You're being too literal again. If we had flying cars, they would be flawlessly self-piloted, never crash, and only make that pleasant sound that was demonstrated to alert our spouses and children that we are home again.
Yup he's a true educator through and through and that's all he wants to be. His belief and enthusiasm in not just the pursuit of knowledge but the sharing of it is legendary and using his influence to reach every single person he can is respectable. There's many more like him that worj in there own spheres and I applaud them all
is there a possibility that you could make a hovering car with the combination of magnets metals and making magnet tubes to allow the cars to fly into them by focusing the metal that it has inside upwards so the magnet will follow the metal moving up with the pressure plate inside the magnet car and then when it gets to the magnet tube which is upwards you can just put the metal back inside and use another pressure plate to push the metal forwards to allow the car to move forwards and if you'll need to stop move it to the back actually on second thought that would be way too expensive but it is an idea videogame creators could use to make another type of transportation
Some Guy: I want a flying car. Neil: Take the sub way, you're welcome. Someone smarter than Tyson: you're still locked into two dimensions in a subway, you idiot. Neil: If a regular human bites a vampire, shouldn't the vampire turn back into a human?
There's more of them out there for sure. Depends on what you find entertaining of course. I dig Veritasium and SmarterEveryDay. Destin is an engineer and does a great job making science entertaining by flying on fighter jets and helicopters, exploring nuclear submarines etc. But Star Talk is one of my favorites too.
The real issue is freedom of movement. You don't trust people to move in three dimensions reliably as you add in an element of gravity that isn't as critical in two dimensional travel. That makes sense, because just try a flight sim; It's harder than it seems. As Chuck mentions, magnetic fields are one such possibility to create mag-lev infrastructure that can be used for travel. It still requires construction, but hopefully with less environmental impact than interstate highway bridges crossing over each other as you have in big cities.
@@JohnDoe-jh5yr Flying cars in cities and any other areas with any sort of population would need to be autonomous. We already have autopilot in our planes, we're on the brink of having totally autonomous cars. Combine those and add vehicle to vehicle data links and an automated air traffic control system which directs the traffic so that there aren't any crashes. The only real issue is creating a technology that makes the cars fly economically, quietly and without creating a small local storm when it lands on the street somewhere. A more feasible solution to city traffic could be autonomous non-flying cars that all communicate with each other or are guided by a centralized system, and no traffic lights. As the cars know where other cars are coming from and how fast, they can drive right past each other in intersections by speeding up or slowing down a little bit so that everyone avoids a collision. Even better solution would be that everyone whose job doesn't require doing physical labor somewhere, works from home. And everyone's shopping is delivered to their houses or buildings. A single delivery van can deliver everyday items to dozens of homes at a time, dramatically reducing the number of cars driving to shops and back home.
@@Kepe The problem will be the cars will still allow for or have a manual override. And people will do it all the time, because people like the freedom and fun of driving themselves. And if you say no manual override allowed, what about emergency situations where the system malfunctions, or when emergency vehicles and police need to reach a destination ahead of everyone else?
Fun fact: helicopters can glide when their engines fail. It’s called “autorotation”. It’s essential training for all helicopter pilots. But yeah i get your point.
I love Chuck's reaction to "The subway is the solution" and he goes "No, just no. That is calling a tofu burger a burger, that ain't what I want dangit"
Being unfamiliar with NYC, totes expected Tyson to say "...called the EL," or "called the highway," but the subway makes a much more amusing punchline!
The hover board benefit: less wheel contact resistance slowing it down, so a push takes you further. Also, you can glide over large cracks, peebles and twigs without the sudden stop And the eventual fall. 😉
The thing that's missing from Neil's interpretation of why you would need a flying car is ability to go anywhere without infrastructure. You still need roads for the third dimension I want to be able to just hop into my personal flying helicopter and go anywhere without worrying about roads. I mean, the ending of Back to the Future said it all: "Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads"
Yes, but that's where his statement about helicopters comes in. Helicopters are flying cars. But we don't have an answer for the noise they create. So that's what he said about actual flying cars. Additionally, how could you possibly regulate flying cars safely? If someone loses control, all the sudden they're crashing into a building, or someone's home. There would be no way to stop that, hence it being far more dangerous and an insurance nightmare.
That is "dark matter", dark matter has repelling nature (as opposed to gravity), we just could never manipulate or even see it, thus the name "dark matter". We can only notice its effects on other things in the universe, but not actually see or touch it. ERRATUM: the correct would be dark "energy", not dark matter
Can you imagine the road rage when someone's in the left lane blocking your ability to get around a slow driver AND another person is in the air blocking you from going over. I don't have enough middle fingers to handle that situation.
What would solve that situation better than flying cars is self driving cars. The autopilot knows where the other cars are and where they are going so they all can go at top speed while keeping safe distance and when something slows down a lane everyone slows down at the same time so it doesn't become a traffic jam where cars have to actually stop.
I'm surprised we haven't built more roads above roads. I know we kind of have a little bit, the problem with them is if you happen to be on the road in an earthquake and the bridge falls maybe that's why they're not more popular. I guess I just answered my own question we need to get better at predicting earthquakes first.
I love the way Neil thinks this was a very interesting point. In my opinion the average person thinking I want a flying car is thinking I just want to go around people at what ever speed the individual feels necessary which would be fast. I’m not sure anyone wants others to have the same option though because then we have sky traffic that puts them all back in the same boat. I appreciate this channel so much because on a weekly bases I’m able to come here and learn so much plus practice thinking differently like we already have flying cars.
1:40 No, it won't. Your rotor blade is a wing, if it's still intact. You can glide and land safely even in the engine failed if you have enough altitude. It won't become a brick. This is called "Autorotation". In fact this is part of the pilot training.
You're correct that helicopters that experience engine issues don't just drop out of the sky like rocks, however they DO still drop out of the sky at a reduced rate and have to land somewhere on short notice which is a problem in high population areas where people would want flying cars.
Neil, if you lose power in a helicopter it doesn't become a brick. You can do an auto rotate and land without a scratch. Dustin from Smarter Everyday already informed you of that! Us helicopter nerds know this already.
Have you ever been on a skateboard, the tiniest rock while make you go flying. In back to the future 3, McFly was riding along side a train over a rocky desert floor which is impossible on a skate board. The invention is that you can go over any solid terrain including dirt, gravel, and grass. Skate boards only work on paved surfaces.
Most helis have two engines and all are capable of doing an autorotate maneuver, where they pitch the nose down and leading edge of the rotors down and use the rising air during the fall to rotate the blades to operating speed, before impact you pitch rotor back up. The momentum carries over and creates lift slowing your descent. It's still a rough landing and is not effective at very low altitudes.
Imho subway is still moving in 1D, but on another level ( imagine a line in cartesian coordinate system being shifted ). I think having a dimension available means having the option to choose any value ( or from a range ) related to that dimension. So tunnels and bridges are 2.5D?
That's true on a personal level - but on a city planing level you have cars travelling in 3 dimensions, when some of the traffic goes up and some goes under.
@@msdsmti7678 kind off ... you still can't park you helicopter just anywhere ... you need a landing space. Rich people do have personal helicopters, but they won't go to grab a big mac or shop for clothes with their helicopter ... The idea of a flying car is you could do those things.
Sound is the vibration of air. It happens whenever the air gets disturbed. Our ears are able to hear the air disturbance when small animals' feet bump the ground as they run. Anything heavy that flies by pushing directly against the air is going to be loud.
@@Member_zero hmm interesting perspective. But feels like its not using the full potential of the third dimension. I mean we use a bridge/tunnel to go in anothe direction, not to increase capacity of roads, like multiple lanes do
Ok, so advantage for a hover board over a regular skateboard is the hover board will float right over small rocks and pebbles. Where as on a skateboard if you hit even the smallest piece gravel the skateboard stops instantly and you don’t.
@@Wonderboy1990 only aviation enthusiasts even have heard of auto rotation. It's no guarantee it's still going to be bad and you still could die but you're actually have to successfully complete a number of Auto rotations to get your license.Bill Burr's trying to get his helicopter license he's been talking about Auto rotations on his podcast where you have to shut the engine off and then turn it back on so you know what it's like and you're going to hit the ground hard but they have that down to a science now. For those who don't know look up auto rotation the blades are like an airplane wing and if the engine is not running they will start spinning like a paper airplane and slow your descent the question is how you deal with it and they're actually meant to crash that way it's kind of fascinating the physics of it really
Jonathan Perry Neil tweeted about this a while back and destin from smarter every day made a video in response to the tweet, it’s possible he knows about it
Flying cars are sort of already here in 2021. All of these have respectable road-mode capabilities comparable to today's cars. 1)Aeromobil has a plane-style flying car that is certified for operation in Europe, you will need access to a runway and a pilot's license. 2)PAL-V (Personal Air and Land Vehicle) Liberty operates in The Netherlands, and while the company has been in business for over 20 years the flying car is only a recent innovation--it's like SpaceX, but for flying cars. Cost ranges from $400k to $600k 3)Klein-Vision air car. It's another plane-style flying car, in working-prototype stage. A video demonstration was released in October 2020. 4)Airbus has a quadcopter design called Pop.up, though it looks like it's still a concept (technically speaking, however, it could be produced right now). It's going to be an Uber-like service that tries to ferry you via the groundways, but when you hit congestion the quadcopter module can swoop in and move you around it (apparently they're going to leave the wheels on the ground and shuttle a new road module to pick you up?) 5)Terrafugia Transition. This was debuted in a 2012 New York autoshow as a prototype, it has since become a working model you can buy for $400k. It's another plane-type flying car. 6)Maverick flying car. If dune buggies could fly, this would be the Maverick. It's essentially a beefy ultralight (so, umm, just a light?) with a parachute and a propeller on the back. Not really something for the general public so much as an emergency vehicle for extremely remote locations...Medivac meets flying car, basically. 7)Terrafugia TF-X. This second Terrafugia offering looks like it was inspired by the Star Trek: TNG shuttlecraft, it's a VTOL flying car still in concept stage and it's unclear if Terrfugia will pursue the program further. It can go from London to Geneva in about 3 hours.
To be honest, my want of a flying car was never to do with avoiding traffic by using a third dimension, it was eliminating the use of ground for roads. Imagine, you could have a lot less space taken on the ground by roads, having just parking spaces, and the rest of the space could be greenery, buildings, etc. As for the noise, how about ionic air propulsion? We are not there yet but it’s promising...
The point is not to merely avoid traffic. But to get somewhere faster along the 4th dimension. We have highways in houston which are kind of like interstates or freeways but they're like winding tracks that go in the air over and under eachother. Pretty cool honestly. But we utilize the 3rd dimension because it gets us places faster I.e. traversing the 4th dimension; seeing as we'd be getting to the x.y.z axis's but at an earlier point along the axis of t.
I think the real reason we want flying cars is because we seen them on "The Jetsons" growing up. I agree with Neil on the hoverboards. Never thought of it that way.
@@MrT------5743 Maybe. What if the air under current is constantly being shifted due to the unevenness of the gravel or stones? Then the car or hoverboard will probably being bumpy as well. If they make some kind of computer chip to compensate for this then yes I agree with you. What do you think?
@@atoz4399 a bump in a road is directly transferred to a tire. Cars have shocks that help dampen out that directly transferred bump but it can't eliminate it completely. If a hoverboard used air like a hovercraft (some say it is more like a forcefield of some kind) then the bump or unevenness of the ground is never directly transferred to any part of it. Sure there would be some uneven movement but would most likely generally spread out sort of like an airplane. This spread-out unevenness over a very rough and/or sloping surface might feel like turbulence on a plane, but over a mostly even flat surface like a gravel road would probably be perfectly smooth.
The problem with the subway system is that you can't easily transition from the 2nd to the 3rd dimension, and it doesn't go everywhere. A flying car is probably not the solution, but neither is building subway systems under every road in the country
I live near San Francisco. Imagine the problem for Air Traffic Control with an additional 7.7 Million aircraft flying en masse twice a day. It gives a whole new meaning to the term 'just dropping in'.
Blade Runner 2049 accurately portrays flying cars. If you saw that film in theaters, your ears were ringing after every car went by and the sound of walking through the city with cars flying overhead was deafening. It was awesome. I refer everyone to this movie as a reference for why we don't have flying cars.
What Neil failed to account for is that what people want is they want to go in three directions "at will." People want to go up immediately if they can't move forward, back or to the side. But here's an impractical solution which we can actually implement now: Build cars so a giant drone can latch onto its roof, and whenever one wants to go up, the driver calls the drone to come pick it up like an Amazon delivery box. Maybe limit the number of drones at one time to prevent hearing loss to nearby pedestrians, and make cars with noise cancelling tech inside the cab.
About the mag lev toilet, what If they had the toilet seats (like the actual seat part you can flip up and down) separated from the toilet and imbedded with magnet so that the seat floated. Then they had someone that sanitized those seats after each use or portable seats u could fold up and carry with u. Would that work? Or would it be to difficult to balance? Or would there be more problems I didn't name/think if?
The hoverboards in BTTF do work on water. Marty's feet didn't provide enough friction to move him over the water. They had hoverboards with little rockets on them too.
I would say it's more like a bomb than a brick because when it hits something it's gonna explode. I don't know that for a fact, I just play a lot of Grand Theft Auto 😅
I madly respect Neil DeGrasse Tyson, but there is a fundamental error with this argument. I do agree that flying cars would not be logical in terms of the safety or noise aspect, but we have not yet conquered the third dimension of traffic. As he stated, we added more lanes to roads in order to freely move between the lanes in order to pass somebody going slower (moving into two dimensions). But this is not the same mechanic that we see in bridges and subways. You cannot move back and forth from a regular road to a subway/bridge simply to pass slower people. Once you get on a bridge or subway you are stuck there. This is really just a translation of the two dimensions that we already had. Sure, it provides more areas to travel so no single area is as crowded, but it does not move our "passing abilities" into three dimensions. One more point. A big reason people want flying cars is in order to travel "as the crow flies" and not have to travel on established roads. With flying cars, you would be able to fly over buildings or open fields in a direct path to your destination, making travel time faster.
@@renierbelarma4770 okay that’s a fair point. I think I was thinking more widely accessible than helicopters right now, but I suppose the reason you don’t have that wide use is because of cost and lack of training. That probably wouldn’t change if we got “flying cars”.
When we say 3 dimensions we can also include the flyovers. Somes cities have 3-4 levels of flyovers.. we are not really flying but it's doing the same job
Ye but they cost way to much not just in terms of upfront cost, but in terms of gasoline and maintenance. They are also too loud and take a lot of parking space - so not very practical for general population. The idea is to have something like a personal helicopter, but with the cost, noise, polution and practicality of a regular car.
@@Member_zero look up "Joe rogan - Neil degrasse tyson on why we don't have flying cars" and it's at 2:43 I'm telling you it's so silly and it always makes me laugh.
They got a point on the fact that hoverboards from back to the future wouldn't matter as much, the main part that it would matter is definitely in the maintenance side of things, if the hoverboard runs off magnetic power to stay above the ground, then there's no need to service it afterwards, there isn't any wheel bearings or wheels themselves that would wear out, only thing to worry about is the board itself
We also like to fly directly rather than however roundabout a road may be. Subways don't fly. The roll on rails with all the friction of wheels on the ground (which is not flying). They are down, true, but they are stuck with a few lanes, and a train can't change lanes.
Hooray!!! Chuck is back :D he wasn't in the video I watched the other day about Exoplanets, and I missed him lol He and Neil have awesome repartee together, the show feels a tiny bit lacking without their unique level of synergy! Chuck's enthusiasm is just downright infectious :3
The subway doesn’t exist in south Georgia. Only densely populated cities have underground transportation systems. In rural areas you typically have to travel farther (more miles) than you typically do in cities. So even though the traffic is less dense, you could still save time in the air. There is a European company now taking orders for a single passenger drone called Jetson ONE. At this point it is electric and can only go about 20 minutes on a full charge. But I believe the video advertisement is on RU-vid. I just did another search and there are apparently other passenger drones now being advertised. What I’m not hearing (so far) is the nightmare that would be air traffic control if we even had 100,000 more aircraft flying around. It is complicated enough as it is.
They had a hover 'cart' board at the Star Wars tour at the San Jose Tech Museum in 2017, but it basically was a hovercraft and was pretty noisy. It slid om a metal floor and air blew out under it. The hover boards today though have either two wheels or one big wheel and are just basically a rollerblade thing. Still it does look cool seeing the one wheeled one. As for the flying car, my late Father (WW2 veteran army air corps) passed in 2009, but he said of the flying car, being in the air force years ago, it's not the flying, you can teach someone that, it's the falling if you crash.
Something to point out about the hoverboard from Back to the Future...presumably it isn't as dependent on a smooth, hard surface as a standard wheeled skateboard. In the third movie it's used at the side of the train they were hijacking to save Clara, and attempting such a maneuver with a standard skateboard wouldn't have come even close to working because of how uneven the ground there was. The ability to ignore uneven, rough surfaces, even if it's only a few inches off the ground, is a substantial advancement over those little wheels from skateboards. It even sort of works over water, the issue that Marty had was that he couldn't effectively propel himself forward because his foot needed to kick off against solid ground to provide proper forward momentum. Presumably, if he could have kept his balance, he could have moved forward by paddling through the water rather than just splashing at the surface. Even that issue is removed by adding an engine to it, as Biff's grandson did. If you were to put an engine onto a skateboard and go over water, it would likely just sink because the board isn't large enough to support the weight and float on water (or so I assume, since surf boards are basically the same idea except without wheels and much larger).
There was a hoverboard hoax video going around in 2015, and it even included the old guy from the Back to the Future series. In it, their fake hoverboards could hover, not just a few inches off the ground, but even a couple of feet off the ground. What advantage would that give over skateboards? Well, besides being frictionless (air friction not withstanding), it also allows it to effortlessly travel over rough terrain, including gravel, grass, and even rocks. So then, to get hoverboard levels of technology, or even surpass it, we'd need all-terrain skateboards.
Awesome 😊👍🏻 love to listen to the talk 😎 But i would love a hovering skateboard.... ride everywhere without thinking of the surface.... so not the same as one with wheels 😃 you wouldnt get stucked 😃
But, if everyone had flying cars, lanes would be created in the sky, and there would still be rules, and still be traffic. Subways are trains, closer to airplanes, as they aren't personal vehicles. The purpose of flying cars is to not hit potholes, not get flats, and to be able to move faster with no road resistance. Plus, it looks much cooler.
After becoming a pilot, I realized that, if everyone had a flying car, keeping them from running into each other would be a logistical nightmare. The only way to handle all this traffic would be to create highways in the sky (like they currently have for airliners). The result is that you would be right back in traffic - the thing you wanted to avoid - with the added risk of falling out of the sky. Interestingly, as you point out, we have already solved the problem of moving large volumes of people safely in three dimensions.
@@TheRealTomahawk Yes, that was the other big promise - "air cars" that would float above the ground. That sounded great until you considered the how easily the wind could push the cars around, creating instant bumper cars. At least a mag lev train should not have these problems with wind.
5:56 wrong. a subway is still single dimensional, not three dimensional. it may appear to be a third dimension only in relation to the roadways, but you can see that the subway is limited to one dimension if there is an issue with or on the railway.
I'm in Shanghai right now. Just saw Chuck shoot past at 250kph on the maglev track. Oh, he wasn't on a train by the way. And his pants were around his ankles.
Funfact about the Maglev-Train in China: It was actually developed in Germany as "Transrapid", but it was never put into service here. Instead, it was sold to China, where it is in service, as described by Neil. For reference: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transrapid
Here is the thing. A) Removing all roads would give us back realestate land. B) bridges and tunnels have the same problems as dimension 2 has. C) If I could bypass structured roads, then I could get to places faster. Therefore creating efficiency and ease in commuting. D) Bridges and road are effected by ice therefore low elevation flying removes that issue. You are overthinking the dimensional play, cities aren't where flying cars are beneficial. Urban areas are.
Flying cars would take full advantage of three dimensions. The infrastructure we have now does not. You're still limited to the width of the bridge or the depth of the subway tunnels. Those only somewhat take advantage of the third dimension. But I will admit that the practical issues that come with flying cars would exceed their usefulness compared to just using bridges and the like.
