[ExI] flying cars?

[spike]

-----Original Message-----
From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
[mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Keith Henson
Subject: Re: [ExI] flying cars?

On Fri, Jun 24, 2011 at 7:31 AM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

snip
>
>> Hi Keith, this is cool, but...  What he has there I think is actually
strictly a hovercraft.

>Could be.  But what I think is likely or if not in this case shortly is the
application of a lot of computation to control.

>You can see that in those little electric quad and hex helicopters.  Keith


Ja, I can imagine something like this in freeflight with four rotors in a
cruciform configuration.  With only the two and only thrust vector control,
you can almost see the instability in any flight regime out of ground
effect.  A gust of wind or any perturbation, over it goes in a roll,
entering a mode which thrust vectoring provides insufficient control
authority to recover, even if you assume perfect compensation.  We had a
saying for that.  With some flight configurations, it was said this craft
could not be stabilized even with god at the controls.

spike