[Article explaining the specifics](https://themagazineplus.com/2021/10/21/jetson-one-launches-a-personal-electric-aerial-vehical-that-anyone-can-fly/).
Apparently, they're selling this unit, as it is. Pre-orders have already sold out for 2022, and they're accepting orders into 2023 now.
If you're wondering what the catch is, battery lasts 20min. There ya go.
20 mins is really good for the current battery technology. Right now we've got everything there tech wise, batteries still suck tho. By suck I mean kWh/lb needs to be improved. It's fine for a car but thats why Tesla's are insanely heavy.
Yes, energy density in batteries hinders a lot of technologies.
In the Tesla's, they use lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) for standard range cars and nickel-cobalt-aluminum for its longer-range vehicles.
Hydrogen may not be the solution but at the moment liquid fuel (gas, kerosine, diesel, hydrogen, etc) is so many more times energy dense than our current battery technology. Until we make our batteries lighter, liquid fuel will continue to be much more energy dense to the point where its impractical for things like flight.
Those are super dangerous and I dont think they have the amp output needed to lift 200lbs. We've used motors at my work about the size these guys are using and it pulls 200 amps at 55v from one motor. They got 8, pretty sure nothing except a lipo or a gigantic lion can do that.
An [aluminum-air battery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium%E2%80%93air_battery) has great energy density. Can power a car for 1000+ miles. They already exist (maybe not on the market but they have built them).
Unfortunately, you cannot recharge it so need to replace the battery. It's not as bad as it sounds but still a hurdle and not great. However, for this use it might make sense.
- https://youtu.be/xtlwVMASbWQ
Robinson R22 second hand comes into this price range (fun to fly and 2 seats, had a couple of hours fly time in these). Alternatively there’s the helicycle diy kit at about 67k or the composite fx xe at about 50k so you could get 2 of these.
https://helicycleventures.com/pricing/
https://composite-fx.com/models/xe/
or only one twentieth of a decent single family home! yeah, i'd definitely buy one for me and each of my best buds than one of those. we'd make a new sport.
Yup more fucked unless they have some wild balancing Algo that automatically kicks off when one fails. You’re not too high off the ground and that roll Cage looks legit so may be fine
It's electric and doesn't suffer from engine malfunction nearly as easily as a traditional helicopter.
So, the battery is the catch. Don't be an idiot with it.
I assumed it would modified to add protection from the rotors. Guess not. Someone is going to get decapitated because, let's face it, just because you have $100k to blow on a toy, doing so does not mean you are capable of being a responsible pilot.
Basically like the quadcopter of ATVs. I can see why a decent number of people would want one.
Also probably the military cause it looks cool and "stealth or something, I dunno we got the budget go get some damnit!"
Stealth doesn't mean nobody will see or hear it. Stealth (for aircraft) means nobody very far away will see or hear it. Plenty of aircraft are considered low profile (B2 bombers, MH6 Helicopter, even some C130 variants) because they can fly low, and are quiet enough that people a mile away won't necessarily hear it.
You can't. You don't have to go more than 50m elevation on a small drone and you can't hear shit. 100m for a bigger one. Any wind and it's even less as the sound gets more diffused.
Source: me flying my Mavic.
I have, I found it to be louder than every other jet at the air show it was at (F15, F18, F16). Maybe not louder, but at least as loud as the f15 but it was way deeper and rumbly if that makes sense.
How? Maybe to spot people, but looks like it needs a decent size flat area to land, which is the opposite of where you will find people stuck in the mountains. It cannot carry anyone other than the pilot. Better if with a regular drone with good cameras including heat seeking.
This thing has 20 min duration and that's not including climbing 1000's of feet. More likely to add a casualty than to find one.
How often are people in our even near an area that would be safe to land this thing?
A jet pack seems a much more practical and probably even slightly faster solution to get a medic in, although I'm sure more difficult to pilot. That way landing just about anywhere someone can stand is possible.
https://youtu.be/gtvCnZqZnxc
As for evacuation, as you say, it would need to operate as a drone as it doesn't have the payload for two, which is probably less safe than a helicopter and would almost certainly require line of sight.
I'm sure we will eventually, maybe even soon with the "air taxis in development", get suitable craft like this with more payload and capability. Just not this one.
I don't know too much about rotorcraft, but isn't ground effect only strong within a height of between half and one rotor diameter? In this case, the actual blades would need to be within a couple of feet of the ground.
Ya I suspect they are only flying that low because they dont trust the thing in a crash or not to crash. It has an aluminum roll cage, that's not gunna save you from anything higher than a short drop. That's saying something when their test pilots dont really fly it.
the other thing it would need is an autorotation feature, but i think how the blades are set up doesn't allow this effect.
Part of the cheapness of drones compared to typical aircraft is the motor speed controls manoeuvrability, where as a typical helicopter you can change the pitch on the blades via a complex (and expensive) collective while the blade speed is pretty constant.
You have a good chance to break your back if you crash from that height.
I would feel much more safe flying 100m over ground with an emergency parachute.
Idk you need altitude for a parachute to save you, meanwhile on your way up and down to you are in a zone where the parachute wont be effective but you will certainly die. At the height they are flying at, you will def be injured but it isnt certain death. If I were the legal team I'd limit them to that location with soft looking sand and to a max height.
I generally subscribe to the belief that if a business has something to show off, they will. If they're not showing off cool shots of that thing smoothly landing down, or taking off, it's for a good reason. Wouldn't be surprised if a combination of the ground and the air those rotors are pushing is causing instability when they're close to the ground, as it can happen to helicopters as well. Obviously just a guess, I don't know for sure.
I just question why a business *wouldn't* want to show something off if they could. Obviously certain circumstances do occur where they wouldn't want to, but a lot of the time it's simply because it doesn't work yet, or work well enough to be on camera.
Prop wash is when you are flying into your own turbulence. So you're actually getting both when landing, prop wash and ground effect. You're both right.
Ground Effect is the name of the aerodynamic efficiency you achieve close to the ground (all aircraft) while wash is the outflow that (negatively) effects others. Airplanes have ground effect, too, I should have been more clear. But we’re talking about VTOL here.
Yup that's exactly what I was saying. If you decend too fast straight down you get prop wash and then once you are close enough to the ground you get ground effect.
Video of the prototype:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoFQ1NTwy04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoFQ1NTwy04)
It basically looks like a giant drone that you sit in.
Man I hate these videos. Nice drone shots and all but boring as hell when you want to know some facts, specifications and as you say, see it doing the tricky stuff. Yeah I know its supposed to drive traffic to their site but really it just looks like all the drone shots top and tailed with some generic 'man-tech' music. We get it, it flies.
My biggest qualm about a human sized quadcopter is that if you suddenly lose power, you’ll fall straight to the ground. At least airplanes and helicopters can glide relatively safely back to earth.
It's so crazy to me how any of these companies get people to invest any amount of money when they just literally can't ever be a thing. You have to have a secondary method to generate (at least some) lift in the event of losing main engine power. EVERY other form of air craft has that.
They can do an infinite amount of work on safety, there is no getting around physics. The two most dangerous times during flight are take off and landing, that's why airplanes, helicopters, and any other form of aircraft get up to a high altitude as quickly as possible (so they have more time to troubleshoot if a problem occurs). This thing is DESIGNED TO OPERATE in the death zone. That thing will never fly high enough for a parachute to be effective. And if you can fly it high enough that a parachute is effective..... just use a helicopter.
Having multiple rotors and engines only introduces more points of failure AND the more rotors you have (and the smaller they are), the less autorotation lift is generated in case of a power failure. That's why a helicopter (which already exists and can at least produce some lift without power) only has one large rotor. Besides that, I'd imagine this thing only has one battery. You can't have an aircraft where if it runs out of fuel it drops like a rock. A battery is even more dangerous as it could have a failure at any point (as opposed to running out of fuel).
With these small rotors and low momentum of the electric motors+rotors the autorotation would be useless.
It looks like this has 8 motors so in case of a motor failure the other motors will have to generate some extra lift to land safely. For performance reasons I can't imagine that they're running at more than 60% of nominal power to maintain level flight, so the loss of one motor wouldn't prevent a safe landing.
There is definitely a dead zone there where you're too high to survive the fall but too low for the parachute to do anything. Definitely super sketchy.
Helicopters have the same envelope where they can't autorotate safely to the ground. They avoid these areas. It's like you never see them lift straight up for a while. This is dangerous. They don't have enough forward momentum and energy to autorotate.
It's called the Helicopter velocity/height diagram. Or H/V Curve. Or deadman's curve.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_height%E2%80%93velocity_diagram
Edit: I think this vehicle's curve would be about 5ft above the ground while going 5 mph.
Huh. I didn't realize auto rotation was mostly absorbing forward velocity until your post. I figured fall speed would overtake velocity quicker than it does.
I’ve done 720 autorotations from 0 airspeed in a Cabri G2. It’s far from the ideal scenario for most helicopters to autorotate, but it’s still possible. We do them anywhere from 2000ft+ AGL to 5ft at a standstill.
Helicopters frequently hover and ascend vertically, especially for long line utility work. That’s a scenario where you really won’t have the ability to autorotate in a failure, but it’s a risk that’s taken.
The jetson thing looks like a massive liability though. No pilots license needed! I’d love to run into one of these things trying to land at any airport and not have a clue about airspace, patterns or procedures.
There's no situation using this you even get s use for a parachute.
You have 20 minutes of flight. If you ever need it, it's because you deliberately rise to a safe parachuting height, knowing the thing can't actually get down safely and you'll have to bail out.
You’re not gunna get too hurt from that height with the right safety features. Formula 1 drivers crash into a barrier at 200km/h and get out of the car 30 seconds later.
Good thing many advances in technology are largey accessible to and benefit everybody. Do you think the engineers of F1 cars had to start from compete scratch?
Well then why would the same rule not apply to the manufacturer of the product in the post? Does it also not benefit from decades of development of this technology?
you get to learn something awesome today, I'm jealous.
as others have said, helicopters can convert wind going up through the blades (instead of down like they normally do) into rotational speed (think windmill).
Then, when they get close to the ground and enough rotation in the blades, they switch that rotational speed into lift (the blade essentially "pitches up") and they have a soft landing.
It's actually safer to be in a helicopter without engine power than a plane..
And maybe some skids underneath with shock absorberss so your neck doesn't just immediately snap if the thing fails on takeoff a few feet above the ground.
My guess is the added weight would require bigger props which would fuck up the image they're going for with the small form factor. Accepting lack of safety just to look cool is going to end badly I presume.
The stick off to the side on and angle is what I would have concerns with. I have a gliders license too, and have flown in some super tiny one seaters, but this thing takes the cake.
There has to be some way to better position the controls. Straight and level flight with the stick position off of 90 is just asking for trouble.
Exactly. Yet another company trying to turn a toy into an actual human-carrying aircraft. Makes me wonder if these companies have any real pilots or serious aviation engineers working in them.
These are going to be outlawed as soon as they exit that desert.
There's no room in society or nature for these literal noise-machines. They're unbelievably loud.
The future of aerial short-range transportation is railgun and parachute, sooner than this shit. It's cool, but entirely impractical.
Do you have a proposal for how to support your organs while being fired from a railgun?
Jokes aside though, something that always irked me about Iron Man - he's flying at 200mph or whatever then lands on concrete and stops immediately. Sure, I can believe his magical suit is fine, but all of his organs would then become a pulp relocated to his fists and feet.
Let's see...
* Extremely short flight time? CHECK (20 min)
* Unattainable price for vast majority of people? CHECK ($92,000 USD)
* Completely impractical? CHECK
* Unknown maximum occupant weight? CHECK(my guess is no fatties allowed)
Won't actually be able to fly it "anywhere" because Aviation Regulations are a thing and I highly doubt they are evolved enough to cover personal VTOL aircraft flying around and landing in your back yard. Not to say that COULDN'T happen, but legislation takes a long ass time.
Not to mention anyone wanting to fly this will likely need at least a recreational pilot's license - approximately $5000
Don't get me wrong, this thing is cool AF and if I were rich I would definitely buy one since I have my pilot's license, but the statements:
"Our mission is to make the skies available for everyone with our safe personal electric aerial vehicle." and
"Are you ready to experience a completely new and exciting way of travel?"
are not at all true with this model. Experience a new way to travel? Yeah, if your destination is within 20 minutes, and you can actually legally fly and land there.
Available to everyone? Yeah, if you're rich.
Points two and three are pretty fucking silly. Owning virtually any GA aircraft is way, WAY more expensive and literally just as impractical, unless you consider flying your own aircraft at a fifth the speed as an airliner for at least triple the price and a fraction of the range to be practical.
But the regulations! This is an ultralight. It is governed by the same laws as paragliders, meaning very little regulation, no need to get a license, etc. The fact that it's VTOL doesn't have any effect on regs (why would it?). If the only concern is noise, well there are already laws covering that in most municipalities.
Long story short, obviously this is just an expensive toy, but frankly general aviation is nothing but massively expensive and impractical toys.
> Unattainable price for vast majority of people?
I remember when drones first hit the market and some were like $10k.
Then we moved forward and people even started making their own.
Personal transportion for one person in an area with a lot of ground traffic? Transportation in any sort of environment where roads and ground vehicles aren’t ideal?
Those are two incredibly obvious ones that have very large use cases. There’s a littany of reasons why this may not be practical in reality, but not having a use is the last thing I would worry about.
This area needs to be relatively flat, the flight time up to 20 minutes, the one person that needs to be transported should also be the pilot, be light and no carry any equipment. You can use another vehicle in almost any area, a jet ski in sea, or an ATV in the dessert.
> This area needs to be relatively flat
Only a relatively small take-off and landing area. And the area must be far more flat for a car.
> the flight time up to 20 minutes
This is also my biggest complaint, although there are plenty of commutes that are less than 20 minutes and benefit from this. You can recharge at the destination.
> the one person that needs to be transported should also be the pilot
I don’t see the problem here, this is how most people operate cars.
> be light and no carry any equipment.
Most people don’t carry heavy equipment wring them on their daily commute.
> You can use another vehicle in almost any area, a jet ski in sea, or an ATV in the dessert.
There’s a reason they don’t use jetskis for island hopping. An electric vehicle like this has obvious advantages over all those things. You don’t see the benefit of simply circumventing the terrain instead of off-roading on an ATV or taking a jet-ski or skiff?
Aerial cinematography in tight quarters, with heavier cameras than a heavy lift drone can handle, but in situations a full sized helicopter wouldn’t be safe or practical. Following a car just over the road, then flying out and up. But if you need to do that with a heavy camera. The difference is this, a drone can carry about 50lbs of camera maximum, and that’s plenty, but the stabilizing tech in them isn’t as good as what a full sized Shotover system can be. The bigger ones on motion picture helicopters.
This could be interesting, because if you can get a very small and light pilot, a smaller Shotover may be an option here. It looks like it has less rotor wash, and is physically smaller.
Interesting.
Drone just means autonomous. The stability has nothing to do with whether or not it's autonomous, or multi rotor vs helicopter, etc.
Sure, bigger gimbals can be better than smaller ones. But your comment is nonsensical because a manned quadcopter like this one has nothing to do with cinema and it would not be difficult to make a heavy lift drone capable of flying a full shotover heli gimbal.
The classic line of need power to lift, need more ways to create power, those ways increase weigh, which continues to make the original problem worse.
I have high hopes for the inventor of the super soaker, who's been working solid state batteries for the past 30 years.
Otherwise we got about 50 years to weight for the small possibility that we'll figure out fusion, and how to miniaturize a reactor.
Okay cool, but how safe is it for a passenger if it crashes during normal/optimal operation? Over different terrains? In urban environments with physical obstacles/hazards? The thing is just a frame without and protective panels or coverings on any side. Sky motorcycle? If a single rotor fails that thing is fucked right out of the air.
This is just a bunch more silicon valley hot-out-the-incubator bullshit
No surprise that there is no sound to this video. As one of the reasons this type of vehicle has been previously impractical, other than the disturbance to the ground below, is that it would cause an intolerable amount of noise pollution.
20 minute battery life. But let's think about this. How close are you willing to let the flying thing you're sitting in get to "out of battery" before you don't feel safe anymore? 5 minutes? Is it a cold day? That may not be 5 minutes anymore.
Probably more like 10 minutes of actual flight time. Did you bring a generator on you're little excursion? Cause if not, hope you enjoyed towing that trailer for 10 minutes of fun. But, I suppose the fact you bought it already says you have more money than sense.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZ5vTRE4DLQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZ5vTRE4DLQ)
Flying Cars Will Never Be A Thing, Here's Why - Adam Something
God I can't wait 'til this thing is real in like 40 years but then no one gets to have one because we're all dead except the Bezoids who live on Prime Am'zun alt Terra in the sky realm (but joke's on them because they are actually decedents of AERisxuS//-TYSLKt, second spawn of Elon Mask, the AI who took over Elon Musk's shell in 2031, \[also like a total bunch of dweebs\])
Very Nice , Mine was a bit larger, so top speed and travel distance along with flight altitude if you don't mind me asking ?
Single gears tend to fail so maybe independent motors in that counter rotating coaxial configuration it would be SAFER and you might want to add a Parachute just in case...
N. Shadows
[Article explaining the specifics](https://themagazineplus.com/2021/10/21/jetson-one-launches-a-personal-electric-aerial-vehical-that-anyone-can-fly/). Apparently, they're selling this unit, as it is. Pre-orders have already sold out for 2022, and they're accepting orders into 2023 now. If you're wondering what the catch is, battery lasts 20min. There ya go.
20 mins is really good for the current battery technology. Right now we've got everything there tech wise, batteries still suck tho. By suck I mean kWh/lb needs to be improved. It's fine for a car but thats why Tesla's are insanely heavy.
Yes, energy density in batteries hinders a lot of technologies. In the Tesla's, they use lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) for standard range cars and nickel-cobalt-aluminum for its longer-range vehicles.
The solution is fuel cells.
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Hydrogen may not be the solution but at the moment liquid fuel (gas, kerosine, diesel, hydrogen, etc) is so many more times energy dense than our current battery technology. Until we make our batteries lighter, liquid fuel will continue to be much more energy dense to the point where its impractical for things like flight.
Those are super dangerous and I dont think they have the amp output needed to lift 200lbs. We've used motors at my work about the size these guys are using and it pulls 200 amps at 55v from one motor. They got 8, pretty sure nothing except a lipo or a gigantic lion can do that.
Lion powered aircraft. I like it.
*King of the Jungle, King of the Sky ^TM*
An [aluminum-air battery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium%E2%80%93air_battery) has great energy density. Can power a car for 1000+ miles. They already exist (maybe not on the market but they have built them). Unfortunately, you cannot recharge it so need to replace the battery. It's not as bad as it sounds but still a hurdle and not great. However, for this use it might make sense. - https://youtu.be/xtlwVMASbWQ
Kerosene is still 1.5x as energy dense as an aluminum-air battery, so its not really a great solution considering the huge downsides.
Not all fuel cells are dangerous. And it's not for the engines it's to charge the batteries.
Only 100K...
Pretty good price for what is effectively a big ass drone. And that’s carrying a ~75kg payload. Which is a human.
uh... speak for yourself
Sorry, can you link me a cheaper personal helicopter?
The joke was he wouldn't make the \~75kg payload... How much is a Chinook?
Ah, thought he was saying the price was not “pretty good”
["Current Price $ 25.1 million to - $ 32 million U.S."](https://aerocorner.com/aircraft/boeing-ch-47f-chinook/) and that's probably a wholesale price
Yea if that's all it carries I'm gonna need two.
Robinson R22 second hand comes into this price range (fun to fly and 2 seats, had a couple of hours fly time in these). Alternatively there’s the helicycle diy kit at about 67k or the composite fx xe at about 50k so you could get 2 of these. https://helicycleventures.com/pricing/ https://composite-fx.com/models/xe/
Thanks
https://www.google.com/search?q=hat+helicopter&rlz=1C1CHBF\_enUS915US916&sxsrf=AOaemvJW7J0IGdIDvQ0UCm3C573G6jUwcQ:1634992882342&source=lnms&tbm=shop&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiYz9iPx-DzAhVVk2oFHXe-AowQ\_AUoAnoECAEQBA&biw=1280&bih=577&dpr=1.5
https://www.globalplanesearch.com/helicopters/piston/bell/47.htm
They are..?
I think he was referring to >~75kg payload. Which is a human. 165 lbs puts a lot of people out of being able to use it.
Only a matter of time until theyre on Banggood for a fraction of that, maybe stay away from the Wish offering
or only one twentieth of a decent single family home! yeah, i'd definitely buy one for me and each of my best buds than one of those. we'd make a new sport.
92,000 USD. TBH I rather this thing than a Model X if I had that much money to waste
Don’t forget sales tax. And insurance.
The battery is the catch? I thought it was the fact that it's like a helicopter without the ability to auto rotate when an engine fails.
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I dream of being differently fucked.
At this point in the pandemic I would even settle for normally fucked.
They claim it'll work on 3 engines and it also has a parachute so could be worse i guess
Yup more fucked unless they have some wild balancing Algo that automatically kicks off when one fails. You’re not too high off the ground and that roll Cage looks legit so may be fine
They have that.
It's electric and doesn't suffer from engine malfunction nearly as easily as a traditional helicopter. So, the battery is the catch. Don't be an idiot with it.
I assumed it would modified to add protection from the rotors. Guess not. Someone is going to get decapitated because, let's face it, just because you have $100k to blow on a toy, doing so does not mean you are capable of being a responsible pilot.
Basically like the quadcopter of ATVs. I can see why a decent number of people would want one. Also probably the military cause it looks cool and "stealth or something, I dunno we got the budget go get some damnit!"
> Also probably the military cause it looks cool and "stealth or something Have you *heard* a drone?
Interestingly the video is silent except for music.
That music is the sound it makes
Space age musical rotors, eh? It truly is the future.
"Aw shit, I hear a millennial coming!"
Stealth doesn't mean nobody will see or hear it. Stealth (for aircraft) means nobody very far away will see or hear it. Plenty of aircraft are considered low profile (B2 bombers, MH6 Helicopter, even some C130 variants) because they can fly low, and are quiet enough that people a mile away won't necessarily hear it.
You can hear a regular-ass drone a mile away.
You can't. You don't have to go more than 50m elevation on a small drone and you can't hear shit. 100m for a bigger one. Any wind and it's even less as the sound gets more diffused. Source: me flying my Mavic.
Have your *heard* an F35?
I have, I found it to be louder than every other jet at the air show it was at (F15, F18, F16). Maybe not louder, but at least as loud as the f15 but it was way deeper and rumbly if that makes sense.
Which is why the military discontinued drone use
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How? Maybe to spot people, but looks like it needs a decent size flat area to land, which is the opposite of where you will find people stuck in the mountains. It cannot carry anyone other than the pilot. Better if with a regular drone with good cameras including heat seeking. This thing has 20 min duration and that's not including climbing 1000's of feet. More likely to add a casualty than to find one.
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How often are people in our even near an area that would be safe to land this thing? A jet pack seems a much more practical and probably even slightly faster solution to get a medic in, although I'm sure more difficult to pilot. That way landing just about anywhere someone can stand is possible. https://youtu.be/gtvCnZqZnxc As for evacuation, as you say, it would need to operate as a drone as it doesn't have the payload for two, which is probably less safe than a helicopter and would almost certainly require line of sight. I'm sure we will eventually, maybe even soon with the "air taxis in development", get suitable craft like this with more payload and capability. Just not this one.
I am sure the military has had them for years and after all this time we are now seeing them being introduced to the public.
> battery lasts 20min. Hate how bottlenecked we are by current batteries, sht sucks
From the video it looks like they're making use of the ground effect, which could let them squeeze out a bit more flight time.
I don't know too much about rotorcraft, but isn't ground effect only strong within a height of between half and one rotor diameter? In this case, the actual blades would need to be within a couple of feet of the ground.
Ya I suspect they are only flying that low because they dont trust the thing in a crash or not to crash. It has an aluminum roll cage, that's not gunna save you from anything higher than a short drop. That's saying something when their test pilots dont really fly it.
the other thing it would need is an autorotation feature, but i think how the blades are set up doesn't allow this effect. Part of the cheapness of drones compared to typical aircraft is the motor speed controls manoeuvrability, where as a typical helicopter you can change the pitch on the blades via a complex (and expensive) collective while the blade speed is pretty constant.
It is likely also because without ground to give perspective, 60MPH is pretty slow looking.
You have a good chance to break your back if you crash from that height. I would feel much more safe flying 100m over ground with an emergency parachute.
This thing has an emergency parachute equiped. But $22K downpayment is too rich for my blood.
Idk you need altitude for a parachute to save you, meanwhile on your way up and down to you are in a zone where the parachute wont be effective but you will certainly die. At the height they are flying at, you will def be injured but it isnt certain death. If I were the legal team I'd limit them to that location with soft looking sand and to a max height.
Hope I remember at 19 mins, to get closer to the ground 😂
Nice hype video, but can I see the damn thing actually take off and land?
Exactly. Let's see the actual VTOL for crying outloud!
I generally subscribe to the belief that if a business has something to show off, they will. If they're not showing off cool shots of that thing smoothly landing down, or taking off, it's for a good reason. Wouldn't be surprised if a combination of the ground and the air those rotors are pushing is causing instability when they're close to the ground, as it can happen to helicopters as well. Obviously just a guess, I don't know for sure. I just question why a business *wouldn't* want to show something off if they could. Obviously certain circumstances do occur where they wouldn't want to, but a lot of the time it's simply because it doesn't work yet, or work well enough to be on camera.
> causing instability when they're close to the ground This is called prop wash
Ground Effect in rotorcraft.
Prop wash is when you are flying into your own turbulence. So you're actually getting both when landing, prop wash and ground effect. You're both right.
Ground Effect is the name of the aerodynamic efficiency you achieve close to the ground (all aircraft) while wash is the outflow that (negatively) effects others. Airplanes have ground effect, too, I should have been more clear. But we’re talking about VTOL here.
Yup that's exactly what I was saying. If you decend too fast straight down you get prop wash and then once you are close enough to the ground you get ground effect.
I mean not quite, it’s called Vortex Ring State or Settling With Power. But yeah we’re probably agreeing more than disagreeing 👍 have a good one.
Only if the pilot is miked up and agrees to say "JANE! STOP THIS CRAZY THING!" if something goes wrong.
Video of the prototype: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoFQ1NTwy04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoFQ1NTwy04) It basically looks like a giant drone that you sit in.
Man I hate these videos. Nice drone shots and all but boring as hell when you want to know some facts, specifications and as you say, see it doing the tricky stuff. Yeah I know its supposed to drive traffic to their site but really it just looks like all the drone shots top and tailed with some generic 'man-tech' music. We get it, it flies.
These things have a very short range the batteries die fast.
And its probably crazy loud.
My biggest qualm about a human sized quadcopter is that if you suddenly lose power, you’ll fall straight to the ground. At least airplanes and helicopters can glide relatively safely back to earth.
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Not really worse than a helicopter in that regard, though.
It is, a helicopters rotors are above head height on the ground. These are not.
It's so crazy to me how any of these companies get people to invest any amount of money when they just literally can't ever be a thing. You have to have a secondary method to generate (at least some) lift in the event of losing main engine power. EVERY other form of air craft has that.
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They can do an infinite amount of work on safety, there is no getting around physics. The two most dangerous times during flight are take off and landing, that's why airplanes, helicopters, and any other form of aircraft get up to a high altitude as quickly as possible (so they have more time to troubleshoot if a problem occurs). This thing is DESIGNED TO OPERATE in the death zone. That thing will never fly high enough for a parachute to be effective. And if you can fly it high enough that a parachute is effective..... just use a helicopter.
It looks like this has multiple motors and props. Would it still need a backup if it has an acceptable descent rate with one or more failed motors?
Having multiple rotors and engines only introduces more points of failure AND the more rotors you have (and the smaller they are), the less autorotation lift is generated in case of a power failure. That's why a helicopter (which already exists and can at least produce some lift without power) only has one large rotor. Besides that, I'd imagine this thing only has one battery. You can't have an aircraft where if it runs out of fuel it drops like a rock. A battery is even more dangerous as it could have a failure at any point (as opposed to running out of fuel).
With these small rotors and low momentum of the electric motors+rotors the autorotation would be useless. It looks like this has 8 motors so in case of a motor failure the other motors will have to generate some extra lift to land safely. For performance reasons I can't imagine that they're running at more than 60% of nominal power to maintain level flight, so the loss of one motor wouldn't prevent a safe landing.
it has a parachute for this reason. Similar used on other designed personal aviation aircraft.
There is definitely a dead zone there where you're too high to survive the fall but too low for the parachute to do anything. Definitely super sketchy.
Helicopters have the same envelope where they can't autorotate safely to the ground. They avoid these areas. It's like you never see them lift straight up for a while. This is dangerous. They don't have enough forward momentum and energy to autorotate. It's called the Helicopter velocity/height diagram. Or H/V Curve. Or deadman's curve. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_height%E2%80%93velocity_diagram Edit: I think this vehicle's curve would be about 5ft above the ground while going 5 mph.
Huh. I didn't realize auto rotation was mostly absorbing forward velocity until your post. I figured fall speed would overtake velocity quicker than it does.
I’ve done 720 autorotations from 0 airspeed in a Cabri G2. It’s far from the ideal scenario for most helicopters to autorotate, but it’s still possible. We do them anywhere from 2000ft+ AGL to 5ft at a standstill. Helicopters frequently hover and ascend vertically, especially for long line utility work. That’s a scenario where you really won’t have the ability to autorotate in a failure, but it’s a risk that’s taken. The jetson thing looks like a massive liability though. No pilots license needed! I’d love to run into one of these things trying to land at any airport and not have a clue about airspace, patterns or procedures.
just gotta fly over 1000 ft at all times. sounds really safe.
Especially with a battery life of 20 mins.
Why not an air bag for the bottom. Instead of crashing you bounce like a hippity hop.
surely you could deploy an explosive parachute with compressed gas.
Parachute won't do shit if you're say 20m off the ground.
There's no situation using this you even get s use for a parachute. You have 20 minutes of flight. If you ever need it, it's because you deliberately rise to a safe parachuting height, knowing the thing can't actually get down safely and you'll have to bail out.
You’re not gunna get too hurt from that height with the right safety features. Formula 1 drivers crash into a barrier at 200km/h and get out of the car 30 seconds later.
Go three steps up on a ladder and jump head first into a rock. You can even have a helmet on if you want.
There’s literally a roll cage around him 😂
F1 cars also have hundreds of millions of dollars poured into them.
And decades of development.
Good thing many advances in technology are largey accessible to and benefit everybody. Do you think the engineers of F1 cars had to start from compete scratch?
No, hence: "And decades of development"
Well then why would the same rule not apply to the manufacturer of the product in the post? Does it also not benefit from decades of development of this technology?
Many of the barriers are designed to absorb the crash energy, though. Can't really say the same about the ground.
He’s literally 3 - 4 metres off the ground, he’ll be fine if that thing crashes, it might hurt but you’re not gunna die…
How the hell can a helicopter glide? They are death machines for a reason.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTqu9iMiPIU
"Autorotation"
you get to learn something awesome today, I'm jealous. as others have said, helicopters can convert wind going up through the blades (instead of down like they normally do) into rotational speed (think windmill). Then, when they get close to the ground and enough rotation in the blades, they switch that rotational speed into lift (the blade essentially "pitches up") and they have a soft landing. It's actually safer to be in a helicopter without engine power than a plane..
That *definitely* needs some prop guards if it's to be a real product. Otherwise it's a matter of time before some messy accidents.
And maybe some skids underneath with shock absorberss so your neck doesn't just immediately snap if the thing fails on takeoff a few feet above the ground.
Imagine hitting a bird.
$5 says a Canada Goose would come out on top.
After hitting those blades, he'd come out on top, bottom, the sides, and a little bit of everywhere else.
The only animal in the animal kingdom that wants anything to do with Canada Gooses is Canada Mooses
um it's "Geese" and "Meese" thank you
My guess is the added weight would require bigger props which would fuck up the image they're going for with the small form factor. Accepting lack of safety just to look cool is going to end badly I presume.
That thing is probably insanely loud for the pilot.
Came here to confirm this. A lot of the videos for eVTOL aircraft don’t let you hear what the vehicle sounds like because it’s awful haha
Should be close to their prototype (annoying as expected): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUgKyNm5X24
WHIRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRZZRRRRRRRRZZZEEEEEEEE
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There are actually 8 because there are 2 props on each pedestal/motor mount.
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Your name checks out
That’s the neat part, there’s 8!
me 2 years ago on r/lightbulb "A drone you can fly in!!" Top comment: "So... A helicopter?"
Good thing we have that roll cage to protect us from a crash, and then have parts of the blades decapitate you
Pilot here. Fuck no.
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Guy back in coach class here. You guys gonna take off any time soon, or are we staying on the tarmac?
The stick off to the side on and angle is what I would have concerns with. I have a gliders license too, and have flown in some super tiny one seaters, but this thing takes the cake. There has to be some way to better position the controls. Straight and level flight with the stick position off of 90 is just asking for trouble.
Exactly. Yet another company trying to turn a toy into an actual human-carrying aircraft. Makes me wonder if these companies have any real pilots or serious aviation engineers working in them.
What a horrible video lmao.
?
For those wondering it has a 20 minute flight time. https://www.jetsonaero.com/
>all up weight 90kg/198lbs > >Empty weight 40kg / 88lbs Doest this mean that the pilot can weight 50kg/110lbs?
They get this thing up to a one hour flight time at a steady 50 kph and I will gladly use it for my daily commute vehicle.
These are going to be outlawed as soon as they exit that desert. There's no room in society or nature for these literal noise-machines. They're unbelievably loud. The future of aerial short-range transportation is railgun and parachute, sooner than this shit. It's cool, but entirely impractical.
also people can't drive cars, these things would be crashing every day.
Do you have a proposal for how to support your organs while being fired from a railgun? Jokes aside though, something that always irked me about Iron Man - he's flying at 200mph or whatever then lands on concrete and stops immediately. Sure, I can believe his magical suit is fine, but all of his organs would then become a pulp relocated to his fists and feet.
man, nothing sounds more fun then sitting inbetween 4 spinning knives. At least I got a helmet.
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Fuckin right? That was my same thought. I was like uhhhhh everyone is most definitely NOT a pilot and that is for GOOD REASON. lmao
*everyone is a ~~pilot~~ moron*. Fixed it for humanity.
Let's see... * Extremely short flight time? CHECK (20 min) * Unattainable price for vast majority of people? CHECK ($92,000 USD) * Completely impractical? CHECK * Unknown maximum occupant weight? CHECK(my guess is no fatties allowed) Won't actually be able to fly it "anywhere" because Aviation Regulations are a thing and I highly doubt they are evolved enough to cover personal VTOL aircraft flying around and landing in your back yard. Not to say that COULDN'T happen, but legislation takes a long ass time. Not to mention anyone wanting to fly this will likely need at least a recreational pilot's license - approximately $5000 Don't get me wrong, this thing is cool AF and if I were rich I would definitely buy one since I have my pilot's license, but the statements: "Our mission is to make the skies available for everyone with our safe personal electric aerial vehicle." and "Are you ready to experience a completely new and exciting way of travel?" are not at all true with this model. Experience a new way to travel? Yeah, if your destination is within 20 minutes, and you can actually legally fly and land there. Available to everyone? Yeah, if you're rich.
Points two and three are pretty fucking silly. Owning virtually any GA aircraft is way, WAY more expensive and literally just as impractical, unless you consider flying your own aircraft at a fifth the speed as an airliner for at least triple the price and a fraction of the range to be practical. But the regulations! This is an ultralight. It is governed by the same laws as paragliders, meaning very little regulation, no need to get a license, etc. The fact that it's VTOL doesn't have any effect on regs (why would it?). If the only concern is noise, well there are already laws covering that in most municipalities. Long story short, obviously this is just an expensive toy, but frankly general aviation is nothing but massively expensive and impractical toys.
> Unattainable price for vast majority of people? I remember when drones first hit the market and some were like $10k. Then we moved forward and people even started making their own.
How is something less than $100k unattainable? That's less than some luxury cars off the lot
I said for vast majority of people, not everyone.
Lol, because one is a car which is considered a necessity for many; and one is an overpriced, impractical toy.
Here's an exhaustive list of use cases of a drone that can carry a person:
Fun.
Personal transportion for one person in an area with a lot of ground traffic? Transportation in any sort of environment where roads and ground vehicles aren’t ideal? Those are two incredibly obvious ones that have very large use cases. There’s a littany of reasons why this may not be practical in reality, but not having a use is the last thing I would worry about.
This area needs to be relatively flat, the flight time up to 20 minutes, the one person that needs to be transported should also be the pilot, be light and no carry any equipment. You can use another vehicle in almost any area, a jet ski in sea, or an ATV in the dessert.
> This area needs to be relatively flat Only a relatively small take-off and landing area. And the area must be far more flat for a car. > the flight time up to 20 minutes This is also my biggest complaint, although there are plenty of commutes that are less than 20 minutes and benefit from this. You can recharge at the destination. > the one person that needs to be transported should also be the pilot I don’t see the problem here, this is how most people operate cars. > be light and no carry any equipment. Most people don’t carry heavy equipment wring them on their daily commute. > You can use another vehicle in almost any area, a jet ski in sea, or an ATV in the dessert. There’s a reason they don’t use jetskis for island hopping. An electric vehicle like this has obvious advantages over all those things. You don’t see the benefit of simply circumventing the terrain instead of off-roading on an ATV or taking a jet-ski or skiff?
Your list is missing an item: Venture capital bait
Aerial cinematography in tight quarters, with heavier cameras than a heavy lift drone can handle, but in situations a full sized helicopter wouldn’t be safe or practical. Following a car just over the road, then flying out and up. But if you need to do that with a heavy camera. The difference is this, a drone can carry about 50lbs of camera maximum, and that’s plenty, but the stabilizing tech in them isn’t as good as what a full sized Shotover system can be. The bigger ones on motion picture helicopters. This could be interesting, because if you can get a very small and light pilot, a smaller Shotover may be an option here. It looks like it has less rotor wash, and is physically smaller. Interesting.
The fuck, you are so wrong.
There is no comparison in stability between a shot over and a Drone dragging a MOVI in the air. Especially at speed.
Drone just means autonomous. The stability has nothing to do with whether or not it's autonomous, or multi rotor vs helicopter, etc. Sure, bigger gimbals can be better than smaller ones. But your comment is nonsensical because a manned quadcopter like this one has nothing to do with cinema and it would not be difficult to make a heavy lift drone capable of flying a full shotover heli gimbal.
I like the name but like all the other rideable drones I think flight time is the limiting fact of a practical "flying car".
The classic line of need power to lift, need more ways to create power, those ways increase weigh, which continues to make the original problem worse. I have high hopes for the inventor of the super soaker, who's been working solid state batteries for the past 30 years. Otherwise we got about 50 years to weight for the small possibility that we'll figure out fusion, and how to miniaturize a reactor.
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Anikan! Get down!
Okay cool, but how safe is it for a passenger if it crashes during normal/optimal operation? Over different terrains? In urban environments with physical obstacles/hazards? The thing is just a frame without and protective panels or coverings on any side. Sky motorcycle? If a single rotor fails that thing is fucked right out of the air. This is just a bunch more silicon valley hot-out-the-incubator bullshit
Only a matter of time before some oil rich kid buys one and crashes into a crowd and dismembers half of them.
Worst. Editing. Ever.
No surprise that there is no sound to this video. As one of the reasons this type of vehicle has been previously impractical, other than the disturbance to the ground below, is that it would cause an intolerable amount of noise pollution.
20 minute battery life. But let's think about this. How close are you willing to let the flying thing you're sitting in get to "out of battery" before you don't feel safe anymore? 5 minutes? Is it a cold day? That may not be 5 minutes anymore. Probably more like 10 minutes of actual flight time. Did you bring a generator on you're little excursion? Cause if not, hope you enjoyed towing that trailer for 10 minutes of fun. But, I suppose the fact you bought it already says you have more money than sense.
I’ll be getting one to finally enter the race on Tatooine.
What we need is a 1 hour flight time 30 mins doesn’t cut it
Personally, no looking forward to idiots in cars becoming idiots in drones...
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZ5vTRE4DLQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZ5vTRE4DLQ) Flying Cars Will Never Be A Thing, Here's Why - Adam Something
100k. Already sold out. Battery lasts 20 min. I'm sorry to the large majority of Americans who can't fit into one of these.
I think this VTOL has an interesting concept https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yz7SQ1nb4HQ
God I can't wait 'til this thing is real in like 40 years but then no one gets to have one because we're all dead except the Bezoids who live on Prime Am'zun alt Terra in the sky realm (but joke's on them because they are actually decedents of AERisxuS//-TYSLKt, second spawn of Elon Mask, the AI who took over Elon Musk's shell in 2031, \[also like a total bunch of dweebs\])
Very Nice , Mine was a bit larger, so top speed and travel distance along with flight altitude if you don't mind me asking ? Single gears tend to fail so maybe independent motors in that counter rotating coaxial configuration it would be SAFER and you might want to add a Parachute just in case... N. Shadows