And you thought a cab at the touch of a button was magical!

Uber is making moves to expand the scope of its flying car experiment - the company just hired NASA engineer Mark Moore. Uber has articulated its vision for "on-demand aviation" as networks of small vehicles that can take off and land vertically, are powered by electric sources, and have ranges of between 50 and 100 miles on a single charge. The ultimate goal is to have these operate autonomously, summoned via an app on a passenger's phone, but in the near-term Moore tells Bloomberg that we'll probably see a bunch of competing designs hit the field that operate well but with human pilots for now. VTOL are a pursuit of other companies, too, including two startup funded by Google's Larry Page, and commercial aviation giant Airbus, which is exploring similar territory to Uber with its own Vahana project. More here.