Readers letters
Regarding “Travelling Light” article by Ben Hargreaves, June 2012, “MyCopter” flying cars project.
1. The exclusive use only of metric units – metres, kilometres/h, kilogram, is unacceptable and assumes we no longer should consider imperial units. We still in this country use feet, inches, miles, miles/hour, pounds and these still remain the preferred choice of most classes, including in my experience engineers - even the younger ones! I would like to remind IMechE of this.
2. The assertion that in around 20 years we shall be travelling in “swarms” of MyCopter flying cars at a height lower than 500m (that's 1640 feet!), at 150-200 km/h (that's 93-124 mph!) with uncontrolled ground-based air traffic control, yet still managing to somehow miraculously miss each other, is positively preposterous and absolutely typical of the wisdom behind “European Commission thinking and funding”. We haven't even got potholes repaired in 20 years where I live!
The article notes that “safety and security issues would need to be addressed as a craft falling from the sky could (!) wreak havoc on the streets below”. A most astute observation and one that would never have occurred to most of us engineers.
Not so much all MyCopter, as MyEye and Betty Martin.
This, plus the recent entirely one-sided gung-ho support of HS2, is not representative of good, unbiased material for our magazine, and this blind eagerness to post huge amounts of money down the drain, while most services are in dire straits, is most worrying.
Roger Jeavons, Wolverhampton, West Midlands
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