The everyday futurology musings of Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk continue to entertain. See: thoughts on self-driving cars and artificial intelligence.
This time he’s talking flying cars.
Speaking with astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson on his StarTalk show, Musk outlined some of his concerns with the idea of flying cars (via Inc).
“If there are flying cars, then well obviously you have added this additional dimension where a car could potentially fall on your head and would be susceptible to weather. And of course you’d have to have a flying car [that operates by] autopilot because otherwise, forget it,” he said.
“Even in autopilot, and even if you’ve got redundant motors and blades, you’ve still gone from near-zero chance of something falling on your head to something greater than that,”
Flying cars would be potentially dangerous, noisy, and completely dependent upon weather conditions, says Musk. So, what’s the alternative?
Tunnels. Or at least a combination of both. Musk clarified his StarTalk comments on Twitter:
Contrary to press reports, I'm not against flying cars. Just said it was important to consider both pros and cons.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 24, 2015
Flying car pros: travel in 3D fast. Cons: risk of car falling on head much greater, noisy, grounded in bad weather
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 24, 2015
Reasons I like tunnels: you still travel in 3D fast, but immune to weather, quiet and no risk cars fall on your head
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 24, 2015
Right move is try both tunnels and flying cars. Otherwise, having 2D streets and 3D buildings means bad traffic forever.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 24, 2015
So, what do you think? Team Flying Cars? Team Tunnels? Both?
Image via Elon Musk, Twitter
