The Fairey Rotodyne, the vertical takeoff and landing airliner time forgot
If things had gone a little differently, the Rotodyne could have been a more convenient way to short haul air travel than the regional jets we now use. [credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images ]
The phrase "Urban Air Mobility" (UAM) seems like it's been with us for quite a while, but really it's only been in widespread use for two or three years. NASA officially recognized UAM in 2017, calling for a market study of remotely piloted or unmanned air passenger and cargo transportation around an urban area. Most people would probably call this the "air taxi" idea-a vision of hundreds of small, unmanned electric multi-copters shuttling two or three passengers from nearby suburbs or city spaces to vertiports at about 100 mph (roughly 161 km/h).
But if things had worked out differently in the late 1950s and early 1960s, we might have a very different understanding of UAM-something more like mass-transit. We might have had a city-center to city-center 55-passenger vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) airliner shuttling between urban heliports at 180 mph (289 km/h).
Actually, we did have that, it's just few people remember. It was called the Fairey Rotodyne.
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