I clicked because "collect threatened plants" sounds like a humorously ironic undertaking, but wow, I was not at all prepared to be this impressed. I've been be

I clicked because "collect threatened plants" sounds like a humorously ironic undertaking, but wow, I was not at all prepared to be this impressed. I've been behind the times! This company promotes it pretty convincingly ('the cheapest form of powered flight', 'fair weather aircraft', 'backpack sized'): https://parajet.com/us/new-pilots/what-is-paramotoring/ https://parajet.com/us/new-pilots/what-is-paramotoring/ And has this seemingly on-point guidance: Yes! Do not believe anyone who tells you that you do not need paramotor training, or only just a couple of days. Paramotoring, like any extreme sport, has its inherent risks and can easily lead to injury or death if used incorrectly. To learn to fly a paramotor we believe that there are no shortcuts. Proper training and responsible flying is imperative. It isn’t as easy as guys like Tucker Gott and Anthony Vella make it look on YouTube. If you decide to do this sport – get training from a reputable paramotor school, follow the rules, and don’t blow it for everyone else. These scientists used them to travel up to 28km and cite a max range of 300km, which is just incredible. They cite an archaeologist from 2005 as pioneering it for scientific usage, but they were just doing aerial photographs, a usecase that has obviously been completely overtaken by drones. Overall I'm trying to think how the tech might improve to mitigate the discussed safety concerns -- they couldn't fly during the day because of wind speed, they had to plan extensively for potential crashes, they couldn't do tandem flights, and AFAICT only people who do Paramotoring as a hobby/profession were actually in the air for this study. Could some amount of computer-assistance help make all this a little more predictable...? The best part, by far, is this little nugget of an idea they didn't try, hidden in a table halfway down: Inflight sampling (using a scoop attached to the foot of the pilot) Now that would be a compelling paper! Thanks for sharing, OP. Will live rent-free in my mind for a while, I have no doubt about it. Oh, and for the curious about my initial sentence: they were just surveying plants via taking samples and setting up static sensors, not trying to, like, propagate endangered plants to safety.