Developed by former schoolmates of yours truly at the MIT Aero-Astro Department, the Transition calls itself a Roadable Light Sport Aircraft — because apparently it's too shy for the media frenzy that will ensue once people realize it's a car that can fly. Or, more accurately, a plane that can drive, say its creators:

Every pilot faces uncertain weather, rising costs, and ground transportation hassles on each end of the flight. The Transition® combines the unique convenience of being able to fold its wings with the ability to drive on any surface road in a modern personal airplane platform. Stowing the wings for road use and deploying them for flight at the airport is activated from inside the cockpit. This unique functionality addresses head-on the issues faced by today’s Private and Sport Pilots.

The Transition can skirt these issues because of recent FAA regulations designed to attract new pilots, says Discovery News:

In 2004, the Federal Aviation Administration created a new category of aircraft and license for sport aviation, an attempt to re-awaken interest in flying after steady drops in the number of licensed pilots. ... Sport pilot licenses don't require as many hours of training as private and commercial pilot licenses, though sport fliers are not eligible to take off and land at runways with air traffic control towers. The medical requirements for sport pilots also are less stringent than for other types of pilot licenses, matching what is needed for a driver's license.

Yes, the problem with flying is all that pesky carpooling to the airport, and the annoyance of coordinating with air traffic control. That's probably what killed the first "roadable aircraft," the Aerocar, which was designed in the late 1940s by Moulton Taylor and flown on television by James May in 2008:

Still, I took some comfort from the fact that the yahoos who double-park in cities and speed on windy country roads would probably find themselves ineligible for a pilot's license. Times are a-changin', however; come 2010, when the first Transition is expected to coast into the waiting arms of its buyer, we might get a very different view of safety in the skies.

"Flying Car" Goes to Market [Discovery via MSNBC]

Image from Terrafugia.

We've labeled all the futuristic features of this home, and color-coded it so you can see which gadgets don't exist (red), sort of exist (yellow), and are in your kitchen right now (green). Below, you can see which movies each device came from, and a bar graph that measures how many greens the movie got vs. reds. We also included domestic vehicles like cars in our "home of the future."

The documentary New Horizons turned out to be most accurate — at least when it came to domestic improvements that are possible with modern technology. This reel commissioned by General Motors focused on realistic advances in the automotive industry, looking only 20 years ahead. After all, why overreach? Googie’s had yet to be built in its landmark style, and human spaceflight was but stardust in scientists’ eyes.

In all the flicks, two of the most accurately-predicted items were large screen TVs and videoconferencing. Wireless technology, implied often by The Jetsons, is now ubiquitous. Less popular devices available today include the Master Cook (in the form of kitchen computers), fins on cars, and thumbprint entry.

Though the Scene Screen doesn't exist as such, it gets a yellow because it could be created by the do-it-yourself crowd. Just set up a projector display for your window. And you can create a Garden Center by winching a hydroponics rig above your dining room table.

In the red zone are a lot of technologies we wish we had — or maybe not. You’ll have to wait for the three seashells, walk-in Orgasmatron, and gigantic fruit (though we’re already genetically modifying produce) — but anti-grav space boots probably aren’t on the way anytime soon.

Of course, what would a piece on everyday life in the future be without mention of the notorious flying car? The roadable aircraft in development today leave us with hope… as well as something to be desired. Even the promising Moller Skycar falls short, lacking the ability to be driven as an automobile.

The self-driving, self-repairing, foam spewing car technology of Demolition Man is also unavailable to today’s motorist. When compared to the domestic conveniences afforded to us now, this film’s gorgeously grandiose vision of modern LA was the least in tune view of the future reviewed (we’ve got at least a couple of decades before 2032 to fix that, but we’d better get cracking).

Personally, I’ll be happy with a simple populuxe revival.

We already have plans to turn this into a consumer product. A driver and three passengers could ride it its enclosed cockpit. The wheels will be powered so it can be driven into and out of garages. It could be flown over mountains, but we believe it will work best near the ground so that civilian operates would not have to learn complicated navigation.

Piasecki envisioned a "simplified and fool-proof" Sky-Car able to fly at speeds of 150 mph and up. "Manufactured at anywhere near automobile volume . . . it could retail at not much more than, say, a Continental Mark II automobile." The Continental Mark II was a luxury car with a price tag to match, but it retailed for considerably less than the cheapest helicopter available at the time (the $39,000 Bell 47G).

The catch was that the military got the flying jeep first. To that end, they bankrolled Piasecki's work in competition with two other corporations. Piasecki went on to build and fly an Airjeep II—but alas for our sky-driving future, the army abandoned the sky jeep to concentrate on "further development of conventional battlefield helicopters."

ESA scientists are currently testing intermetallic materials, combinations of metal similar to alloys in which two or more metals are diffused together on a molecular level. Titanium aluminide is an intermetal that could cut the weight of fan blades in jet engines by half. Unfortunately, titanium aluminide tends to fail under high temperatures. This can be solved by introducing small amounts of other materials, such as niobium. In Earth gravity, weight differences between the different metals makes it difficult to get them to diffuse properly.

Small-scale tests in rockets have shown that zero-g solves many of the issues with intermetallic production. The ESA will run larger tests over longer periods of time in the new Columbus science module on the ISS. These space metals could revolutionize the aerospace industry. Photo by: NASA.

'Space metals' aid perfection quest. [BBC]

We've taken a look at Scott Robertson's flying sea-pods before, and these minijets confirm that he's obsessed with cool personal transports, and water. In his original painting for this piece, the planes had pusher propellers mounted on the back, but in subsequent "drafts" he decided to change them to jet engines because people weren't able to tell which way the planes were flying. Robertson opened up a studio with Cloverfield monster designer Neville Page, right after graduating, and their collaboration continues to this day. Maybe they'll spawn a water-born tech-creature hybrid that'll terrorize pedestrians everywhere.