NASA crowns winner in $250k “flying car” contest
13th August 2007
It’s encouraging to see NASA following Jerry Pournelle’s advice about holding contests with prizes for technological advances.
It’s disappointing to see them concentrating on ancient technologies like “go real fast with wings and you can fly”, because such toys run into the same problem as e.g. the Segway — something that might work well in a country with few people in it won’t survive the regulatory process (and would be inherently unsafe if it did) in the Real World.
All it’s going to take is one “FUI” accident and the whole scheme will get so loaded down with bureaucracy and limitations that nobody will use it.