Skip to main content

Flying Cars Two Years Away

Daily Republic: NEWS Index: "Milk Farm Partners wants to develop 30 acres of the 60-acre site off of Interstate 80 and Milk Farm Road - 30 acres for highway commercial use and 30 for agricultural activities, according to Milk Farm Associates' September 2002 report. Four highway commercial acres will be set aside for research and development.

The project includes restaurants, lodging and conference facilities, retail shops, a pond, and recreation and picnic areas. The agricultural part of the project will include seasonal and permanent amenities.

Paul Moller, the man spearheading this project, is a retired University of California, Davis, professor and founder of Moller International, a research and development company dedicated to inventing the first flying car. The research side of the proposed facility, if built as presently planned, will expand the building where Moller is currently working on Skycar and other transportation-related projects.

Milk Farm Partner LLP originally submitted a redevelopment proposal for the Milk Farm to the county, but withdrew it and made a formal application to the city of Dixon in June 2002. Since then, they have applied for an environmental review, sphere of influence amendment, general plan amendment, annexation and pre-zoning for 60 acres of land at the historic site at I-80 and Milk Farm Road. Annexation of the land is key, and will have to be approved by LAFCO.

'It would provide a gateway to the city that doesn't exist right now,' project manager Steve Peterson said. 'It would also provide jobs in the highway commercial and retail facilities there.' Peterson's company, Environmental Stewardship & Planning, represents Moller's interests in the project.

Now that the Dixon City Council authorized Baseline Environmental Consulting to begin the environmental review, the project is officially under way. The review will take about a year.

'At this point, we have quite a long ways to go,' Peterson said. 'Obviously, sooner would be better by us, but we'll see how it goes. We'll look forward to working with city and county to see if we can make it a reality.'"

jaynote: ok, so why the headline? Moller needs this facility to do flight testing of his flying car. Their site describes how they need to develop the lake over which the unteathered flights will happen. Since the environmental review will take a year, chances are we won't see it zipping around untill 2006.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

New York Post Online Edition

news : "December 29, 2003 -- WASHINGTON - Startling new Army statistics show that strife-torn Baghdad - considered the most dangerous city in the world - now has a lower murder rate than New York. The newest numbers, released by the Army's 1st Infantry Division, reveal that over the past three months, murders and other crimes in Baghdad are decreasing dramatically and that in the month of October, there were fewer murders per capita there than the Big Apple, Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. The Bush administration and outside experts are touting these new figures as a sign that, eight months after the fall of Saddam Hussein, major progress is starting to be made in the oft-criticized effort by the United States and coalition partners to restore order and rebuild Iraq. 'If these numbers are accurate, they show that the systems we put in place four months ago to develop a police force based on the principles of a free and democratic society are starting to
Forum: The fish that threatened national security : "At La Guardia we proceeded to security and the X-ray inspection point run by the Transportation Security Administration. I have learned by now that, post-9/11, a traveler is better off safe than sorry when proceeding through security. I wasn't prepared, however, for the TSA to stop me right at the entrance, proclaiming that no small pets, including fish, were permitted through security. I had, however, just received the blessing of the ticket agents at US Airways and pre-assured MJ's travels with Pittsburgh International Airport security weeks before our travel date. I tried to explain this to the screener who stood between me and the gates, but she would have none of it. I was led back to the US Airways ticket counter, stocking-footed and alone, where the agents reasserted that they did not see a problem for me to have a fish on board, properly packaged in plastic fish bag and secured with a rubber band as MJ was.