hmmm - but will it make private flight easier? That's what I'd like - easy private flight, with enough safety features involved that Amber would be willing to get into it with me. Personally, I'm thinking that personal dirigibles would be a good idea. It shouldn't take that much helium to lift a basic craft, propulsion could be handled by solar cells and electric motors, steering should be simply cable and pulley (I'd suggest this rather than servo motors because I'd like all available power to go to motors and steering should be easy with plain mechanical advantage).

Upsides - if the motors fail, just slowly deflate the helium and come down somewhere safe - you could even add pedal power backups to give minimal propulsion. As for flight speed, you'd likely be going slow enough as to not hit anything and go catastrophic. also, noise pollution would be minimal, as would any environmental impact.

downsides - slow is the problem.

further research brought me to this site which goes through some of the calculations necessary to make this a reality. Unfortunately, it does look a bit less feasible than originally planned. In order to lift ~1000lbs, I'd need an envelope that was 160'x10'x10', which is a bit big.

make a hybrid aircraft ,fan wing joined to blimp

make a hybrid aircraft ,fan wing joined to blimp

make a hybrid aircraft ,fan wing joined to blimp