A helicopter that looks like a car, can take off straight up and climb to 12,000 feet after rescuing soldiers trapped behind enemy lines or plucking people from a burning building? No way.

Rafi Yoeli says he has a way and it’s named the X-Hawk. His prototype can rise about three feet in the air now, but he hopes to see a marketable version of his flying car by 2010.

Think of the people trapped in the World Trade Center. Think of ground patrols in Iraq blown up by roadside bombs. Think of New Orleans residents stranded on rooftops after Hurricane Katrina. Think of urban environments.

“The reality is that we have not been designing helicopters to operate in urban environments,” said M.E. Rhett Flater, executive director of the American Helicopter Society, a professional group.

Although his dream might seem more science fiction that reality, Textron Inc.’s Bell Helicopters is taking a serious look, teaming with Yoeli’s privately held Urban Aeronautics to explore X-Hawk’s potential.

X-Hawk and its smaller version, Mule, might one day offer the same capabilities as helicopters, but without the serious operating limitations — like exposed rotors — that helicopters face in urban terrain.

“What Rafi is doing is addressing that need to design some kind of vehicle that can operate in an urban environment, that can get close to buildings and skyscrapers, and provide some type of relief for people stranded in buildings.”

X-Hawk — for now just a full-size mold in Urban Aeronautics’ headquarters in the central Israeli town of Yavne — looks like a futuristic space car, with its streamlined design, two fans rising from the rear and cockpit-style driver’s seat.

Like a similarly sized helicopter, X-Hawk will be able to take off vertically, fly up to 155 miles an hour and as high as 12,000 feet and remain aloft about two hours, Urban Aeronautics says.

Encased fans will replace the exposed rotors that keep helicopters from maneuvering effectively in urban areas or dense natural terrain because they have to stay clear of walls, power lines and mountain ridges. And a patented system of vanes is designed to afford the vehicle greater stability. Urban Aeronautics says vehicles will be able to sidle right up to a building.

The X-Hawk also will be quieter, offering a stealth advantage over helicopters, said Janina Frankel-Yoeli, the company’s vice president for marketing.

But because the rotor diameter is smaller, the new vehicle will use about 50 percent more fuel.

Yoeli started working on the precursor to X-Hawk and Mule in 2000, but Flater said the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks have “given vertical takeoff and landing vehicles a new priority.”

“The military is learning that they have to fight wars in cities again,” he said. “So we’re looking at unmanned aerial vehicles that can provide reconnaissance. Obviously the next step would be to look for vehicles … that can provide actual relief in urban areas.”

Yoeli expects an unmanned Mule prototype to be flying in two or three years and in production within five. He projects a manned X-Hawk will first hover in 2009 and hit the market within eight years. He hopes ultimately to sell 250 to 300 machines annually, out of up to 2,000 helicopters sold worldwide.

(新华网)