We all remember the Jetsons, right? With three-day workweeks, flying cars, and all the time in the world for leisure thanks to technology that takes care of the inconveniences of daily life, the 1960s show painted a pretty ideal future. Although we doubt we’ll ever get to three-day workweeks, technology like Alexa is already making day-to-day life easier — all we’re missing is ridiculous transportation technology.
It may be a much closer than originally believed: Aston Martin, the luxury car company that James Bond prefers, has recently unveiled their sleek (and just a little bit silly) Volante Vision. The vehicle possesses hybrid-electric vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) concept — essentially a “sports car for the sky”. It is the closest thing to George Jetson’s aerocar we’ve seen in modern times, although the future of this futuristic design is still pretty unclear; instead, Aston Martin is using the design to strengthen its bonds to potential aerospace partners, such as aircraft engine manufacturer Rolls-Royce.
The Volante Vision is all well and good for personal use, but what about modern flight adaptations? When (and if) this technology comes to light, not everyone is going to be able to afford it — it’s projected that millennials alone will already be spending $1.4 trillion on travel each year by 2020. More expensive modes of transportation don’t seem ideal. There has to be something for the general public to utilize — and there is (or there will be, maybe).
Boeing realized the first step towards the future is to imagine what it will be like, so they considered the fact that there are, at any given moment, around 9,728 planes carrying 1.27 million people traveling through the air and ran with it. What’s the worst part about flying? The wait: the longest flight in the world lasts about 18 hours and spans half the globe.
With Boeing’s new hypersonic aircraft — capable of speeding past the sound barrier to fly at Mach 5 (around 3,800 mph or more) — you would be able to travel just about anywhere on the planet in less than three hours. The hypersonic (which is one step beyond supersonic) airliner is in the very early engineering-study phase; the company has been working on the tech for decades, and it will likely take decades more to see it come to fruition.
