Uber Hires Veteran NASA Engineer to Develop Flying Cars
Uber Hires Veteran NASA Engineer to Develop Flying Cars
The man who inspired Google’s co-founder will join the
ride-hailing startup’s nascent project.
by Brad Stone February 6, 2017, 3:30 AM PST
In 2010, an advanced aircraft engineer at NASA’s Langley
Research Center named Mark Moore published a white paper outlining the
feasibility of electric aircrafts that could take off and land like helicopters
but were smaller and quieter. The vehicles would be capable of providing a
speedy alternative to the dreary morning commute.
Moore’s research (PDF) into so-called VTOL—short for
vertical takeoff and landing, or more colloquially, flying cars—inspired at
least one billionaire technologist. After reading the white paper, Google
co-founder Larry Page secretly started and financed two Silicon Valley
startups, Zee Aero and Kitty Hawk, to develop the technology, Bloomberg
Businessweek reported last summer.
Now Moore is leaving the confines of the U.S. National
Aeronautics and Space Administration, where he has spent the last 30 years, to
join one of Google’s rivals: Uber Technologies Inc. Moore is taking on a new
role as director of engineering for aviation at the ride-hailing company,
working on a flying car initiative known as Uber Elevate. “I can’t think of
another company in a stronger position to be the leader for this new ecosystem
and make the urban electric VTOL market real,” he says.
Uber isn’t constructing a flying car yet. In its own white
paper published last October, the company laid out a radical vision for
airborne commutes and identified technical challenges it said it wanted to help
the nascent industry solve, like noise pollution, vehicle efficiency and
limited battery life. Moore consulted on the paper and was impressed by the
company’s vision and potential impact.
Moore acknowledged that many obstacles stand in the way,
and they’re not only technical. He says each flying car company would need to
independently negotiate with suppliers to get prices down, and lobby regulators
to certify aircrafts and relax air-traffic restrictions. But he says Uber, with
its 55 million active riders, can uniquely demonstrate that there could be a
massive, profitable and safe market. “If you don’t have a business case that
makes economic sense, than all of this is just a wild tech game and not really
a wise investment,” Moore says.
Uber’s vision is a seductive one, particularly for sci-fi
fans. The company envisions people taking conventional Ubers from their homes
to nearby “vertiports” that dot residential neighborhoods. Then they would zoom
up into the air and across town to the vertiport closest to their offices. (“We
don’t need stinking bridges!” says Moore.) These air taxis will only need ranges
of between 50 to 100 miles, and Moore thinks that they can be at least
partially recharged while passengers are boarding or exiting the aircraft. He
also predicts we’ll see several well-engineered flying cars in the next one to
three years and that there will be human pilots, at least managing the onboard
computers, for the foreseeable future.
His move to Uber is a risky one. Moore says he’s leaving
NASA one year before he’s eligible for retirement and walking away from a
significant percentage of his pension and free health care for life “to be in
the right place at the right time to make this market real.” (Though it’s
probably safe to say that Uber, with some $11 billion on its balance sheet, is
making it worth his while.) Moore seems to be disillusioned with NASA, saying
the agency is leaving promising new aviation markets to the private industry.
“It’s the federal government who is best positioned to overcome extremely high
levels of risks,” he says.
While NASA is larded with layers of bureaucracy and
management, Uber Chief Executive Officer Travis Kalanick has been closely
involved in hatching his company’s flying car plans, Moore says. That is, when
he’s not distracted with his own political crises, such as his role on
President Donald Trump’s advisory council, which he relinquished last week
after criticism from customers, drivers and employees.
Kalanick’s bet on Uber Elevate is another indication that
while Silicon Valley seems on the surface to be consumed with politics and
protests these days, the march into the future continues apace.
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