Traveling the 21st Century Way

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Air Board

Now we can all ride a personal hoverboard like Marty Mcfly. To some extent, that is. The personal hovercraft is finally here and civilians can scoot around on nothing but air. Arbortech has created the Airboard, a gas powered (it’s true; although not exceedingly eco-friendly) device that glides an individual around any smooth surface-pavement, asphalt or freshly cut grass. Sadly, water gliding is not an option yet. While riders will technically still be on the ground, the shell of the craft sits on a cushion of air propelled by a fan which makes maneuvering 360º easy, and really fun. You turn the Airboard in the direction you wish to go by simply leaning your body and the craft will follow. The craft requires low maintenance and achieves top speeds of 15mph. Hovering around your neighborhood is finally possible! Some describe using it as feeling like a combination of flying and skiing. Hoverboarding/Airboarding could very easily become the skateboarding of the future. Just think, you could be the first to win the championship.

Skycar M400

Now this is seriously cool technology. Forget about cars or bikes or boards or anything else that travels on the ground because the Skycar M400 is soon to make air travel common for everyday use – no runway required. Able to hit speeds of 375mph and reach 20 miles per gallon on cleaner burning ethanol fuel, this car of the skies naturally seems like the next step in personal transportation.  Moller International is the company responsible for giving the world its first winged automobile, and the technology used to achieve this feat is like something straight of the Jetsons. Plus, it couldn’t be more straightforward. First of all, no pilot’s license is necessary to operate one of these puppies because it is just like driving a car. Well, minus the traffic, road signs and speeding tickets, of course. Okay, it will be easier than driving a car. Then there’s the liftoff. Runways will not need to replace driveways because takeoff and landing occurs vertically from rotary engines. Several models have already been designed with seating variety for 1 to 6 passengers, with distance ranges of up to 750 miles on one full tank, and altitudes up to 10.8 kilometers. Soon flying cars will be a simple reality and future generations may wonder how we ever did without them. Henry Ford wasn’t crazy when he remarked, “Mark my word: A combination airplane and motorcar is coming. You may smile. But it will come…” He was just a few years ahead of his time.

Personal Jet Pack

What if you could fly without wings, takeoff with ease and land with precision all by wearing a jet fueled belt pack? That would be great, right? Well, sorry, you can’t. At least not for more than 9 minutes. Colorado based company JetPack International, or Jet PI, initially developed the technology to give a person 33 seconds of high-flying fun at heights of up to120ft. Known as the ‘world’s longest flying jetpack’ Jet PI’s main contender was Mexico’s Tecnologia Aeroespacial Mexicana, or TAM, whose model competed at a measly 30 seconds of flight. The models for both these companies opted to burn hydrogen peroxide as fuel to keep their 124-139 pound jetpack afloat, and the cost for the very short rides ranged from $155,000 to $250,000. Doesn’t quite sound worth it to you either, huh? Because the rider couldn’t really go anywhere or do anything such as perform fun tricks in the air, Jet PI founder, Troy Widgery toiled to create the T73 Turbine, a much more advanced model promising more air time (9 minutes, woohoo!) with a maximum height of 250ft. So how did he do it? He had to revert to jet A fuel in place of the hydrogen peroxide (which wasn’t really cutting it) and blew TAM right out of the water. Unfortunately, a 9 minute ride will still run you a nice $200,000, but hey, it sure does beat 33 seconds. Just imagine what you could do in 9 minutes.

All of these evolving technologies are making transportation that seemed impossible, just a few short decades ago, into reality.  The once ‘impossible’ has become the modern fact. Our grandparents generation may have been around for the first automobiles, but our generation has produced the first flying ones. All these cool ways to travel are only breaking ground for other ideas that have yet to become a reality. Transportation will change more and more and the distances between people will begin to matter less and less. The only thing that will matter is how you want to go.

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