Flying Cars, Orbital Flights ... Futuristic Travel Takes Off

Nov. 3, 2006 — -- Almost as soon as cars were invented, man -- and woman -- began dreaming of cars that could fly.

For years, it has been the stuff of science fiction and fantasy, but experts say 25 years from now, that dream will become reality.

"We will have a flying car in the next 25 years. Make no doubt about it," Stanford University professor and world-renowned "futurist" Paul Saffo told "Good Morning America's Weekend Edition."

In fact, we're already closer than you may realize.

In a warehouse in Davis, Calif., an inventor named Paul Moller is building the M-400 Skycar, which he says will be able to take off and land vertically, hover, and fly at up to 300 mph.

Moller foresees a future where skycars routinely zip around taxis or personal vehicles.

"You will be able to get in your skycar, drive it electrically to a vertiport, two or three blocks from your home, program in your destination, and go directly to that destination with being involved in the process," Moller said.

The M-400 and several earlier prototypes have already flown, but only on a limited basis and not very high or very far.

But no one doubts the technology exists to produce a flying car. The challenge is to make it safe to operate, and that means turning the driver into a passenger.

"As you know on the ground most of the accidents are due to operator error so you have to pull that out of the equation in the air," he said. "You just have to computerize it."

Transportation experts say people will eventually turn to the skies not just out of a sense of adventure, but out of necessity: to escape gridlock on the ground.

"There's a lot more space in three dimensions than there is in two dimensions on a road," said Mark Jannot, editor in chief of Popular Science. "I think that's a clear advantage -- just sort of being able to kind of move over and around and up and down and get out of the way."

There are several other versions of flying cars in the works.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are developing a combo car-and-plane. A Texas company is releasing something that looks sort of like a miniature helicopter.