Conceptual Design of a Starcar

This is the second report about a new program on personal aviation at The University of Arizona. The motive for the program is a belief that advanced information technologies like the Global Positioning System (GPS) have made possible a personal aviation system on a scale last imagined fifty years ago. Research on differential GPS for precision navigation is described briefly, but the report is mainly about design concepts for a Starcar, a transformer vehicle that functions as an automobile or airplane. A Starcar is a composition of three components: passenger module, road module, and sky module. The passenger and road module together make an automobile, and the passenger and sky module are an airplane. Because the road module does not fly, a Starcar in flight proves to be nearly as efficient as the best of modern kit airplanes.