\nA thing about “we were promised flying cars” is people have constantly been inventing flying cars for near a century now, they are inevitably worse cars than dedicated cars, worse planes than dedicated planes, and more expensive than one of each.
Like, pretty much every part of the power transmission/propulsion system after the internal combustion engine is completely different and heavy. There’s stuff like \u2013 small aircraft engines don’t use auto-style spark plugs, they have dual magnetos that you test preflight every time so you’re sure they won’t both fail simultaneously. Like, “there is an enclosed compartment where people sit facing forward” is kinda the limit of what they share in common.
they\u2019re called \u201chelicopters\u201d and they suck, but that aside I think it\u2019s significant that modes of transport accelerated (literally) from sailing ship to moon rocket within a single lifetime but basically maxed out in the 1960s, since then everything has gotten a lot more efficient and cheaper which is amazingly good but you can\u2019t really do anything you couldn\u2019t have already done fifty years ago if you had enough cash (and indeed the military is still flying some jets from fifty years ago!)
One of the trippiest parts of living in the Bay Area is all the ex swamps are covered in tiny airports and as a direct downstream result, your coworkers who can’t make rent every month are flying their Cessna that they own over the mountain range to Vegas every weekend out of petty cash.
You’d think on the edge of the Bay seaplanes would be more of a thing, at least to travel to Montana lake houses
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