Uber Hires Former NASA Engineer to Help With Creation of Autonomous Flying Vehicles
Uber has hired Mark Moore, a former advanced aircraft engineer at NASA's Langley Research Center, to help the ride-hailing company in its goal to develop autonomous, flying vehicles.
Moore, who was with NASA for 30 years, will serve as the director of engineering for aviation at Uber Elevate.
“I can’t think of another company in a stronger position to be the leader for this new ecosystem and make the urban electric VTOL market real,” Moore says via Bloomberg.
Back in 2010, Moore published a white paper on the feasibility of vehicles with vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) capabilities. Six years later, Uber published its own white paper on the subject, culminating with the creation of the Uber Elevate initiative.
In Uber’s white paper, which Moore consulted on, the company spoke about its desire to not only develop these vehicles, but also to help the industry solve certain key issues surrounding this technology, including noise pollution, vehicle efficiency and limited battery life.
With this in mind, Uber Elevate will work towards creating flying cars that can take off from ‘vertiports’ throughout a city. Operating in ranges between 50-100 miles, the vehicles would transport commuters from their city offices to their homes.
While it might be a while before these vehicles are fully autonomous, Moore believes that well-engineered flying cars could be a reality in the next one to three years, with human pilots onboard to manage onboard computers for the foreseeable future.
