Northwest Aerospace News PNAA 2021 ADVANCE | Page 29

If you can go to your destination straight away , it makes more sense .”

Tibbitts has made great strides in a short amount of time due to the GoFly competition sponsored by Boeing , whose purpose is , “ Design and build a safe , quiet , ultra-compact , near- VTOL personal flying device capable of flying 20 miles while carrying a single person .”
The concept of personal aircraft was first introduced to the world via the Jetson ’ s family , a Hanna-Barbera space-age cartoon that was the counterpart to the Flintstones stone-age cartoon in the 1960s ( https :// en . wikipedia . org / wiki / The _ Jetsons ). George , Jane , Judy , Elroy , Rosie ( the robot ), and Astro ( the dog ), embedded new technological ideas with future engineers that were decades in the making . The aircraft attached to the Jetson ’ s apartment had a bubble top and could hold the family . It was maneuvered with a joystick and came in many bright colors . George drives it to work every day , flying from his high-in-the-sky apartment to his office at Spacely ’ s Sprockets , folding his personal aircraft into a briefcase as he enters work . Early versions of George ’ s flying car show an open cabin vehicle that can pick things up through a trap door in the bottom .
The ZEVA ZERO is an impressive-looking aircraft and has a similar profile to the Jetson ’ s personal vehicle , but with many more propellers , bells , and whistles . The prototype is black in color and pancake in shape , with a cockpit window at the top of the vehicle . Propellers appear on the back and front of the aircraft . The renderings on the website show a sleek vehicle white to gray in color , shiny , with black accents .
FEBRUARY | MARCH 2021 ISSUE NO . 19 29