The popular ride-hailing service Uber hired NASA advanced aircraft engineer Mark Moore to work on Uber Elevate, the company’s new flying car initiative. 

Moore will be the company’s director of engineering for aviation and help with its vertical take-off and landing technology (VTOL).

“Just as skyscrapers allowed cities to use limited land more efficiently, urban air transportation will use three-dimensional airspace to alleviate transportation congestion on the ground.”

“Just as skyscrapers allowed cities to use limited land more efficiently, urban air transportation will use three-dimensional airspace to alleviate transportation congestion on the ground,” Uber wrote in its white paper. “A network of small, electric aircraft that take off and land vertically, will enable rapid, reliable transportation between suburbs and cities and, ultimately, within cities.” 

A 30-year veteran of NASA, Moore basically kickstarted the current interest in vertical take-off and landing craft for short-haul urban flight with a 2010 paper on the feasibility of the helicopter-like vehicles, Techcrunch reported. He also consulted with Uber on its own white paper, published last October. 

“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 told Bloomberg.

Uber admits its interest in developing helicopter-type vehicles could take many years.

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