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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2010 > February > 22
Monday, February 22, 2010
Pitts too pessimistic?
Leonard Pitts has a column about a subject that has been grabbing me lately, too: the apparently increasing impermeability of the human brain against unwanted facts.
He might be a bit too pessimistic. He says, “To listen to talk radio, to watch TV pundits, to read a newspaper’s online message board, is to realize that increasingly, we are a people … divorced from logic, alienated from even objective truth.”
Thing is, though,
when you’re talking about talk radio and online message boards, you’re probably talking about the same people, a small group in percentage terms.
On the other hand, especially when he adds the talking heads on TV, he’s talking about a group that has significance beyond numbers. These are the people who actually engaging in political discourse — or a lot of them.
To hold that most Americans aren’t so closed minded doesn’t bring much comfort if those people are sitting out political debate, perhaps in part because they’re repelled by it.
Permalink | Comments (9) | Post your comment | Categories: Blog entry only, Columns, Martin Gottlieb
Editorial: Soaring sedans worth a look for Dayton, after the jokes
Want to start a conversation around the coffee pot? Say “flying car.”
The phrase grabs the imagination. A story in this newspaper on Wednesday, Feb. 17, about a company that’s talking about coming to Dayton to build flying cars stirred all manner of local imaginations.
People were picturing having to deal in the sky with the kinds of drivers they face on Earth. And they were talking about an old TV show, “The Jetsons.”
Coffee pot conversations suggest that some people think a “flying car” is the dumbest, most impractical thing they’ve ever heard of. Others are surprised we don’t have them already.
Once beyond the giggling stage, the local imagination must turn to this point:
Dayton really does seem to be the right place for this idea to — no, not that cliche — get off the ground. No city in the world can claim a stronger connection to the histories of flight and cars, both.
How that figures into the plans of Terrafugia, Inc. is not clear. That Massachusetts company has developed a prototype. The thing really does drive on roads and fly. The two-seater fits on roads because the wings fold up. It can fill up at a gas station and use that gas to fly.
The company says it can have flying cars ready for the market next year at $200,000 each, and that 70 people have already put down $10,000 each, meaning a $14 million market is already there.
Nevertheless, the company has had difficulty raising the money necessary to proceed until it starts selling products.
Even in flying circles, there’s a lot of skepticism about the idea proving practical any time soon. People note that the flying-car idea isn’t new, that a car flew as long ago as 1937. But achieving reliability, affordability, safety and ease of use are really hard. Skeptics note that a mere fender-bender could make a car unflyable. So driving on the road would foster too much stress.
Also, said one writer, “An air car has to make too many weight concessions to be really flyable, so chances are it won’t fly anywhere near as well as an ordinary… aircraft.” Terrafugia says it isn’t getting enough financial support at home, but has potential Ohio investors. Who the investors are is unknown, as is why they care where the company operates.
Although Dayton was singled out in the original news reports about the company’s plans, Terrafugia has reportedly said it is considering other places, too.
The first report about its plans came when an executive called a Boston Globe reporter to say the company is moving, though it would prefer not to. Some in Dayton think he might be just trying to drum up money at home.
How Massachusetts will respond is another unknown. At this stage, Terrafugia only employs about 10 people. How many it might want to hire is another unknown. Economic development officials in Dayton weren’t aware of the company’s plans when the story broke. That’s no reflection on them. Every indication is that Terrafugia’s obsession at this point is with capital.
Since the news broke, the Dayton Development Coalition has been in touch with the company.
Comparisons with the Wright brothers arise. They weren’t the first to get into the air, but they were the ones whose work led to airplanes becoming practical.
And they were able to proceed largely on their own — up to a certain point. Eventually war and the military became crucial in the development of flight. Well, there’s a military angle here, too: The Pentagon would love to have a vehicle that proceeds on the ground until, say, it comes to a body of water, and then can hop over it.
The military connection is yet another reason Dayton would make sense as a development site, given Wright-Patterson Air Force Base’s leading role in driving air-related technology.
Unfortunately, the military seems most interested in a car-plane that could take off and land vertically. The Terrafugia prototype requires a runway. But those practical considerations are still a way off.
The best guess is that a use will be found in our time for vehicles that fly and drive, just as vehicles that float and drive have long been around. But whether “our time” means 2011 or 2018 or 2032 is a question of great importance to investors.
Dayton and Ohio shouldn’t be obsessing over the obstacles now. Just having the effort here would be a good thing. Flying cars are already an object of public fascination. The closer they come to reality, the more attention there will be. That’s the kind of attention Dayton is looking for.
And, who knows? This, too, might be history.
Permalink | Comments (8) | Post your comment | Categories: Auto industry, Editorials, Martin Gottlieb, Transportation
