oh, say, 20 (just for example, it'd need to be looked at much more closely, obviously) different sub-layers, or horizontal directions one can take in any layer. The trickiest part would be changing layers or sub-layers, but it'd still be doable. For sub-layers, if the sub-layers were layered in order, (so have 0 degrees on the bottom, then 18 degrees above, then 32 degrees, etc.), you'd simply put enough vertical distance between each of the sub-layers to change direction, to be able to make an easy turn while changing altitude. For moving between layers, you'd have to leave a little more room so one could easily slow down or speed up safely, and put the layers so that when you transfer layers, you stay facing the same horizontal direction.
If you were looking on this from the top-down, you'd see layers of traffic all moving the same direction, with the slower traffic on the bottom, and the faster traffic on top. My only concern would be that depending on how many directions you'd want defined, and how many different speeds defined, it might become very high in terms of altitude.
The cars would obviously have built-in altitude detectors, and would ideally also be able to drive themselves once you've determined the speed you want to go at and the place you want to go. You'd probably still want to land and take off manually though, and be able to manually control the car just in case. The lowest heights would basically be a slow 'free for all', kind of like a parking lot. You'd also have to either make the layers start at an altitude higher than the tallest building, or have specific 'no fly' zones in areas with tall buildings. I like the 'no fly' zone idea better, but in large cities with tall buildings where traffic's heaviest, the type of flying I've suggested wouldn't seem to work well.
Regular aircraft would probably still be used with this system though, because the further away you want to go, the less likely you can be to fly from point A to point B, because there's only so many directions you could go. You would have to make sure cars can't fly near airports then. Also, airplanes are designed to withstand the changes in pressure you get at high altitudes. Regular flying cars probably wouldn't be.

I suppose if this map were to get too high, you could take out the speed layers and instead have speed lanes, just like we do now. They'd be repeating lanes though, so maybe have 10 lanes or something, then a space, then another 10 lanes. This would also give room for emergency vehicles, as they could have their own lane.

If we are throwing sheer impossibilities out of the picture then imagination would bring a good concept to life. To address some points though you would have to bring in some practicality. First off, the zone idea would be good but the problem with having too many lanes going upwards is the inefficiency of shifting between layers. Lets say you are at the top layer but you find out that you are at your destination so you have to get to the bottom. Getting from the top to the bottom would take so much time it wouldnt decrease the time it takes to get around in normal cars. So either less lanes would have to be employed or a FLAWLESS system would have to be developed for quickly ascending and descending.
As for the idea of getting the cars to have the standardized layer system it would be fairly simple depending on which method you use for keeping the car off the ground. Which brings me to my next point.
Currently i can only think of two conceivable ways to pseudo-practically get the cars off the ground. Magnetism or thrust propulsion. If you use magnets then you could just adjust the strength of a magnet in the car such as an electric magnet that regulates the intensity of the push. However this leads to the problem of the other magnet. Unless you found a way to use the sheer gravity or metals of the earth (which would mean the magnetism would be different in different locations) then you would have to make huge magnet strips along, lets just say, the roads we have now. Obviously everyone can see why having giant magnets on our streets next to buildings and such would be a problem.
This leads to the second idea, propulsion. Current hovercraft vehicles use air and a curtain or dress type thing to keep the air pushing in the correct direction. If we somehow found a way to increase these intensities hundred-fold as to get a heavy car high off the ground then that would mean we have a massive amount of a steady stream of air pushing downward which would make the layer system impossible (for the air would be pushing down on cars beneath causing a change in altitude).
The third way would be of course to use what aircraft today use which would take too much takeoff distance and landing distance. However if a 4th way were developed then it might be possible. Such an idea would have to approach the realm of being able to repel the air molecules directly beneath the car or use them in such a way that we could drive on it as if air was a solid matter. Other than that and a silly "stuff a bunch of lighter-than-air materials inside the car" i cant think of another way to accomplish it.
As far as no fly zones go you could easily just have the hovering (or just really tall) traffic signs with whatever technology you used on the cars and simply just use the road system we have now with a few alterations. Flying over buildings though would have to grant a manual control to deviate from the "air highway" which could be as disastrous as a car going off the road and running into a building.

P.S.- You wouldnt need emergency vehicles that could fly if all the commercial vehicles were already flying. First off if there was an accident it would all crash to the ground anyway. Second, if the roads are clear then the emergency vehicles could just use the ground roads. Lastly, even if the emergency was in the air its not like we would be able to just take a step outside to the side of the "air highway" because last time i checked gravity still applies.

Edit: You would also have to find a way to compensate for the increased gusts at higher altitudes that could throw a car off course.