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Jetson One – Personal Electric Aerial Vehicle
- gorgoiler 5y agoVery cool, especially the demo video which eventually loaded. Something on their website smells a little whiffy and bovine though: ”[our mission] is to change the way we travel and make the skies available for everyone” Erm. Everyone? I don’t think so. Your mission is to give the 0.1% yet another way to be jerks, only this time with added noise!
- jefftk 5y agoLots of things start off as only for rich people, and get cheaper as the technology matures and scales up. Making something only rich people can afford can be part of the process of making something available for everyone. (In this case it costs $92k, so under 0.1% in rich countries)
- Tade0 5y ago> Your mission is to give the 0.1% yet another way to be jerks, only this time with added noise! Imagine having - instead of car-centric cities - personal-aircraft-centric cities.
- darepublic 5y agoI was thinking more long distance commute and moving away from city
- egypturnash 5y agoImagine a constant, loud drone of propellers. High pitched whines that rise and fall, mixing into a shrieking chorus when you get close to a major destination. Imagine cities built without any thought given to how people who don’t have their own aircar will get around. Roads can be used by foot or cycle traffic. Some places might be completely cut off from the outside world except for air traffic. Imagine buildings towering high into the sky, tiny aircraft vying for ways in and out of the landing bays that pepper the building’s sides like holes in a tree full of birds. Imagine a significant portion of these aircraft shrieking their way over your head are piloted by people who are badly trained, drunk, arrogant assholes, or otherwise uncaring of the rules of the road. Imagine some of these people have disabled the sophisticated collision-avoidance methods the law would surely require - maybe because it broke in their old aircar and they can’t afford to get it fixed/replaced, but can afford an illegal workaround; maybe because a business can get just enough profit to feel like it’s worth the risk and fines, maybe because they are bored teenagers playing chicken. Imagine two air cars crashing near their flight ceiling, right above a busy convergence of routes. Or above the tower you live in. Imagine aircars maintained to the standards of personal vehicles, rather than expensive airplanes. Imagine the equivalent of a rust-bucket with several dents, a fender held on by wire, and one wheel running on a spare. Imagine the shittiest thing you’ve seen on the freeway, translated to the air.
- mhb 5y agoLike cell phones!
- CryptoPunk 5y agoKnee-jerk ascription of new product classes to elitism isn't constructive. The iPhone, when first released in 2007, cost $500, or about $800 today after adjusting for inflation, but launched a smartphone industry that today produces devices that are affordable enough that 3 billion own one, including some that go for as little as $50 and have better performance than the original iPhone.
- gorgoiler 5y agoDude, it’s a helicopter.
- CryptoPunk 5y agoIt's a multicopter..
- cush 5y agoThese things have absolutely no viability unless they're quiet
- davidzweig 5y agoBudget version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SabzZ5UOC-c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SabzZ5UOC-c
- noduerme 5y agoAmazing. The next iteration should have jacuzzi jets.
- ricardobeat 5y agoIsn’t it crazy that Moller spent decades trying to get the basics of their flying car, only to give up inches from the finish line? Tech has evolved so fast in the past few years that a brand new vehicle like this can go from design to production in a few years, and anyone can build a rough working prototype in their backyard.
- 29athrowaway 5y agoMoller tried making an actual car-sized vehicle with 2 seats. The Jetson One produced a minimalistic 1 seat vehicle.
- leetcrew 5y agoyes, kudos to them for bringing it to market ($90k seems almost reasonable for this sort of contraption), but it's a much less ambitious vehicle. the aircar was supposed to cruise at 300 mph with an 800 mi range. this thing maxes out at 63 mph and has twenty minutes of flight time, so only about a 20 mile range. even if I were somehow allowed to do it, the jetson would barely make it from my house to my office.
- ricardobeat 5y agoConsidering the Skycar never flew above 10 meters high or ever achieved free flight, getting this less capable aircraft to commercial production is a significant achievement. The target specs on paper are meaningless.
- underwater 5y agoA classic case of "done is better than perfect".
- 29athrowaway 5y agoThe Jetson is an improvement over the status quo: no flying cars.
- ricardobeat 5y ago
- Animats 5y agoEHang has a vehicle like that.[1] There are a few other quadcopters big enough to carry a human. So far no real products, but some nice demos. [1] https://ehang.com/ https://ehang.com/
- akie 5y agoHave to say that EHang's version looks nicer and safer. They also have a two seater version. Same flight time (20 minutes).
- kumarvvr 5y agoWe have gained so much in terms of technological progress, consistently reducing the energy required to go from point A to point B, it surprises me how we are again increasing it for getting from point A to point B. The concept is great, but the push for mass market adoption bugs me. These things are not efficient modes of transport. It takes a lot of energy to move one person from A to B.
- aero-glide2 5y agoI don't want to just transport, i want to explore from high above.
- noduerme 5y agoI agree. No one ever said waverunners were a practical form of transportation, but they still sell millions of them. This does look like a really fun personal toy, though. I can easy imagine some rich dudes taking them for Endor-style races through the forest up here.
- anonporridge 5y agoLike a powered paraglider on steroids.
- tweedledee 5y agoThat would involve Endor-style crashes, it would be insanely dangerous. Flying FPV drones gives much of the same feeling without the all the death.
- anonporridge 5y agoYou can also take gondolas to the top of mountains, but people still climb them, putting themselves in unnecessary risk of death for the same views. There will always be some subset of people willing to do crazy dangerous things when similar safe alternates exist. And I for one am excited to see the race footage.
- 5y ago
- TheSpiceIsLife 5y agoIf this had a FPV / drone mode, looks like it'd be ideal to rescue those dogs on La Palma. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28920693 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28920693
- swatkat 5y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzhREYOK0oo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzhREYOK0oo
- auslegung 5y agoI swear I saw something like this in some kids magazine 30 years ago. It was supposedly powered by a vacuum motor. I now understand that can’t possibly work, but for many years I thought it could. I’d love it if someone else knew what I’m talking about and could send me a link to the magazine article. I assume it wasn’t trying to be a joke, this was a relatively serious kids magazine, but maybe I’ve been wrong.
- jawns 5y agoIt was a regular advertisement in the 1980s and 1990s in Boys' Life magazine, published by the Boy Scouts of America. Picture of the ad: https://www.reddit.com/r/nostalgia/comments/7jrpbu/this_hover_craft_from_the_back_of_boys_life/ https://www.reddit.com/r/nostalgia/comments/7jrpbu/this_hove...
- iamthepieman 5y agoI still have the old plans to build one of these that I ordered from an advertisement in boys life when I was 12.
- gardenfelder 5y agoThat doesn't "fly" in the sense of climbing above a thin layer of air created by blowing air into a chamber under you. The picture in the ad hints that 3 1-foot diameter pads would provide sufficient "lift"; seems unlikely. Depends on how much pressure the source can provide but you need to lift not just the rider but the vehicle on just a few psi pressure. That class of vehicle is known as a hovercraft: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hovercraft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hovercraft
- FunnyLookinHat 5y agoI built one of these with my dad (the version with only a single skirt) in the sixth grade - it was awesome! Unfortunately, the skirt we created wasn't quite even around and couldn't hold enough pressure for me to ride it, but that didn't stop my younger sister from riding. Building this started a several years long obsession with hovercrafts. Multiple science fair projects, digging on the internet, etc. My family ended up taking a trip to Europe and I was able to ride across the channel from Calais to Dover on a giant hovercraft. Literally a dream come true at the time. Too bad I was also 14 and super embarrassed by my parents' attempts to take pictures, etc. ;-)
- nine_k 5y agoI wonder why the rotors are positioned so low. Should a propeller get fractured, the splinters would hit the pilot's chest and neck. OTOH putting the propellers above would change the shape and thus the aesthetics seriously.
- StanislavPetrov 5y agoThe giant balls of whoever flies one of the things would shield the head and neck area.
- namibj 5y agoAt least small planes in europe (CS-23) aren't allowed to have humans within an (iirc ~15 degree) cone of them. This approach here seems to be done with no regards to such regulatory (and well-meant) requirements.
- gambiting 5y agoSweden is very much "in Europe" and according to the company it's legal to fly it there.
- namibj 5y ago1) This is a powered lift craft, not a plane, so it doesn't even fall under CS-23. 2) There are classes where you're allowed less in exchange for easier certification. If the craft isn't operated commercially and doesn't need to leave national airspace, certification is typically far easier (at least for anything not heavier than a medium SUV).
- Spionbil 5y agoFrom Unwind's Teknikens Värld link it seems to be mostly a technicality. >Peter Ternström betonar att det egentligen är lagligt i Sverige också, eller snarare att det inte är olagligt, eftersom farkosten inte ingår i en klassificering. Peter Ternström points out that it's actually legal in Sweden as well, or rather that it's not illegal, because the craft isn't part of any class rating. Where the preceeding talks why they chose to sell to the US market first.
- Mengkudulangsat 5y agoLooks hella fun! Imagine the noise though, you'll get tinnitus riding that thing all day.
- exhilaration 5y agoDid you see the "20 minute flight time"? Your ears will get plenty of rest waiting for it to recharge.
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y agoAlmost looks like a ground-effect vehicle. Doesn’t go too high; which may not really be an issue. Just high enough, so tarmac isn’t necessary. I seem to recall a discussion on HN, where it was explained that quadcopters don’t scale up too well. I don’t remember the reasoning. The one thing that concerns me about commodity-level flying vehicles, is the way people drive the ones that are stuck on the ground. I would want autonomous vehicles to be devloped and refined, before flying ones.
- adamweld 5y agoQuadcopters scale up fine, in fact as other commenters have mentioned they get more efficient as they get larger. However, quadcopters are mainly useful because they are simple and cheap. Once you add the amount of redundancy necessary to safely carry a human (I am not convinced they have hit that bar here) it's no longer cheap, and it makes sense to spend a bit more on a helicopter, which is much more efficient.
- syntaxing 5y agoBecause smaller prop means you need to spin faster to hit the same airflow. And efficiency usually drops by x^2 as a function of rotation velocity. Also, at high speed you have vacuum issues near the tip of the blade. Therefore, having four small rotors can easily be up to a magnitude less efficient than a helicopter.
- dtgriscom 5y agoThe comment was "quadcopters don’t scale up too well"; you're explaining the reverse.
- tweedledee 5y agoThey are explaining how quadcopters don't scale very well. You may be misunderstanding the explanation. The surface area covered by the rotor is much less for quadcopters and it is difficult to make up for that. Plus small rotors are less efficient. One upside for quadcopters is simplicity but that advantage diminishes with scale.
- syntaxing 5y agoI never understood why startups are so infatuated with quadcopter designs. Just design a small electric gyro-copter and you'll get 10X range and half the complexity.
- omginternets 5y agoDoesn’t that require a runway?
- tweedledee 5y agoSome gyros can jump-start, as in pre-spin their rotor fast enough for vertical take off. It would add a bit of complexity but it'll still be relatively simple.
- mrfusion 5y agoWouldn’t that make the body spin in the opposite direction?
- Toutouxc 5y agoNo, because the pre-spinning (torque applied to rotor) part happens on the ground with the rotor blades set to low/no pitch. The rotor then starts freewheeling (no torque applied or transferred from the rotor) and the blades' pitch angle is increased, which slows the rotor down, but momentarily creates enough lift to lift the autogyro into the air, where it immediately transitions to forward flight.
- mrfusion 5y agoWow neat approach. I’m always surprised auto gyros aren’t more popular. They seem so versatile.
- Toutouxc 5y agoThey also have some extremely dangerous flight characteristics.[0] To be fair, helicopters are even worse, but they require extensive training and are known to be dangerous. [0] https://youtu.be/CfjBzrSDrV0 https://youtu.be/CfjBzrSDrV0
- voldacar 5y agoI was about to leave a snarky "glide ratio = 0" comment until I saw the note about the ballistic parachute. Wish they included the effective altitude though. I assume it would be effective from a lower altitude than the Cirrus, as this thing weighs only ~400 lbs with a human in it.
- edrxty 5y agoThe official number is 400ft but I've heard anecdotes that there have been successful deployments lower. That said, I see this being operated in the "dead mans curve", ie well below any effective height, for a significant portion of it's flight
- pininja 5y agoThere are also enough false deployments that caused harm with these parachutes (edit: instances where pilots didn’t deploy when they should have) that the jury is out on how much of an improvement these are to safety, overall. Operator skill and training is a big factor and this product isn’t targeted at highly trained pilots.
- edrxty 5y agoI haven't heard of any deaths as a result but I'm sure there are a few. Usually it's just a hull loss. That said, this looks like another Icon A5 situation...
- pininja 5y agoI don’t have great sources, so take my claim with a grain of salt. But overall this analysis of Cirrus incidents over 25 years [0] was interesting to read. In response to fatalities and pilots choosing not to use the parachute when that could have saved lives, Cirrus improved training and saw significant safety record improvements. > By then, Cirrus had already upgraded its training twice, eventually pulling it entirely in-house. All new-aircraft buyers take it. They also have training for the used market, and saw owners that didn’t do it often had worse safety records. Since a Cirrus has a wing, the parachute is primarily a super last resort.. the passenger safety training I took even said it’s mainly to be used if the pilot passes out and a passenger engages it. The jetson doesn’t have a wing, so I’m happy they have this parachute. I hope they can offer great training too. [0] https://www.aviationconsumer.com/safety/cirrus-at-25-a-safer-airplane/ https://www.aviationconsumer.com/safety/cirrus-at-25-a-safer...
- sydthrowaway 5y ago20 minute flight time? Useless.
- dtgriscom 5y agoTop speed of 60MPH; let's halve that for a safety margin, which gives a range of ten miles. There's around thirty towns and cities that close to my home. Reaching any of thirty towns in ten minutes would be far from useless.
- JKCalhoun 5y agoParamotor?
- mhh__ 5y agoIf you were a rich person living in (say) a village in the UK 20 minutes is easily enough to fly to the pub, charge it a bit, and fly back. As a non-rich person it'd be useless to me even if I could afford it (I live near other humans) but I can absolute imagine some people I have met buying one.
- systemvoltage 5y agoHow noisy is it going to be?
- 908087 5y agoIncredibly.
- ramesh31 5y agoDoesn't matter until there's a breakthrough with battery energy density. Any electric VTOL aircraft capable of carrying humans is limited to less than 50 miles range.
- mrfusion 5y agoIt could certainly be useful as a recreational vehicle though.
- squarefoot 5y agoOr as the cool gimmick in the next James Bond movie, complete with sponsorship, so that it could attract interest and fuel the development of better aircraft in the future.
- anonu 5y agoHaven't these been around in China for 5+ years? I'm also a bit skeptical about the 1 item per month build rate... that seems a bit slow to me. Then again, I'm just the armchair critic here...
- ramesh31 5y agoThere's a whole crop of aerospace startups now wasting their time on electric airframes that are 10-20 years ahead of their time in terms of battery capability. It's a classic case of solving the easy problem first. Airframes are trivial. Getting battery energy density to a place that it becomes useful for personal aircraft is not. Yet that is the singular enabling technology to make this stuff a reality.
- notatoad 5y ago> Start and Land anywhere you want. Make your garden or terrace your private airport I assume this is wildly illegal in most jurisdictions?
- TylerE 5y agoNot especially. No different than a helicopter. Hell, plenty of farmers that have a Piper Cub or similar and operate off their acreage.
- dragonwriter 5y agoIn the US, you can fly most places and land most places (with permission of the owner) with helicopters, with only general (e.g., must pose no hazard to people and property) rules instead of specific restrictions (outside of controls to keep them out of, e.g., airplane traffic patterns around airports.) But I can see something like this being available in numbers being the catalyst for that changing fast...
- ramanujank 5y agoThis is an amazing outcome! Three cheers to the founders and the team working on this project/company. As with most tech, it does seem like a Pandora's Box in terms of outcomes. Especially regulatory/safety issues. I come from India, where median folks have a complete and utter disregard for traffic rules and safety regulations. I can't begin to think how we would adopt a technology like this. I mean, how would we start, how would traffic merge? Can we restrict/regulate the flow of vehicles in thin air? The fact that this is a tech+social problem interests me even more.
- King-Aaron 5y agoLooks like a fantastic way to give bystanders a very efficient haircut
- mortenjorck 5y agoFrom the video, it looks like this craft is limited to about 10 feet in altitude (certainly as high as I’d want to go, but I imagine their primary market at first is going to be thrill-seekers). And yet that’s really all you need for a lot of point-to-point transport, especially in rural areas (which I also imagine will be the only legal places to fly these for the foreseeable future).
- aero-glide2 5y agoI'm not sure that is accurate, why would they include a parachute?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- rob74 5y agoA thing with what amounts to buzzsaws conveniently mounted at its extremities, flying at 10 ft. (3 m) max altitude? Can't imagine anything going wrong with that...
- teeray 5y agoYou want to be higher. Altitude gives you more time in an emergency (like waiting for that chute to deploy). Once you’re above the altitude that will kill you on impact, more altitude won’t make you more dead. Also, wires are at low altitude, and are responsible for many rotorcraft accidents. The real limitations come from Part 103, which limits ultralights to uncontrolled airspace (Class G). These aircraft will be limited to 1200 ft. AGL in most of the country, and 700 ft. AGL near many airports and their associated approaches.
- SideburnsOfDoom 5y agoIt does not appear to be limited by the Wing-in-ground effect. This effect apparently tops out at approximately half the vehicle's wingspan; and they are above that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_effect_(aerodynamics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_effect_(aerodynamics)
- satisfice 5y agoMaximum pilot weight of 210lbs? I suppose if I were rich enough to buy this I could also get myself a personal trainer.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- fastball 5y agoWell at 210 lbs you're either tall enough that you probably won't fit in this thing lengthwise or you are in fact overweight and losing a few lbs wouldn't hurt.
- nhumrich 5y agoYou might want to meet some football players/wrestlers/gymnasts etc before you tell someone to lose some pounds, just based on weight alone
- gibbonsrcool 5y agoWhat are the odds that someone posting on this site falls into those categories?
- mattlondon 5y agoMore common than you might expect! You do not need to be a professional sports person - keen hobbyists exist and there is definitely a group here that are into power lifting.
- hackflip 5y agoI am an avid powerlifter and used to compete in submission grappling. Now I write TypeScript code.
- abeppu 5y agoFootball players, sure, and a bunch of other kinds of athletes ... But aren't gymnasts typically relatively light?
- toomanybeersies 5y agoReminds me a lot of the Martin Jetpack, which received tonnes of media hype when it was first unveiled at Oshkosh 2008, and despite being "almost ready" for the next decade, nothing was ever built and the company went bust. Incidentally, the remaining assets (including intellectual property) were just put up for auction a few days ago [1]. The market for what's essentially an aerial jetski has always been small, and now due to the drone renaissance it's basically non-existent. [1] https://www.skylarc.co.nz/tenders/martin-jetpack/ https://www.skylarc.co.nz/tenders/martin-jetpack/
- zephyr9 5y agoI guess if you really want to know how you'll die.
- rexf 5y ago> A complete vehicle is 92 000 USD and is delivered to you as a partially (50%) assembled kit for home completion. It contains everything you need, from the aluminium space frame to motor controllers, propellers and motors. You will also receive detailed build instructions. Seems odd to not deliver a fully assembled aircraft. Is there any regulatory reason? If cost is an issue, they could probably charge extra (such as $110K total) and deliver it fully assembled.
- Hamuko 5y agoEasier shipping?
- skykooler 5y agoIf it's less than 51% assembled by the manufacturer it's classified as "home built" and the manufacturer assumes no liability in the event of a crash.
- rajup 5y agoWow very interesting. Curious if you have any source?
- Tuxer 5y agoThats not exactly right. It’s simply that you cannot sell something built >51% by the factory under experimental rules, you’d need to have it FAA certified which this isn’t ( for thousands of reasons ). The 51% rule is extremely common in experimental aviation.
- edrxty 5y agoCan confirm [1], am building an aircraft in my garage. It's the only segment of general aviation that's growing as it does away with a lot of the arduous approval process for inconsequential modifications/maintenance. I don't mean this is some sort of libertarian crypto-utopia, the FAA has just lumped general aviation in with commercial operations where the passengers expect to have an absolute guarantee of an uneventful trip whereas GA is similar to driving your car. Realistically safety ranges from slightly better than car to slightly better than a motorcycle depending on how you work the numbers but it's important to note that mechanical issues are extremely rare in GA accidents, much like the auto world, it's almost entirely operator error. The FAA is, as a result, regulating GA aircraft into extinction as certifying new airframes is an absolute financial impossibility due to overhead costs. Even if the new craft are safer than the existing fleet they're prevented from entering service and it's causing a lot of issues. [1] https://www.eaa.org/eaa/aircraft-building/builderresources/getting-started/selection-articles/faa-51-rule https://www.eaa.org/eaa/aircraft-building/builderresources/g...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- RachelF 5y agoI guess when the pilot falls out they will be called "The Jetisoned One" ;-)
- pininja 5y agoWith a 20 minute flight time (and is that with any safety margin remaining? Doesn’t say.) at ~60mph I can only make a 10 mile round trip. 20 miles of each landing spot has a charger (and I doubt there’s weight budget to carry a decent charger with me). It’s a very cool kit for hobbyists but there are very few missions this can fly with utility.
- mattlondon 5y agoI don't know - 10 miles across impassable terrain sounds pretty good if the alternative is a 60 miles detour driving around a fjord or Forrest or something. Still I don't think this is designed for "utility" - seems to me it is more for the fun of it.
- SergeAx 5y agoI personally wouldn't want to fly over impassable terrain with vehicle this short range. Anything happens - and I have to call for helicopter rescue team, opposed to just land anywhere more or less flat and call for tow truck.
- pininja 5y agoTotally agree it’d be great in those situations, but I just don’t think there are a lot of people who need that. It’s probably a lot of fun to fly. It’s just stressful to think if something isn’t going right in flight and I want time to think and react.. every minute is 5% of my battery. I also saw in another post that fully loaded the battery life is 12 minutes total.. nearly 10% a minute brand new (which every charge cycle reducing my total energy). They also said the batteries are swappable, so if I had 3 in a rotation they could all be charging/flying with up to an hour of flight. Sounds like a fun day!
- blobbers 5y agoReally impressed a swedish company has gone and done this. We asked for the flying car, YC has not given it to us.
- nikitaga 5y agoIf you're interested in the components, looks like both motors and propellers are from https://www.mad-motor.com https://www.mad-motor.com It's quite hard to find high quality electric drive components in this size – too big for drones, too small for full scale airplanes. https://store.tmotor.com/ https://store.tmotor.com/ is another alternative.
- fragmede 5y agoWhere do Tesla's motors fit in on that scale? They don't (afaik) wholesale them, but used drive units are purchasable.
- y4mi 5y agoNot in the same market, so it's too heavy. It could handle the required rpm to create lift/takeoff (up to 18k according to their marketing material, it would probably overheat if you had that kind of rpm for an extended period of time though), but you'd probably need a cable to an energy source.
- yread 5y agoIt seems that an electric hovercraft like this one https://www.hoverstream.com/hovercraft/marlin-xl/ https://www.hoverstream.com/hovercraft/marlin-xl/ would be a lot more viable - easier to drive, more efficient, 2/3 seats instead of 1
- unwind 5y agoI found this [1] article when I started googling the people in the company, I thought this quite from their CTO Tomasz Patan was fun: Vi vill inte att folk ska köpa vår produkt och krascha den direkt, så vi har sålt till välkända personer främst i USA som skulle få för mycket skit om de gjorde dumheter med den which translates to (note: native Swedish speaker, but not a certified translator): We don't want people to buy our product and crash it straight away, so we have been selling to famous people mostly in the US, who would get too much crap if they fooled around with it" I enjoyed the directness of that statement. :) Also learned from the same article: - The maximum cargo weight including pilot is 100 kg, if you actually reach that then flying time is reduced to 12 minutes. - The battery pack is charged externally, i.e. not in the vehicle, so you can have spares and swap. - No mention of the battery pack's weight, but I guess you would have to be quite a bit below those 100 kg in order to have room for another battery. - New owners get a 2-day course (not a "crash course", I guess :) at Jetson before being allowed to take their new vehicle home. EDIT: Fixed italics for translated quote. [1]: https://teknikensvarld.se/nyheter/miljo-och-teknik/jetson-one-flygande-farkost-for-formogna/ https://teknikensvarld.se/nyheter/miljo-och-teknik/jetson-on...
- fho 5y agoI saw that video some days ago and thought "that would be a nifty way to get to work and back" ... 12 minutes flight time would actually allow that for me ... but not for a lot of others.
- t0mas88 5y ago12 minutes endurance is absolute madness to any pilot. No way to fly this thing within the current regulations. A fuel powered aircraft needs to land with a legal minimum fuel reserve of 30 minutes when flying visually (good weather only), in worse weather it's 45 minutes + the time it takes to get to an alternate airport in case of problems at the destination. So usually 1 to 1.5 hour of reserve/alternate fuel on top of the time needed for the flight itself.
- hef19898 5y ago
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- sdan 5y agoYou guys have more of a product than most 1b+ SPACs Time to go public haha
- JoelJacobson 5y agoAnother Personal Electric Aerial Vehicle which looks promising: https://www.volocopter.com/solutions/volocity/ https://www.volocopter.com/solutions/volocity/
- yborg 5y agoDon't think I'd drop $90k based on a spec sheet like that. I assume all this is at sea level? What if I live in Denver?
- Jnr 5y agoLacks the safety features of airplanes (gliding) or helicopters (autorotation), has terrible rotor placement and small air time. I would advertise it as "your personal death machine". :) No amount of money would make me use that thing. EDIT: Ok, sorry, it says it has a parachute, but I still would not use it.
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y agoParachutes have a minimum altitude. For standard human chutes, that’s 300 feet (100 meters) or so. Not sure what the ceiling is on this. They don’t have footage of it going too high. You only need to fall 30 feet (10 m), to buy the farm. Less, in many cases (depending on how you fall, and onto what).
- KineticLensman 5y agoYes. This is why paragliding from hills is more dangerous than regular parachuting from a plane. Your paraglider canopy can collapse due to bad wind or unexpected updrafts at say 40 feet from the ground and you slam into the ground before it recovers. In contrast, when a parachute malfunctions on a freefall deployment, you are often higher than 2000ft, and there is plenty of time to deploy a reserve, fix twisted lines, etc.
- cannabis_sam 5y agoBeyond the risk level of ground take-off paragliding (and related activities), you have (in my subjective order of least to most risk) wingsuit fliers, base jumpers and then you of course have base jumping wingsuit fliers.. Yet, people still do it..
- nikitaga 5y agoWhat are you comparing, deaths per flight, per flight hour, per participant per year? Do you distinguish tourists, hobbyists, and competitors? What about injuries? Credible and reliable data for such comparisons does not exist, unfortunately. Paragliders who aren't idiots don't spend much time at 40ft AGL in weather conditions that can cause a collapse. And not every low altitude collapse is fatal. Spine compression injury is more likely, and they wear padding on their butt to minimize that (some even have airbags). For better or worse, the main predictive risk factor in paragliding is personal attitude, and I suspect it's the same in parachuting.
- Aeolun 5y agoGonna have a hell of a time convincing my office to let me land one of these on the roof…
- hiccuphippo 5y agoCan it be controlled remotely? A drone capable of moving 90kg of cargo ought to be useful to somebody, maybe Spanish drug smugglers[0] ;) [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27904396 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27904396
- yholio 5y agoIt's a nice toy, but the problems of personal aerial vehicles were not about electric motors vs ICE: - Massive amount of sound pollution, current crop won't be allowed near cities in significant numbers; that's why the presentation videos are always silent. - Exceptionally energy inefficient and limited speed, due to the way lift is achieved; it makes zero sense to spend 10 times the energy to travel at speeds comparable with what can achieved on the ground with the right infrastructure. - Very limited safety guarantees, can't be safely used by an untrained pilot, typically can't be flow at all over populated areas etc. Maybe they could reach for a market that can tolerate these drawbacks, ex. air ambulances, and build on that.
- paul_f 5y agoYou nailed it. They never seem to mention how load these things are. The use case is more of a dune buggy or jet ski. An expensive toy.
- BurningFrog 5y agoAn air ambulance that flies above roads is actually a real good idea!
- yholio 5y agoAirbulances are definitely a killer app. The loud noise is a feature, it makes people look up and make room for landing. A 0.005% chance of crashing on its built in airbags, and possibly damaging property or squishing somebody, while completely unacceptable for a personal recreation vehicle, would be ok for a device that can save a life every few flights. You can also find suitable infrastructure - helipads - on many urban hospitals. Forget electric, it needs the highest density fuel system to allow at least an hour of flight, maybe a LPG fuel cell, or a piston engine geared with electromagnetic power couplers to the propellers for very rapid dynamic response. A two person craft, lifting maybe 250Kg overall to allow for medical gear, the medic operates during liftoff/landing then autopilot takes you to predefined hospitals on predefined flight paths that are known to be safe. This should be a thing already.
- 5y ago
- api 5y agoBefore I left California I actually looked into personal transport, only half ironically. The real estate costs are so nuts it would be cheaper to get a house inland across the mountains (Southern California) and buy a personal aircraft to commute. Telecommuting is better.
- mrfusion 5y agoThey should add on crush core legs to handle falls lower than parachutable.
- freediver 5y agoFeels like going back full circle to 1903 and using a propeller to fly :) I am incredibly excited about the prospect of small flying machines. I also can not imagine that propellers will be where this ends although there are limitations with using electric energy. There are quite a few concepts flying around these days: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sUqJ9bId70 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sUqJ9bId70
- dougSF70 5y agoA complete vehicle is 92 000 USD and is delivered to you as a partially (50%) assembled kit for home completion...
- S_A_P 5y agoI am 6'3" tall and have the body of a programmer who also lifts weights. That means Ive got some body fat and some muscle mass and I weigh too much for this vehicle. Im not obese though. 210 lbs max weight is going to cut out a large percentage of the folks who could afford one- Athletes. I get this is Rev 1, but there isnt much flight time here and you have to be a small to medium sized person to fly it.
- ladyattis 5y agoIf you're rich enough for this vehicle, it might be better to rent or buy a single engine plane instead. Yes, you gotta get a license but honestly after you get past the basics you'll probably fly better than Harrison Ford with little issue. I assume the real costs are going to be the hanger rental, insurance, and maintenance.
- tw04 5y agoI think you'd have a far better chance of walking away from a failed engine in that plane too. Assuming it's something like a Cessna you've at least got a reasonable chance of landing it. There's a reason the racecar frames that "inspired" this thing are made of steel and not aluminum. While this looks sturdy to a layman, I'd imagine this thing would crumple to nothing on impact. Love to see a crash test and be proven wrong though.
- purpleflame1257 5y agoHarrison Ford is in fact a very skilled pilot in real life. https://snowbrains.com/fun-fact-harrison-ford-is-a-teton-county-wy-volunteer-search-and-rescue-helicopter-pilot-and-has-saved-lives-in-real-life/ https://snowbrains.com/fun-fact-harrison-ford-is-a-teton-cou...
- BurningFrog 5y agoThis thing can be flown from lawn to lawn. Very different from what a plane is good for.
- kelvin0 5y agoSo, the drone footage used to capture this video makes me wonder: - Is the camera drone VERY fast? - Or is the Jetson slow? - Is this realtime footage or accelerated somehow?
- spookthesunset 5y agoThe answer for FPV footage is almost always that it is real time. FPV camera drones can go upwards of 100mph. In the hands of a skilled pilot they are incredibly agile. They are also almost entirely built by the pilot. The entire FPV scene is a pretty cool hobby to get into.
- nradov 5y agoHere's a direct link to the flight demo video. Looks like fun but it only reaches a maximum altitude of about 4 m. Basically it's operating more like a hovercraft than an aircraft. https://youtu.be/FzhREYOK0oo https://youtu.be/FzhREYOK0oo
- blablablub 5y agoFor the plebs among us https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQK9m_OBVgY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQK9m_OBVgY