They killed the electric car—they is no one in particular—but damn it if we’re not gonna see a flying car before this planet’s best and brightest found a space colony on the moon.
Yes, Darpa, which brought you all of the Internets, has developed Personal Air Vehicle Technology, or PAVT (or A Ceca Persevering Holly Hot Loin, in anagram form). It’s part car, part helicopter. One minute it’s driving along, minding its own business, the next it’s flying, majestically, no doubt, in the air like so many flocks of seagulls. Seagulls powered by petrol.
The vehicle is designed to have a velocity of 60MPH on land and 150MPH in the air, just fast enough to fly from Schenectady, NY to Paterson, NJ in under an hour.
Pretty neat, but, you know, I’d rather Darpa put its know-how toward developing some sort of alternative energy contraption and/or fuel.