Uber Hires Former NASA Engineer to Help Develop Flying Cars at Uber Elevate

The ride-hailing company Uber, is planning to expand its flying car experiment. In this regard Uber has hired NASA engineer Mark Moore as Director of Engineering at Uber Elevate.

Mark Moore has worked at the federal agency as an advanced aircraft engineer. Basically, Moore started the current interest in vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft for short-haul urban flight with a 2010 paper on the workability of the helicopter-like vehicles.

Uber Hires Former NASA Engineer to Help Develop Flying Cars at Uber Elevate

According to Bloomberg, the appointment of Moore came right after the NASA expert deliberated on Uber’s recent white paper on VTOL craft.

The engineer was fascinated by Uber’s work on the subject. He believed that there was an opportunity to make the vision he’d originally stated years ago into something substantial.

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Moore informed that the major reason behind his decision was, that the company seemed to have a reasonable business case for making a flying commuter transit facility real.

Uber Continues to see its role as a Catalyst to the Growing VTOL Ecosystem

Uber has articulated its view for “on-demand aviation” as networks of small vehicles. That can pull out and land vertically, are powered by electric sources, and have ranges of between 50 and 100 miles on a single charge.

In the end the ultimate goal is to have these operate freely, summoned via an app on a passenger’s phone.

Moore while talking to Bloomberg said:

“But in the near-term we’ll probably see a bunch of competing designs hit the field that operate well but with human pilots for now.”

Uber is serious about ensuing the tech, and will look to host a summit of those interested in the field. It will help coordinate efforts to get practical VTOL transit sometime early this year.

On the appointment of Moore, Uber Head of Product for Advanced Programs Nikhil Goel told TechCrunch that,

“Uber continues to see its role as a catalyst to the growing developing VTOL ecosystem. We’re excited to have Mark join us to work with companies and stakeholders as we continue to explore the use case described in our white paper.”

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