Not that it particularly matters but both "house" and "work" appear to be isolated villa's in the country somewhere (definitely not in Sweden) probably in central Italy (from the trees and general landscape I would venture to say Tuscany/Umbria/Lazio).
I mean, the flight video is nice, but this "commute" seems to me very unlike what most people experience daily.
Agreed. The videos is actually relaxing to watch as he's flying over orchards and ravines and their "work" destination happens to exist in the same plush green continuum as the rest of the flight. This work destination also conveniently has an isolated ground level helipad.
I would also be curious to know what the noise is like. You couldn't tell with the music playing. I wonder if that's intentional. I looked for the db/noise rating in the specs on their site but it wasn't listed. I imagine if you lived in that serene country setting and someone was buzzing your property in their Jetson hoverbike you wouldn't be too thrilled.
Depending on where you live flying a vehicle like this will require that you maintain a certain distance from people (500 feet in Canada), which would do something for noise at least. Thats probably why the flight is in the country side actually, they probably are not allowed near a city.
My thought on most people not having this commute is specifically because we don't currently have fling cars/vehicles like this.
I hear Elon Musk made a quote something about nobody wants flying craft all over their heads, but thats the point of the flying craft. Most people live near high density centres because transportation on land dictates but if we could go up we could have more greenery and spread out a little.
I’m curious what the failure mode is like for this. In a plane you and glide and in a helicopter you can autorotate.
With this, I guess it’s a fairly abrupt plummet to the ground?? (Hence a need to limit the height you can fly at?)
On the flip side I guess you may have more redundancies here with the 4x (or is it 8?) motors…
Also, the geek in me wanted to see a nice large cockpit screen with navigation and various vehicle metrics. I’m somewhat surprised that you can make such an elegant looking flying machine but not have much in the way of a computerised (or indeed any) dashboard! (Unless it just wasn’t captured in the video).
FTA: The vehicle features eight drone-like propellers in four pairs, and the makers say the craft will stay aloft even if one of them fails. If a pilot does get into serious trouble, the Jetson ONE carries a ballistic parachute. It also features a triple-redundant flight computer, lidar-driven obstacle avoidance and terrain tracking, and a race-car-inspired cockpit.
The parachute unit is integrated into the airframe. If it's used, the pilot remains inside the aircraft and rides it down to the ground.
These parachutes do take a few seconds to inflate and decelerate a falling aircraft. So there is a "dead zone" in the flight envelope: too low to use the parachute, too high to survive an uncontrolled crash.
As a hobby drone pilot I wouldn’t get in one of these without prop guards. Not because of the risk of the blade hitting me but the moment they strike anything else they’d shatter and you’d plummet to the ground wildly out of control.
I’d be curious to know how large a sphere crash dome around the drone you would need to have a 90% chance of survival falling at terminal velocity.
Really neat. Must like the Tesla Roadster, this is a wildly expensive and impractical toy for rich people, but it's in production and it works so a big first step.
Yes that are! There are places on this earth where travel is prohibitive, and air transport will open entire regions to development without destroying it with freeways first.
Right. Having every random person fly around is an absolute regulatory and organizational nightmare, not to mention that only wealthy individuals will be able to afford this for the next decade.
Meanwhile, catastrophic economical failure, food shortages, inflation and climate change are acutely threatening us, but at least some rich dudes can fly around to places without basic infrastructure, over the heads of the starving and struggling poorer quantiles, to “develop” them.
Yeah the world would be so much better if we just lived in caves. Everybody would sit around and be so glad no rich people ever got access to better technology.
having a car without fuel parked outside my cave would sure feel like we missed a turn.
You have me wonder how one would explain the concept of rich people to the post apocalyptic generation. We.. ehh i mean they created a contract that says everything in the world may only be used by them and everyone else just agreed with it.
> Having every random person fly around is an absolute regulatory and organizational nightmare
I wouldn't be surprised at all if one day autonomous flight for low cost aircraft like this one would turn out to be much easier than autonomous drive for cars.
I mean the computational problems behind it; energy requirements are of course a whole different story though, and will keep prices very high for quite some time, but I can envision a future in which autonomous flying aircraft can talk each other to avoid collisions and/or arrange taking off or landing from/to shared reduced space.
I agree, but that is way into the future. Cars are not nearly able to do this, and they only operate in two dimensions. Aircraft operate in three dimensions and are affected by more factors than cars such as wind and weather.
> Cars are not nearly able to do this, and they only operate in two dimensions.
True but they depend on roads that are built all different from each other, full of irregular shapes and surprises, bumps, pedestrians, bicycles, absent, broken or different signs when traveling to other counties, etc.
Autonomous IFR flight is a reasonably tractable technical problem, as long as nothing breaks. The Garmin Autonomi system can already sort of do that for light aircraft under some very limited circumstances.
The problem is that there are a zillion different potential failure modes (some involving circumstances completely outside the designer's control) and it's impossible to program in responses to all of them. Where experienced human commercial pilots really earn their pay is in handling those rare emergencies.
not sure what to do about tge later part but there is this regulatory idea for sky roads. Fly in a straight predefined line/speed/height. bit like a ski lift.
Cool but seeing those uncovered rotors spinning freely so close to treetops made me really uncomfortable. I don’t even want to think about what happens if this thing accidentally strafes into a person.
Birds will laugh at us. Spinning 8 rotors at, what, 8000 rpm, and making one HELL of a noise just to keep afloat. Lilienthal, too, would be disappointed to see that this is the best version of “democratizing flight” we have come up with after these 126 years. His inspiration where the storks. Their way of flying, silent and elegant, was where he wanted us to be. It’s 2022, and with all of our microcontrollers, carbon fiber and li-ion batteries, his dream is still unfulfilled.
I agree. Flying cars (and to some extent supersonic flying) are always hitting barrier called noise. Concorde had limited deployment thanks to noise limitations - was allowed to go supersonic only above oceans, but not enough range to cross Pacific.
Flying cars are running against noise barrier head-on and every proponent of flying cars will be surprised that people really does not like scream of 8 vacuum cleaners at 2am.
Yup. I mean, the only reason that video looked beautiful was that this CEO was the only hoverbike in that landscape. And even then they had to put on music to hide the noise.
I don't want to downplay the achievement. Building this thing was hard, and I'm sure that flying it must be super fun. Heck, I won't even rule out buying one myself. But when I look at this from the perspective of our ancestors who dreamed of flying, and of our future, I must say: This is not the answer. It's one very clumsy, inelegant iteration, like some 1950s mainframe computer. We should be happy that it exists. But it should exist only as an ancestor to something greater. In other words, we shouldn't celebrate and say we "cracked human flight", or "the flying car", or "democratization of flying". We should not be satisfied with this, at all. And we should remember that, if old Lilienthal saw this, he would be disappointed in us. He'd want us to try harder.
(He might even say that it's not "flying like a bird" anymore if it's so loud. That what we've done here is cheating. Like launching a man from a catapult and then claiming we've "solved flying". It just isn't the thing that people imagined when they longed to "fly like a bird".)
Incredible. But I have a few observations in addition to what others already asked (unprotected rotors in line with the pilot, survivability, ballistic chute etc)
at time offset 02:26 it flies ridiculously close to some tree branches. May be the camera angle but that looks too close for comfort
at 02:41 it flies UNDER some power/utility cable, between 2 poles.
Generally throughout the video it's flying way too low, under the tree line, there were so many obstacles at its height. Are they trying to make me NOT want one of these, was it an illegal flight trying not to be detected and fined massively, was it imposed by the local airspace administration (assuming any were aware) ... ?
Looked like only just barely missed death through most of the flight. Catch the tip of any tree branch in a prop, and enter instant tumbling catastrophe.
42 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 80.6 ms ] threadI mean, the flight video is nice, but this "commute" seems to me very unlike what most people experience daily.
I would also be curious to know what the noise is like. You couldn't tell with the music playing. I wonder if that's intentional. I looked for the db/noise rating in the specs on their site but it wasn't listed. I imagine if you lived in that serene country setting and someone was buzzing your property in their Jetson hoverbike you wouldn't be too thrilled.
... and a pool, like most offices ....
I hear Elon Musk made a quote something about nobody wants flying craft all over their heads, but thats the point of the flying craft. Most people live near high density centres because transportation on land dictates but if we could go up we could have more greenery and spread out a little.
2 cents
I’m curious what the failure mode is like for this. In a plane you and glide and in a helicopter you can autorotate.
With this, I guess it’s a fairly abrupt plummet to the ground?? (Hence a need to limit the height you can fly at?)
On the flip side I guess you may have more redundancies here with the 4x (or is it 8?) motors…
Also, the geek in me wanted to see a nice large cockpit screen with navigation and various vehicle metrics. I’m somewhat surprised that you can make such an elegant looking flying machine but not have much in the way of a computerised (or indeed any) dashboard! (Unless it just wasn’t captured in the video).
These parachutes do take a few seconds to inflate and decelerate a falling aircraft. So there is a "dead zone" in the flight envelope: too low to use the parachute, too high to survive an uncontrolled crash.
I’d be curious to know how large a sphere crash dome around the drone you would need to have a 90% chance of survival falling at terminal velocity.
Meanwhile, catastrophic economical failure, food shortages, inflation and climate change are acutely threatening us, but at least some rich dudes can fly around to places without basic infrastructure, over the heads of the starving and struggling poorer quantiles, to “develop” them.
Makes sense.
I will be sure to tell the hn story by the campfire.
You have me wonder how one would explain the concept of rich people to the post apocalyptic generation. We.. ehh i mean they created a contract that says everything in the world may only be used by them and everyone else just agreed with it.
I wouldn't be surprised at all if one day autonomous flight for low cost aircraft like this one would turn out to be much easier than autonomous drive for cars. I mean the computational problems behind it; energy requirements are of course a whole different story though, and will keep prices very high for quite some time, but I can envision a future in which autonomous flying aircraft can talk each other to avoid collisions and/or arrange taking off or landing from/to shared reduced space.
Begin listing the functions for autonomous car. I’ll wait.
True but they depend on roads that are built all different from each other, full of irregular shapes and surprises, bumps, pedestrians, bicycles, absent, broken or different signs when traveling to other counties, etc.
The problem is that there are a zillion different potential failure modes (some involving circumstances completely outside the designer's control) and it's impossible to program in responses to all of them. Where experienced human commercial pilots really earn their pay is in handling those rare emergencies.
Flying cars are running against noise barrier head-on and every proponent of flying cars will be surprised that people really does not like scream of 8 vacuum cleaners at 2am.
I don't want to downplay the achievement. Building this thing was hard, and I'm sure that flying it must be super fun. Heck, I won't even rule out buying one myself. But when I look at this from the perspective of our ancestors who dreamed of flying, and of our future, I must say: This is not the answer. It's one very clumsy, inelegant iteration, like some 1950s mainframe computer. We should be happy that it exists. But it should exist only as an ancestor to something greater. In other words, we shouldn't celebrate and say we "cracked human flight", or "the flying car", or "democratization of flying". We should not be satisfied with this, at all. And we should remember that, if old Lilienthal saw this, he would be disappointed in us. He'd want us to try harder.
(He might even say that it's not "flying like a bird" anymore if it's so loud. That what we've done here is cheating. Like launching a man from a catapult and then claiming we've "solved flying". It just isn't the thing that people imagined when they longed to "fly like a bird".)
at time offset 02:26 it flies ridiculously close to some tree branches. May be the camera angle but that looks too close for comfort
at 02:41 it flies UNDER some power/utility cable, between 2 poles.
Generally throughout the video it's flying way too low, under the tree line, there were so many obstacles at its height. Are they trying to make me NOT want one of these, was it an illegal flight trying not to be detected and fined massively, was it imposed by the local airspace administration (assuming any were aware) ... ?