NASA engineer hired by Uber to build flying cars

Uber has just taken one more step forward toward building its flying car – it has hired Mark Moore, the NASA aircraft engineer. Moore has been appointed as the Director of Engineering for the Uber’s flying car experiment – Uber Elevate.

Moore was impressed the white papers recently published by Uber on VTOL craft. Moore had been working on developing something similar since years and was suddenly impressed when he saw Uber’s work. Moore had been working as an advanced aircraft engineer and was interested in developing helicopter-like vehicle capable of taking short flights and vertical takeoff. Moore said that he decided to join Uber because of market motivated vision toward making flying commute a reality.

Uber had long thought of providing on-demand aviation through a series of small helicopter-like vehicles capable of landing and taking off vertically and can run for 100 miles at a stretch on electricity. The other goal is to make them autonomous and that they can be summoned by the user through an app. This is still the long-term goal. However, Moore says that few human-operated designs will become available in near future.

This vision is not something that is being pursued by Uber alone. Companies including Google, Airbus etc. are also working on VTOL craft. The greatest appeal to adopting this solution is to cut off the ground traffic and reach destination in shorter time periods.