Saturday, January 5, 2013

Whatever Happened to Flying Cars...

And does anyone really care?? 

If the information from my childhood and adolescence was even remotely credible, we should have flying cars by now. I remember watching The Jetsons tooling around Orbit City in their futuristic flying saucers, Doctor Emmett Brown and Marty McFly traveling through time to 2015 (a mere 3 years from now) in a flying DeLorean DMC-12 in Back to the Future Part II, Dick van Dyke flying over Bavaria in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang -- not to mention, Meet the Robinsons, The Fifth Element, Blade Runner and a whole host of other science fiction-based television shows and movies which show the apparent ease of using flying automobiles as regular modes of transportation. All big, fat lies! That is until recently...

Ostensibly, a company based in Woburn, MA, Terrafugia, is close to putting flying cars into production and for just under $300,000, you too could own one of these machines! (See the photo below)  But really -- would you want to? Upkeep on a automobile is difficult enough, I can't imagine how much harder a flying car would be. Additionally, how convenient would this vehicle be? First you have to drive to a local airport, fly to another airport, and then drive to your destination. Not exactly the best way to get to work in the morning. Plus, with a $300,000 price tag, this gadget is definitely for the rich and the shameless!  If you have that kind of money to throw away, please contact me and I can give you better ideas on where you can put your money!  (And yes, I meant that the way it sounded!)
I know most people joke about where are the flying cars, but I'll gladly give up on that during my lifetime. It seems a little ridiculous. But I would like to know when time travel will be available. To have the opportunity to travel to the past or the future... now, that would be an amazing feat!

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