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Re:Terrafugia's flying car model has been approved for tests... by lukev on Monday December 21, 2015 @09:10AM (#10771098)
I'm not an aeronautical engineer, but the fuselage/wing size ratio on that is way bigger than anything I've seen that actually flies.

Is something that looks like that even a little bit possible?

Re:Terrafugia's flying car model has been approved for tests... by jacquesm on Monday December 21, 2015 @09:28AM (#10771159)
There is such a thing as a lifting body but this at first glance does not seem to be one of those.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifting_body

A scale model can easily be over-powered to the point that it will fly (anything can fly if you strap a large enough engine to it and you can vector thrust), but to make this work for a life-sized design the amount of power required to make it fly would likely cause the vehicle to be so in-efficient it would not be economical to use.

Re:Terrafugia's flying car model has been approved for tests... by Someone on Monday December 21, 2015 @09:28AM (#10771163)
Given enough power, a brick can 'fly'.

This more likely is a flying body (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifting_body) or a blended wing body (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blended_wing_body), as 'give it an enormous engine' hurts economical feasibility.

But yes, it looks as if those wings are there only to have something to hang the engines from.

Re:Terrafugia's flying car model has been approved for tests... by jobu on Monday December 21, 2015 @09:30AM (#10771173)
Not the most successful comparison, but it looks proportionally similar to the V-22 Osprey (also a VTOL aircraft).
Re:Terrafugia's flying car model has been approved for tests... by jacquesm on Monday December 21, 2015 @10:03AM (#10771335)
Not really, the Osprey has much more horizontal wing surface relative to its size and it has a tail surface and double stabilizer as well. That's a completely different geometry much closer to a conventional aircraft than the subject of this thread. This new vehicle also has a ducted fan for more forward thrust (I suspect this is because mounting larger tilt rotors was impossible given the constraints on height of the vehicle).

It'll be a close race between this one and the Moller sky car which one will hit the dealerships first.

/sarcasm.