COURSTEY Feb 07 2017 : The Economic Times (Mumbai)
Uber Hires NASA Veteran to Help Make Flying Cars
San Francisco


In 2010, an advanced aircraft engineer at NASA's Langley Research Center named Mark Moore published a white paper outlining the feasibility of electric aircraft 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 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 US National Aeronautics and Space Administration, where he has spent the last 30 years, to join one of Google's rivals: Uber Technologies. 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