Uber has lofty dreams. The ride-hailing company is looking to expand beyond the confines of ground-based transportation and bring its passengers into the sky. It plans to do so with electric flying vehicles that will be accessed via a terminal of sorts, and the company just inched a bit closer to realizing this dream with an impressive new hire.
His name is Mark Moore. He's a very smart man who's been doing very smart man things for NASA's Langley Research Center for the last 30 years. Now he's shifting away from the government sector to help put his ideas of flight to work.
Moore wrote a white paper back in 2010, which outlined his vision for electric flying vehicles that could operate with vertical takeoff and landing capabilities. According to Bloomberg, this paper inspired Google co-founder Larry Page to start a pair of companies seeking the same flying goals as Uber. The end of this fanciful rainbow is autonomous electric flying machines that whisk people off to their desired destinations around a metropolitan area.
Uber envisions you hailing a ride through its app, and being driven to a nearby vertiport. Once there, you'd hop into your waiting sky taxi and whir off to another veritport placed elsewhere in the city.
As little as ten years ago, this would have been considered pie-in-the-sky science fiction nonsense. Now, however, it seems quite possible, given adequate testing and regulations. The technology is most likely nearly ready based on all of the autonomous tech available, and the proliferation of drones certainly helps as well.
Perhaps your kids will be asking to take the Sky Uber to their friends' houses in a few decades.
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