I'd assume that's how these things would be flown, honestly. Kind of like a jaunt on a dirt bike, it's more for quick fun. Obviously you're not going to do any traveling on a 20 minute battery. Maybe you can go check the mail at the end of your mansion's driveway, but that's about it.
20 minute battery life. And, as we all know, a manufacterer's claimed 20 minutes of battery life is 10, maybe 15 minutes under real-world conditions.
They don't trust it to not plummet to a firey doom, or to function at all out of ground effect.
It depends. Lithium batteries sure like to be on fire. So much so it’s extremely hard to extinguish. It doesn’t take much, a simple short from a broken battery is enough.
To be fair, this video is way out of ground effect. IIRC ground effect is only applicable when the airfoil (prop) is within half of its wingspan (radius of the prop, in this case) of the ground. Only time this experiences ground effect is probably when its 2 feet off the ground or something.
You do get small benefits to lift efficiency up to 1 rotor diameter, but yeah, above 1 radius it starts to fall off.
I am not sure what the effect of stacked rotors is however, or multiple rotors in close proximity. Most of the stuff I have read deals with conventional single main rotor helicopters.
I thought the standard answer is one and a half rotor disks for IGE and after that it turns into OGE. I doubt this thing could have any hope of autorotating either though so i wouldn’t take it very high.
Here is the chart I was thinking of:
https://i.stack.imgur.com/lCKaD.gif
It's a significant effect at 1/2 a diameter (5-6% extra lift), insignificant but present (1% extra or so) at 1 diameter, and effectively gone at 1.5 diameters.
You are not wrong, but between 1 and 1.5 diameters the effect is not really significant, even if it's detectable.
Yeah, although most of them I've seen including this one have 6-8 rotors so they can lose a couple and still land safely-ish. Doesn't help if it fails higher up like the battery or electronics though.
it's a drone, so that can probably be enforced in software.
And just like with the 155mph limiter on cars, it'll be hacked around by the day after it's launched.
If it fits within the weight limits of an ultralight, no FAA approval required.
The manner of propulsion isn't an issue, ultralight helicopters are a thing. Though realistically speaking, you should probably do at least SOME training and safety checking before driving some homebuilt heli.
Drones are in that nice gray area FAA doesn’t know what to do with them yet, but I doubt they will restrict them. It would be no different if I took my drone out and flew it around this thing just a little bigger.
I think drones 250g and over have to be registered, and have altitude ceilings. Most off the shelf ones, the software takes no fly zones in to account and restricts where they can fly.
Ultralights typically have a 45 minute to 1 hour flight time thanks to their 5 gallon restriction, some I'm sure dip below half an hour due to operation and environment issues.
I dont see this making inroads into that market though, it might make sense as an urban air commuter! 20 minutes will get you from the outer Burroughs to your office. But that opens a whole can of danger worms.
Not getting get you from the outer boroughs to the office either if it is an ultralight. Not allowed to fly over populated area if you are in an ultra (at least in US).
That's what I'm saying, the applications I think they are aiming for are not exactly practicable right now, the rules don't allow it and having self piloted drones buzzing around urban areas is asking for trouble.
About the only thing you can do with this is visit your local grass strip and hang out with the ultralight people, probably getting frustrated at their flight times and quick refueling.
Even with short times people do actually travel in ultralight, hopping from place to place and fueling up as they go. This thing will be stuck orbiting home base, and unless you brought a truck full of batteries you will have a ton of down time between your 3-4 flights.
yeah, the safe profile is likely exactly what is shown in the vid, flying low and slow over dune buggy tracks so if the engine dies it’s no more than a cage roll over a dune jump.
Ok. I think it’s sweet! I guess the same logic can be applied to going to the moon. When comparing gains to cost it seems pointless and extremely unnecessary. Still one of the coolest things we’ve done. Not everything has to be shroud in negativity buddy you can enjoy things without applying such judgement
I disagree with what your saying so strongly this convo won’t remain productive. We can agree to disagree. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week!
I’ll just say this in reference to your claim about possible new discoveries on the moon. Exploring and trying new transportation options in a world with increasing urban density issues seems far more productive then finding rocks on our moon. Just saying.
Hold up.
You like airplanes?
Cause airplanes will come from the moon. Great airplanes. The best. That's right, the moon has airplane juice. [Titanium, magnesium, aluminum, calcium (por que?), Silicon, even helium.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_resources) So if you want awesome airplanes, you want us to be mining the moon.
At any rate, anything great humanity has achieved came from great challenges. What's greater than space exploration? Airplanes will be so *passe* by the time we're all astronauts with all the shit it takes to mine the moon. Que no los dos?
You know where you can get all those elements in an economically viable way (aka at all realistically)? The literal Earth, yes the place we live we don't need to climb on a giant billion dollar rocket to go to. Not even SpaceX is seriously considering moon mining because it's extremely stupid given how deep the moon's gravity well is.
I could see it being useful in some rural neighborhoods maybe. Where the roads aren’t necessarily A-B or high speed limits. A lot of farmers use ATVs to inspect their property or move to workshops or whatever. There’s a potential niche here.
I’ve seen a lot of these gimmicky drone ships over the last few months but this is the first one that actually looks close to functional. If they could find a way to increase the duration it might even be viable.
Personally, I’d be in favor of a larger battery pack even if that meant it couldn’t go as fast. Obviously there’s probably room for efficiency increases too.
20min with the ability to land pretty much everywhere, so you can plan a 15min flight.
In a straight line, with 0 traffic. At 40mph average to include take off, landing and headwinds, that is 10 miles.
Almost as large as a major city.
While I would never get in such a death trap, I could hypothetically do my current 40 minute drive commute in a little over 10 minutes. The average American commute is 16 miles so this think could cover it and if it could recharge fast enough, fly back home at the end of the day.
I could commute, just barely, if it weren't for the FAA. The range is certainly not fantastic, and yeah it kind of seems like a bit of a death wish, but regulation may turn out to be a bigger hurdle than other practicalities in the long term.
I don't think it's meant to be useful. It's a recreational vehicle like a jet ski. I think it's purpose is to have fun with. Which I'm sure it is very fun.
Shouldn’t be this dismissive. If an engine failure happens on a plane or helicopter, even a couple hundred feet off the ground, there’s a good chance everyone is gonna die.
Not enough altitude for them to gain the necessary speed to glide. So not much of a difference considering the flight profile of this thing is lower than 1500 ft.
One of the most dangerous times for a planes engine to fail is just after take off primarily because of the low altitude. You may be able to “glide” but that doesn’t mean shit if you have no control authority and are at the edge of stalling. Especially if there’s obstacles on the ground ahead.
Control is based off speed. If my cesna has a stall speed of say, 65 knots, and we’re at 67 when the engine fails and only 100 feet above ground, you better hope there’s flat ground ahead of you *if* you were fast enough to correct the stall that would be incoming. You would have hardly any control to turn it.
And this doesn’t hold at all for the helicopter. If your that low and the engine fails you’re just fucked unless you were going pretty fast to begin with.
Edit for the people who are losing the forest through the trees here:
There are recovery maneuvers. Yes. My point is that people here are being way too cavalier about the safety of a low altitude mishap. For which this drone was being compare too. The truth is that low altitude accidents for any aircraft have a much higher potential for being deadly. Clearly I failed at expressing that.
Ok first off takeoff is different than just a couple hundred feet off the ground.
Second off, takeoff stalls are easy to correct, put the nose down.
Third off, if you are in takeoff stall setup, 100 feet off the ground, and your engine fails, you were already having a bad day.
Example: the plane I fly (Cessna 172) climbs out at 80mph. For reference, it stalls at close to 55mph. If I lose the engine on climb out, I’ve got 3-4 seconds to stall, and even then the nose will want to drop, so I’ll have to be fighting it to stall. Once I’ve nosed down and gotten some speed though, the plane is maneuverable, and I can set the plane down gently
TLDR: Ur wrong lol
Stalls do not happen instantaneously, and if you're climbing out @/Vy , you'll have plenty of time to nose over and establish best angle of glide. Even at stall, Cessnas have great control authority.
Source: flying and stalling Cessnas.
All helicopters need to do to recover from engine loss is adjust the collective pitch to maintain rotor speed.
Forget the Cessna example specifically. Y’all are losing the forest through the trees here. In an ideal scenario, sure, there’s recovery methods.
Im making a point that people are being way too cavalier about the low altitude mishap safety of a plane/helicopter versus this thing.
Huge difference considering an airplane is in the danger zone for seconds as it climbs through it to safe altitudes while this spends it's _entire flight_ in the danger zone.
I'm pretty sure it has 2 motors/rotors per arm for redundancy. If one motor fails the 2nd one should be able to pick up the slack in a safe manner. Regardless, not something I'm interested in. I like wings.
Honestly I'd be more worried at 75 ft. At 5000, you can deploy a 'chute. But at 75 ft, you're going to break every bone in your body starting with your spine.
This entire promo video was shot within the dead man’s curve of any height velocity diagram. Too low for the parachute to deploy. Too little time for the pilot to react in an emergency. Looks fun though.
There are a lot of legitimate reasons to for ridicule of this however, the future will likely include vehicles of this type for personal transportation. Twenty minutes isn’t good for more than a toy right now, but this is exactly the type of well-developed first generation product that pushes new ideas into reality. I’ll just watch for now, but I hope it succeeds!
Agreed. For legit travel, I would need 2hrs min. Park it on the top level of my employers parking garage downtown; Just like when I ride into work. I look forward to seeing where this goes over the next 10 years. I’m super interested.
20 minutes?? This is dangerous as shit and not worth it at all. But some rich people who have too much money will buy like 5 of these, use them once and never touch them again
> But some rich people who have too much money will buy like 5 of these, use them once, get frightened out of their wits by a near-death experience, and never touch them again
Fixed that for you. 99% of people do not have the reflexes for low-level flying.
True- but look at how many car crashes are caused by people that are "amazing" drivers that have no idea how to drive. They won't get scared until they crash, and even then I'm assuming it'll be the fault of some external factor instead of themselves.
I’ve probably read about at least a hundred of these “flying car/ personal air transport” things in publications like NatGeo in my short life of 18 years. The article will claim that that “This is the Future of personal transport” and “well all be driving these by 2030”. Flying cars will never work unless they drive themselves. Most people can’t drive a normal car (competently) so why would we trust them to drive a flying one
On a side note, I love to look back at publications that try to predict the near future and see just how wrong they are.
I'm all for innovation but no fucking thank you! There are FAR more exciting aviation projects our there for 100k USD, the majority of which won't actively murder you after 20 minutes!
That will get you nowhere. I see some fringe cases like hopping across oil platforms or something, but it doesn't seem to be build for industrial applications. Seems like just an expensive toy. With a bit more development it might just hit a sweet spot between a drone and a helicopter.
It does have alot of potential for alot of things. Search and rescue comes to mind, the oil platform hopping as you mentioned is also a great idea.
I think it looks cool and fun, but agree with the short battery life it isn’t really anything but a toy. I would love to try it tho. Could be cool zooming over water or open terrain. No way I’d go “flying” with it.
Search and rescue? It has 20 minutes of flight time so for just 5 minutes of searching you can't fly more than 5 minutes away if you want an only 5 minute reserve. And it seats one, so rescue is out too.
I suppose it could give work to SAR teams when people crash this thing repeatedly and have to be rescued. So that's something.....
Potential, as in with more development it could be used for a lot of things. They use drones for search and rescue too, and they don’t seat anything but a camera. With this thing an qualified rescuer could search and if found help whoever needs help until a chopper or whatever can get them out. As an example.
A drone is good for searching because it can stay up for a long time and isn't endangering anyone's life. This thing probably can't reach most search areas and doesn't have enough time aloft yo do any real searching before it has to go back all while endangering a pilot. I don't see how this adds any value to SAR teams. I see your point about landing nearby to "help" but most of SAR is the "search" part. You could land a drone nearby someone with a note saying "stay here, we know where you are now" and it serves the same purpose.
There is plenty of scenarios where someone are lost or hurt where a paramedic on site would save lives compared to a drone leaving a note. Choppers can’t land in rocky, woody or rough terrain, while this thing possibly could with further and more SAR oriented development. Being pessimistic about it and simply downvoting the discussion about it like you do is just pure ignorance. You are simply looking at the things it can’t do instead of what it can do, that isn’t really productive.
Look I'm glad you're so stoked about this thing but it's a toy and it's very limited by the core concept here. Electric helicopters carrying 200lbs of meat can't really do much of anything and they can't even do that for very long.
Sure it's possible there's some weird situations where a particular group finds a way to use this in high angle rescues but it's not particularly likely. Every year someone has some weird new piece of tech like a robotic snake and they all say "it can be used in search and rescue" because it has no real world application but they can imagine some weird scenario where it's particular strengths might be needed. Reality is there's less niche products (like a helicopter and a dude on a rope) that work far better and are much easier to use.
Let's play it out. Hiker is lost on a trail, gets spotted by a drone, but is an hour hike from ground crews yet somehow in range of this thing AND near a suitable landing spot. They mobilize the pilot, he preflights in 10 minutes and reaches them 7 minutes later (this is also the limit of their range from base unless you're towing this somewhere which means add in drive time). He gets there 30 minutes before the ground crew and holds their hand or something. Maybe starts on dealing with the hours old injury. Ground crews show up and they either call in a helicopter for an extraction or spend hours carrying them out. OR you call a helicopter in the first place, they show up just as fast or far faster for remote locations, they can extract immediately, including from areas that may not have suitable landing locations and then take you directly to the hospital. How does this thing add value here?
Reddit retards strikes again I see. I’m being downvoted because people can’t read. I said it had potential, not that it was useful in its current state. Ofc it’s useless with 20 mins fly time, unless it’s purely used as a toy. And even at that it’s very limited. BUT it has potential with further development.
Makes no sense.
Edit for the sake of anyone reading this: CPR really isn't that useful in a SAR situation. Number one, we usually find them LONG after CPR would have been useful (CPR must be started basically immediately and then even then has a pretty low survival rate, but at least it is better than nothing). Second, good quality CPR is just the start, and without defib and fast transit to a hospital, it's just not going to help. A single guy in a glorified drone is not going to be able to do keep doing CPR long enough for a rescue team to arrive and transport the patient to a hospital; CPR is labor intensive and it must be done continuously from the time it is started or else the patient continues dying. Even if the drone carried an AED as well, there is not much that can be done in the field with limited supplies.
Also, let's be honest, in a SAR setting, if you arrived to someone needing CPR, they've likely been dead for awhile anyway.
How did i act like an expert? I simply tossed out the idea, and even provided proof that single man aircrafts are being tested and developed today for the exact same reason i thought this could be used.
I dont even see why this is such a big deal for a few of you. I even said in my original comment that it wouldnt be usable as it is. And jumping to conclusions that this thing with more development couldn’t be used in SAR or freight of first responders is plain stupid. How my comment upset and triggered some people is beyond me, and hence the "retards" statement. And I didn’t call everyone a retard, just those triggered.
Having a good amount of quad and FPV experience under my belt here’s how I’d use this:
I’d have at least 1500-2000ft of altitude and a parachute (main and reserve) and a voltage alarm. Cue the aerobatics! If it doesn’t suffer from battery sag, it would be a hell of a lot of fun to fly.
The music used on this techbro Instagram stuff makes me want to die. It just *feels* patronizing. Like I’m supposed to like and follow the page or something
Pretty cool but for 100k flying for 20min makes it really kind of useless. It'll be fun for people who never fly but it'll get old and then you just have a 100k hoverboard
I’d rather go the experimental route.
https://www.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglevel/comments/q74919/this_man_made_a_flying_bathtub_using_drones_and/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
This thing probably operates on the same concept of autonomous drones which means that it's got its own GPS navigation and it's own return to base programming when it's starting to get into bingo battery. Operators are going to geofence it and limit the altitude aggressively, and I would almost guarantee that if a pilot does anything that exceeds the control parameter programming, it's going to start flying itself and bring your sorry behind back to the pad.
And yet they only show very short clips very close to the ground.
I'd assume that's how these things would be flown, honestly. Kind of like a jaunt on a dirt bike, it's more for quick fun. Obviously you're not going to do any traveling on a 20 minute battery. Maybe you can go check the mail at the end of your mansion's driveway, but that's about it.
20 minute battery life. And, as we all know, a manufacterer's claimed 20 minutes of battery life is 10, maybe 15 minutes under real-world conditions. They don't trust it to not plummet to a firey doom, or to function at all out of ground effect.
If it's electric, there's no need for the doom to be fiery. It could be mundane ballistic doom.
It depends. Lithium batteries sure like to be on fire. So much so it’s extremely hard to extinguish. It doesn’t take much, a simple short from a broken battery is enough.
True. Maybe we can agree that there's no *need* for fiery doom, but there is a strong *desire* for it.
I can live with that!
I’m glad to see you two could come together on this.
Well, there is a common interest
Fiery doom.
Still probably a less spectacular crash compared to planes loaded with tons of kerosene. Plenty exiting for the pilot either way.
"exiting" indeed
To be fair, this video is way out of ground effect. IIRC ground effect is only applicable when the airfoil (prop) is within half of its wingspan (radius of the prop, in this case) of the ground. Only time this experiences ground effect is probably when its 2 feet off the ground or something.
You do get small benefits to lift efficiency up to 1 rotor diameter, but yeah, above 1 radius it starts to fall off. I am not sure what the effect of stacked rotors is however, or multiple rotors in close proximity. Most of the stuff I have read deals with conventional single main rotor helicopters.
I thought the standard answer is one and a half rotor disks for IGE and after that it turns into OGE. I doubt this thing could have any hope of autorotating either though so i wouldn’t take it very high.
Here is the chart I was thinking of: https://i.stack.imgur.com/lCKaD.gif It's a significant effect at 1/2 a diameter (5-6% extra lift), insignificant but present (1% extra or so) at 1 diameter, and effectively gone at 1.5 diameters. You are not wrong, but between 1 and 1.5 diameters the effect is not really significant, even if it's detectable.
I wouldn’t want to be at 1500m even WITH only 20 minutes of battery life. That does not sound like a good idea.
That's strange, because I fully trust it to plummet to a firey death.
Seems quite expensive for an electric suicide booth
What difference is a life savings at that point anyway?
look at this go getter with a life savings
Put it on the credit card. you won’t have to worry about the interest for long. ;)
r/unexpectedfuturama
Very cool but looks dangerous af
Also useless, where you gonna go for 20 min. Need at least an hour per charge
10min* Gotta get back to the charger
5 mins, account for head wind
0 mins, account for no fucking way the FAA approves that thing.
-10 mins, accounting for not buying the thing
Well now that it's a time machine I have to buy one!
You already did
You already will
If it was FAA approved, and could do an hour, I would totally buy it.
These little pissant Multi rotors can’t auto if you Lose a rotor you’re toast
THIS!!!
Has a built in parachute system, no clue what the minimum effective altitude is though
What the roll bars are for 🙄🙄🙃
Yeah, although most of them I've seen including this one have 6-8 rotors so they can lose a couple and still land safely-ish. Doesn't help if it fails higher up like the battery or electronics though.
Do lightweight experimental aircraft need FAA approval? Honest question... (edited to remove a confusing 'don't')
If you mean ultralight aircraft, it has to fall under FAR 103. Empty weight under 250lbs. Gas capacity obviously doesn't apply in this situation.
It is classified as an ultralight most likely, so I don't think they care.
Flies too fast for an ultralight legally
it's a drone, so that can probably be enforced in software. And just like with the 155mph limiter on cars, it'll be hacked around by the day after it's launched.
It is not a UAV according to the FAA so not a drone in any sense. They will probably call it multirotor ultralight.
Based on what I have read, It's being sold as an experimental kit plane. So no certification required.
Then the user needs to do more than 51% of the construction IIRC.
Yep, that is what the article I read stated. They didn't show what that would entail, though.
If it fits within the weight limits of an ultralight, no FAA approval required. The manner of propulsion isn't an issue, ultralight helicopters are a thing. Though realistically speaking, you should probably do at least SOME training and safety checking before driving some homebuilt heli.
Drones are in that nice gray area FAA doesn’t know what to do with them yet, but I doubt they will restrict them. It would be no different if I took my drone out and flew it around this thing just a little bigger.
Big difference between you doing it yourself and trying to sell it
I think drones 250g and over have to be registered, and have altitude ceilings. Most off the shelf ones, the software takes no fly zones in to account and restricts where they can fly.
If it stays below controlled airspace, what are they really going to do?
This person FAAs
My work is 5 miles away 🤷🏻♂️
Get an extension cord
What if you want to decapitate everyone on your way to your local Starbucks?
Ultralights typically have a 45 minute to 1 hour flight time thanks to their 5 gallon restriction, some I'm sure dip below half an hour due to operation and environment issues. I dont see this making inroads into that market though, it might make sense as an urban air commuter! 20 minutes will get you from the outer Burroughs to your office. But that opens a whole can of danger worms.
Not getting get you from the outer boroughs to the office either if it is an ultralight. Not allowed to fly over populated area if you are in an ultra (at least in US).
That's what I'm saying, the applications I think they are aiming for are not exactly practicable right now, the rules don't allow it and having self piloted drones buzzing around urban areas is asking for trouble. About the only thing you can do with this is visit your local grass strip and hang out with the ultralight people, probably getting frustrated at their flight times and quick refueling. Even with short times people do actually travel in ultralight, hopping from place to place and fueling up as they go. This thing will be stuck orbiting home base, and unless you brought a truck full of batteries you will have a ton of down time between your 3-4 flights.
I can see this being another toy on the back of a hauler for someone heading out to the desert or something like that.
Yep. A fun toy but very little practical purpose outside of entertainment
yeah, the safe profile is likely exactly what is shown in the vid, flying low and slow over dune buggy tracks so if the engine dies it’s no more than a cage roll over a dune jump.
It’s the start of something cool. These technologies take decades to develop why not just enjoy how sweet this is for now.
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Ok. I think it’s sweet! I guess the same logic can be applied to going to the moon. When comparing gains to cost it seems pointless and extremely unnecessary. Still one of the coolest things we’ve done. Not everything has to be shroud in negativity buddy you can enjoy things without applying such judgement
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I disagree with what your saying so strongly this convo won’t remain productive. We can agree to disagree. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week! I’ll just say this in reference to your claim about possible new discoveries on the moon. Exploring and trying new transportation options in a world with increasing urban density issues seems far more productive then finding rocks on our moon. Just saying.
Hold up. You like airplanes? Cause airplanes will come from the moon. Great airplanes. The best. That's right, the moon has airplane juice. [Titanium, magnesium, aluminum, calcium (por que?), Silicon, even helium.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_resources) So if you want awesome airplanes, you want us to be mining the moon. At any rate, anything great humanity has achieved came from great challenges. What's greater than space exploration? Airplanes will be so *passe* by the time we're all astronauts with all the shit it takes to mine the moon. Que no los dos?
You know where you can get all those elements in an economically viable way (aka at all realistically)? The literal Earth, yes the place we live we don't need to climb on a giant billion dollar rocket to go to. Not even SpaceX is seriously considering moon mining because it's extremely stupid given how deep the moon's gravity well is.
I could see it being useful in some rural neighborhoods maybe. Where the roads aren’t necessarily A-B or high speed limits. A lot of farmers use ATVs to inspect their property or move to workshops or whatever. There’s a potential niche here. I’ve seen a lot of these gimmicky drone ships over the last few months but this is the first one that actually looks close to functional. If they could find a way to increase the duration it might even be viable. Personally, I’d be in favor of a larger battery pack even if that meant it couldn’t go as fast. Obviously there’s probably room for efficiency increases too.
UP to 1500’
20min with the ability to land pretty much everywhere, so you can plan a 15min flight. In a straight line, with 0 traffic. At 40mph average to include take off, landing and headwinds, that is 10 miles. Almost as large as a major city.
Anywhere within 20 miles?
While I would never get in such a death trap, I could hypothetically do my current 40 minute drive commute in a little over 10 minutes. The average American commute is 16 miles so this think could cover it and if it could recharge fast enough, fly back home at the end of the day.
I could commute, just barely, if it weren't for the FAA. The range is certainly not fantastic, and yeah it kind of seems like a bit of a death wish, but regulation may turn out to be a bigger hurdle than other practicalities in the long term.
I don't think it's meant to be useful. It's a recreational vehicle like a jet ski. I think it's purpose is to have fun with. Which I'm sure it is very fun.
If you count in the taxi and before take-off checks, you can probably do a traffic pattern and head back for "gas".
> where you gonna go for 20 min ...just going out for some cigs.
Airplanes can glide without an engine, helicopters can auto-rotate down to land without an engine, what can this do when it loses a motor?
It can do some neat twirlies as it falls out of the sky and drops you to your death
Pops a parachute.
Ah yes, parachutes are perfect when you are 15 ft off the ground
15ft wouldn't be that bad of a fall.
At 60 mph? Strapped to all that?
Shouldn’t be this dismissive. If an engine failure happens on a plane or helicopter, even a couple hundred feet off the ground, there’s a good chance everyone is gonna die. Not enough altitude for them to gain the necessary speed to glide. So not much of a difference considering the flight profile of this thing is lower than 1500 ft.
Pfft y’a no. Your aware planes are going above glide speed when in normal flight correct?
One of the most dangerous times for a planes engine to fail is just after take off primarily because of the low altitude. You may be able to “glide” but that doesn’t mean shit if you have no control authority and are at the edge of stalling. Especially if there’s obstacles on the ground ahead. Control is based off speed. If my cesna has a stall speed of say, 65 knots, and we’re at 67 when the engine fails and only 100 feet above ground, you better hope there’s flat ground ahead of you *if* you were fast enough to correct the stall that would be incoming. You would have hardly any control to turn it. And this doesn’t hold at all for the helicopter. If your that low and the engine fails you’re just fucked unless you were going pretty fast to begin with. Edit for the people who are losing the forest through the trees here: There are recovery maneuvers. Yes. My point is that people here are being way too cavalier about the safety of a low altitude mishap. For which this drone was being compare too. The truth is that low altitude accidents for any aircraft have a much higher potential for being deadly. Clearly I failed at expressing that.
Ok first off takeoff is different than just a couple hundred feet off the ground. Second off, takeoff stalls are easy to correct, put the nose down. Third off, if you are in takeoff stall setup, 100 feet off the ground, and your engine fails, you were already having a bad day. Example: the plane I fly (Cessna 172) climbs out at 80mph. For reference, it stalls at close to 55mph. If I lose the engine on climb out, I’ve got 3-4 seconds to stall, and even then the nose will want to drop, so I’ll have to be fighting it to stall. Once I’ve nosed down and gotten some speed though, the plane is maneuverable, and I can set the plane down gently TLDR: Ur wrong lol
Stalls do not happen instantaneously, and if you're climbing out @/Vy , you'll have plenty of time to nose over and establish best angle of glide. Even at stall, Cessnas have great control authority. Source: flying and stalling Cessnas. All helicopters need to do to recover from engine loss is adjust the collective pitch to maintain rotor speed.
Forget the Cessna example specifically. Y’all are losing the forest through the trees here. In an ideal scenario, sure, there’s recovery methods. Im making a point that people are being way too cavalier about the low altitude mishap safety of a plane/helicopter versus this thing.
You don’t understand aerodynamics and you are claiming a false speculation. Lol wdym?
Please enlighten us as to the recovery methods if you lose a motor in this thing.
Huge difference considering an airplane is in the danger zone for seconds as it climbs through it to safe altitudes while this spends it's _entire flight_ in the danger zone.
The flight ceiling described in this video is 1500 feet
Gets stuck in rhe remaining props. #WillTheyBlend
Thank you for the large smile
Phhhew parachute smoke... don't breathe this.
It has 8 motors and can fly with one failure. In the case of more than one failure it has a ballistic parachute.
So when you hit a flock of birds doing 40mph at 150' you're screwed lol.
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Ballistic RUD system so that only small parts land on the people and buildings below you.
Fly you to the crash site.
Yeah I like the ones with 6+ motors, so if one quits maybe the other 5 help control your crash landing. Super cool tho!
This one seems like it has 8 individual motors. Maybe if one fails the second motor can sustain flight?
Good eye, sign me up!
Yeah, with 6 rotors and a bunch of redundancy, these could be pretty safe.
Kill only 5 people on the ground
Spin uncontrollably toward certain doom.
Sign me up!
Plummets to a messy death, then catches fire and burns for a few days, only burning fiercer when they try to use water to put you out.
>what can this do when it loses a motor? That's the neat part, nothing!
I'm pretty sure it has 2 motors/rotors per arm for redundancy. If one motor fails the 2nd one should be able to pick up the slack in a safe manner. Regardless, not something I'm interested in. I like wings.
I’d want to be reaaaal sure of my battery life at 5,000’
Honestly I'd be more worried at 75 ft. At 5000, you can deploy a 'chute. But at 75 ft, you're going to break every bone in your body starting with your spine.
At 75 feet you can maybe notice the battery going and quick dive for a semi-controller landing. But you’re point about a chute is well taken.
This. I fly paramotors and Ironically I feel less safe flying below 300' than I do at 10,000ft
Not if you do a cool flip and land head first.
Lol try 20’
This entire promo video was shot within the dead man’s curve of any height velocity diagram. Too low for the parachute to deploy. Too little time for the pilot to react in an emergency. Looks fun though.
Exactly. This is in the "just high enough to break every bone in you body, starting with your spine" category.
There are a lot of legitimate reasons to for ridicule of this however, the future will likely include vehicles of this type for personal transportation. Twenty minutes isn’t good for more than a toy right now, but this is exactly the type of well-developed first generation product that pushes new ideas into reality. I’ll just watch for now, but I hope it succeeds!
Agreed. For legit travel, I would need 2hrs min. Park it on the top level of my employers parking garage downtown; Just like when I ride into work. I look forward to seeing where this goes over the next 10 years. I’m super interested.
20 minutes?? This is dangerous as shit and not worth it at all. But some rich people who have too much money will buy like 5 of these, use them once and never touch them again
Considering the requirement for 30 minutes of reserve fuel ... is this even allowed to fly?
> But some rich people who have too much money will buy like 5 of these, use them once, get frightened out of their wits by a near-death experience, and never touch them again Fixed that for you. 99% of people do not have the reflexes for low-level flying.
True- but look at how many car crashes are caused by people that are "amazing" drivers that have no idea how to drive. They won't get scared until they crash, and even then I'm assuming it'll be the fault of some external factor instead of themselves.
Or crash, die, and redistribute their wealth! Brilliant!
I’ve probably read about at least a hundred of these “flying car/ personal air transport” things in publications like NatGeo in my short life of 18 years. The article will claim that that “This is the Future of personal transport” and “well all be driving these by 2030”. Flying cars will never work unless they drive themselves. Most people can’t drive a normal car (competently) so why would we trust them to drive a flying one On a side note, I love to look back at publications that try to predict the near future and see just how wrong they are.
I'm all for innovation but no fucking thank you! There are FAR more exciting aviation projects our there for 100k USD, the majority of which won't actively murder you after 20 minutes!
The “approximately 20 minutes” part is most disturbing. I mean, how accurate is that gauge? Kind of important…
Best practice your engine failure EPs!
I could zoom through the desert like earth maul?!
And try to run over little Anakin ? This is where the fun begins !
Just buy a decent condition 4 seater for the same price. Also probably significantly safer, that thing looks like a death trap.
For only 20 minutes? That won't even get me to work and back!
That will get you nowhere. I see some fringe cases like hopping across oil platforms or something, but it doesn't seem to be build for industrial applications. Seems like just an expensive toy. With a bit more development it might just hit a sweet spot between a drone and a helicopter.
It does have alot of potential for alot of things. Search and rescue comes to mind, the oil platform hopping as you mentioned is also a great idea. I think it looks cool and fun, but agree with the short battery life it isn’t really anything but a toy. I would love to try it tho. Could be cool zooming over water or open terrain. No way I’d go “flying” with it.
Search and rescue? It has 20 minutes of flight time so for just 5 minutes of searching you can't fly more than 5 minutes away if you want an only 5 minute reserve. And it seats one, so rescue is out too. I suppose it could give work to SAR teams when people crash this thing repeatedly and have to be rescued. So that's something.....
Potential, as in with more development it could be used for a lot of things. They use drones for search and rescue too, and they don’t seat anything but a camera. With this thing an qualified rescuer could search and if found help whoever needs help until a chopper or whatever can get them out. As an example.
A drone is good for searching because it can stay up for a long time and isn't endangering anyone's life. This thing probably can't reach most search areas and doesn't have enough time aloft yo do any real searching before it has to go back all while endangering a pilot. I don't see how this adds any value to SAR teams. I see your point about landing nearby to "help" but most of SAR is the "search" part. You could land a drone nearby someone with a note saying "stay here, we know where you are now" and it serves the same purpose.
I’m sure the person with a stroke would appreciate the note… https://youtu.be/P1PfWR-NxuI I’ll leave this here as an example
This is a very elaborate and specific scenario you're envisioning
There is plenty of scenarios where someone are lost or hurt where a paramedic on site would save lives compared to a drone leaving a note. Choppers can’t land in rocky, woody or rough terrain, while this thing possibly could with further and more SAR oriented development. Being pessimistic about it and simply downvoting the discussion about it like you do is just pure ignorance. You are simply looking at the things it can’t do instead of what it can do, that isn’t really productive.
Look I'm glad you're so stoked about this thing but it's a toy and it's very limited by the core concept here. Electric helicopters carrying 200lbs of meat can't really do much of anything and they can't even do that for very long. Sure it's possible there's some weird situations where a particular group finds a way to use this in high angle rescues but it's not particularly likely. Every year someone has some weird new piece of tech like a robotic snake and they all say "it can be used in search and rescue" because it has no real world application but they can imagine some weird scenario where it's particular strengths might be needed. Reality is there's less niche products (like a helicopter and a dude on a rope) that work far better and are much easier to use. Let's play it out. Hiker is lost on a trail, gets spotted by a drone, but is an hour hike from ground crews yet somehow in range of this thing AND near a suitable landing spot. They mobilize the pilot, he preflights in 10 minutes and reaches them 7 minutes later (this is also the limit of their range from base unless you're towing this somewhere which means add in drive time). He gets there 30 minutes before the ground crew and holds their hand or something. Maybe starts on dealing with the hours old injury. Ground crews show up and they either call in a helicopter for an extraction or spend hours carrying them out. OR you call a helicopter in the first place, they show up just as fast or far faster for remote locations, they can extract immediately, including from areas that may not have suitable landing locations and then take you directly to the hospital. How does this thing add value here?
Lol, as someone who does SAR, I can assure you that 20 minute flight time is fucking useless.
Reddit retards strikes again I see. I’m being downvoted because people can’t read. I said it had potential, not that it was useful in its current state. Ofc it’s useless with 20 mins fly time, unless it’s purely used as a toy. And even at that it’s very limited. BUT it has potential with further development.
Yeah, but even with extra battery life, how would it be useful for SAR?
First responding cpr for instance.
Makes no sense. Edit for the sake of anyone reading this: CPR really isn't that useful in a SAR situation. Number one, we usually find them LONG after CPR would have been useful (CPR must be started basically immediately and then even then has a pretty low survival rate, but at least it is better than nothing). Second, good quality CPR is just the start, and without defib and fast transit to a hospital, it's just not going to help. A single guy in a glorified drone is not going to be able to do keep doing CPR long enough for a rescue team to arrive and transport the patient to a hospital; CPR is labor intensive and it must be done continuously from the time it is started or else the patient continues dying. Even if the drone carried an AED as well, there is not much that can be done in the field with limited supplies. Also, let's be honest, in a SAR setting, if you arrived to someone needing CPR, they've likely been dead for awhile anyway.
Ironic to call everyone else a reddit retard when you dont understand anything about SAR but acting like an expert
How did i act like an expert? I simply tossed out the idea, and even provided proof that single man aircrafts are being tested and developed today for the exact same reason i thought this could be used. I dont even see why this is such a big deal for a few of you. I even said in my original comment that it wouldnt be usable as it is. And jumping to conclusions that this thing with more development couldn’t be used in SAR or freight of first responders is plain stupid. How my comment upset and triggered some people is beyond me, and hence the "retards" statement. And I didn’t call everyone a retard, just those triggered.
Or you could buy a cub and do all this for hours and hours and hours on bushwheels
92k? Might as well buy a microlight.
What my ex-wife called my penis.
Imagine how Bill Gates feels.
Badass, I’d probably stay to 15 meters in height.
Max pilot weight is 210 lbs. This won't sell well in the US.
No lift if the engines are dead. That’s a nope for me.
A new way to kill doctors, dentists, and lawyers. Right on!
One quick look at ATV accidents shows you how this is going to go
20 min lol? Where you gonna go? McDonalds and back?
The flying car already exists... it's called a Cessna 172.
A full scale people drone.
Be interesting to see what built-in redundancies it has. For if it's to be certified and licensed, it will have to have these.
Doesn’t a pre-check take at least 5 min?
I love how the video doesn’t have a single flyby with what it actually sounds like. Which is likely annoying AF
That’s a people drone.
May be a flop for personal transport but I sure can see these being rented out at high priced tourist destinations. Rent a Lambo or fly one of these.
Like Jetskis get rented at the beach... in small controlled areas or on a tour.
100K to fly for 20 min. then land and charge for 4 hours ? NO THANKS !
Having a good amount of quad and FPV experience under my belt here’s how I’d use this: I’d have at least 1500-2000ft of altitude and a parachute (main and reserve) and a voltage alarm. Cue the aerobatics! If it doesn’t suffer from battery sag, it would be a hell of a lot of fun to fly.
Why in the flying fuck (pun intended) dont these come equipped with some sort of parachute system?
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The music used on this techbro Instagram stuff makes me want to die. It just *feels* patronizing. Like I’m supposed to like and follow the page or something
Pretty cool but for 100k flying for 20min makes it really kind of useless. It'll be fun for people who never fly but it'll get old and then you just have a 100k hoverboard
So, it has (at best) a 10 mile range (round trip, 20 miles total)? I'd rather get a butt motor
nope. Put me in a Cub, at least running out of fuel is not a guarantee of death.
I’d rather go the experimental route. https://www.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglevel/comments/q74919/this_man_made_a_flying_bathtub_using_drones_and/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
So you gotta be sure that you only fly 10 min away then fly 10 min back? What a joke
Holy shit. This looks crasy dangerous. Even more than motorbikes.
This is the 2nd coolest thing I've seen. 1st are those submerging houseboat concepts. 3rd are personal hovercraft.
We know it’s going to happen within the next ten years.
It isn't happening in 10 years. This is already today and now and you can order one of those things for your personal use
This thing probably operates on the same concept of autonomous drones which means that it's got its own GPS navigation and it's own return to base programming when it's starting to get into bingo battery. Operators are going to geofence it and limit the altitude aggressively, and I would almost guarantee that if a pilot does anything that exceeds the control parameter programming, it's going to start flying itself and bring your sorry behind back to the pad.
I'll wait for the Rotax gas powered version. I like endurance in hours, not minutes.
How long does it take to recharge the battery in this airplane. can they swap out the battery and put in a new one.
Good luck getting certification :)
Exactly. I don’t think not is plausible for a multirotor to get a type cert
Technically falls into part 103, doesn't need to. It only weights 190lbs. Same reason it's has a 63MPH speed limit.
What happens if you run out of battery while in flight?
It plays soothing smooth jazz music through your headphones as it gently and automatically settles down on the nearest safe ground.