Vertical Takeoff

[Chock Chucker]

I believe in the not to distant future aircraft or rockets carrying passengers will take off from airports & land at airports around the world using vertical takeoff & landing.

I'm sure people like Richard Branson & possibly companies like NASA are pioneering forward in this direction for future passenger air travel.

It will be a great way to fly & hopefully make air travel much faster at the same time.

Wouldnt it be nice to travel from say Sydney Australia to London England in a vertical takeoff & landing passenger aircraft or rocket in say 3 hours or less.

Beats the 20 or so hours flight time at present.

Chock Chucker. :ok:

[ATSA1]

However I believe that in the not too distant future, we will be flying around in ultra fuel-efficient twin engine airliners at around Mach 0.82, because anything else would cost an obscene amount of money.....

[onetrack]

VTO is an elusive dream, that has been in "futuristic visions" for over 100 yrs. It is unlikely to happen in the near future. The power required to lift heavily-loaded passenger aircraft vertically is enormous, and the single greatest problem besides that, is noise levels.
In an era where everything possible is being done to reduce noise, VTO continues to remain an impossible dream, unless there is a major technology breakthrough.
There has already been major inquiry at high level into VTO, and I note that no summary is included in the heavy reading below - because no-one can envision what aviation will look like in 50 yrs, because of the unknown advances that may occur, in a different direction to standard thinking, because of one or two major scientific breakthroughs.
Imagine what would happen to aviation, if a scientist developed a breakthrough in teleporting the human body?

A Review of Vertical Takeoff and Landing Technology in the National Airspace System (http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/science/hsy73333.000/hsy73333_0.HTM)