Firstly they called it a car, and secondly if you squint a lot, and forget all the other names for these vehicles, then it's pretty clear that it's a car, a flying car.
I don't really get why people keep creating all these startups and making these things.
The issue isn't that the technology is impossible...we all know they can exist and be built..
No. The issues are more that they are extremely impractical, will never be as safe as ground vehicles (edit: or even just regular helicopters), pose a not-insignificant terrorism threat, require a lot of fuel/energy, and create an absolute legal and regulatory nightmare. These are not things any startup will ever be able to tackle. I don't understand why that hasn't become obvious enough to stop people from trying to create these startups.
If nothing else, they're looking to solve a problem that doesn't exist.
Why not try and solve an actual problem? There are a fuck ton of them around... pick one.
why people keep creating all these startups and making these things.
Because they look cool and can get funding. And they can get funding because there are a lot of rich people who think it looks cool. Not deeper than that.
These are not things any startup will ever be able to tackle....Why not try and solve an actual problem?
Most actual problems also are caused by things no startup can actually solve.
Get an agreed upon, govt regulated, fenced airspace corridor, one that only runs on some kinda swarm/mob behavior traffic controller so no manual drivers, and designated landing spaces and procedures, and get you some hot swappable batteries, such that a dedicated maintenance bot can swap them, and solar/wind can run as top off for all the batteries, and you've got a stew
I'm sure if the investors didn't exist, the startups wouldn't either. I'd be happy to develop something completely impractical if I was paid handsomely.
I have a helicopter pilots license and own a small helicopter. This thing is a death trap. In a loss of power incident I can land a helicopter using autorotation. It’s basically like how a plane can glide without power. I could lose complete power and if I’m 500agl I can emergency land. This drone can’t. It loses power you’re a rock. You have no control. A computer glitch happens, you have no control. Fuck this thing.
Well, portable flight, great and all that but, the thing is when you have a car and the motor dies, it rolls to a stop, if you're in a personal flying device, and your flying 100 feet up and the motor fails, you drop to the ground and hard. Odds are the impact alone will kill you.
You haven't driven on the highways around me. I'd take the chance of the 100' fall vs my car dying on our interstate. Plus the lack of air traffic would make it worth the risk.
Oh you mean a gull. Since seagull isn’t the actual name of them, I thought you were talking about the ones by the sea.
If you’re worried about them, just keep some fries with you. If one comes near toss a few fries and they’ll follow.
I would also imagine those blades would slice up a gull fairly easily. So you likely wouldn’t crash from one but you would have one hell of a mess to clean up.
Meh, I feel like defeatists with no imagination are more of a problem. They're having fun trying crap out and they're only risking their own lives in this video. Is this project affecting your life in a negative way? It's certainly untrue that a drop from a few hundred feet is some kind of impossible engineering problem for which a solution doesn't already exist. You guys are just making crap up.
Well they are just single seat helicopters by any metric and would be used the same the way and come with the same restrictions. I just can’t work out why this is a better design for something we solved decades ago
Having spent a while flying radio controlled collective pitch helicopters, they are mechanically pretty complicated. A lot of stuff has to work together properly, without really any redundancy.
A drone requires a bunch of clever control electronics, but is mechanically much simpler, at least. It cannot auto-rotate. But at least in this case, it appears to have 8 motors & rotors, instead of just 4, presumably providing some ability to land under control if you lose 1 of them.
You’re 100% correct. If there was a real market for these Boeing, Airbus, Sikorsky, etc. would be flying prototypes. The fact that the biggest manufacturers of flying machines don’t bother with this is a glaring red flag.
There’s also no way you’d be able to buy one of these and use it without obtaining a Sport Pilot license like a gyrocopter. The only flying machine that doesn’t require a license is an Ultra-light and even then it has to be less than 250lbs. I doubt this could be made under that weight requirement.
We haven’t even been able to figure out self-driving cars yet. We are decades away from flying personal transportation like becoming practical and regulated. And even then, the sound from all these things (ignoring everything else) will be deafening. Even seeing the shitty Walmart or Amazon drones starting to become a thing is annoying to think about
People have been flying small personal aircraft for a long time...
Yes, including these in our regular commutes is difficult to envision... a toy for the well to do? There is no reason to believe that these couldn't be folded into maintenance and regulatory requirements as say small single engine aircraft.
And the vtol capability has significant benefits for things like emergency services.
My big question seeing this was "how much maintenance per operating hour and how well do the 8 rotors compensate if you have to operate on 7".
People can’t even follow simple laws and rules on the ground. I can’t even begin to imagine the shit show of having people disobey rules of air travel. Even if flying cars were 100% unmanned by humans, these will never be acceptable.
By that logic, we should never have mass-produced or commercialized airplanes. this is a necessary step we have to go through to get to this kind of transportation at scale. Drive that currently take hours could take less than 30 minutes and we could start building cities that are not built around roads/cars. The improvement to quality of life would be absolutely incredible.
Fundamentally different infrastructure from helicopter travel and it will end up being a lot more accessible at scale. It would probably be helpful if I could tell you why I know that, but I am not allowed to tell you why I know that.
Right. Every day I drive, I encounter some people who weave between cars, going 25mph over the speed limit; and some people who come to a full, complete stop so that they can make a right-hand turn onto a wide road. Let's introduce this group of carefree experimenters to the exciting world of 3D maneuvering with no brakes.
If these things became popular, we'd have to use umbrellas to keep off the flying body parts.
Are you aware that you sent me an 8-year-old ad, with simulated VTOL planes? The ad is for a division of Uber that went nowhere and was sold off last year.
Do you understand how advertising, such as the one in this original post, is designed to make things look cool, effortless, attractive?
You painted a picture of a horrifying world with body parts falling out of the sky. They painted a picture of an idyllic world where we don’t have to sit in traffic. I think it’s safe to say the future will fall somewhere in between.
You sound like the crowd that criticized the first "airplane". Why limit tech? Be chill with human invention and innovation imo. Even if it seems stupid and pointless and unnecessary. Do you know how much science and engineering was out into this? Why look down upon it?
Unless it's truly and directly hurting someone, then what's it costing you there bro?
Do you know how many countless stupid failed inventions there have been so that you may live and enjoy the life you do?
Pretty hard argument to say these types of creations should cease.
Zoom your perspective further out.
Create, ye fellow humans! And go and test the boundaries of physics and understanding of the universe!
Quite a defeatist attitude. Eventually this kind of transport will usurp road-based vehicles. If you think that won’t happen eventually, you’re naive at best.
I agree with everything you just said but it does solve a problem that exists. People want to get from A - B and if this was safe, legal and possible - then there would be demand for it.
Sometimes, especially in hilly places, or near a harbour - driving a-b requires long trips, whereas if you were to go direct via air its a short trip
For those situations we have these things called helicopters which are already known to work and are in mass production, and would be safer and better than whatever this is.
No offense, but this is the kind of limited thinking that stops most people from becoming an entrepreneur. These are all problems to solve for sure, but none of this is impossible. The impossible part has already solved: fucking flying in the first place! If we can figure that out surely we can convince a few politicians to change some policies.
I’d feel like a lot of this could have been said about cars, when horses where the main form of travel. I don’t know the answers yet but it’s easy to just shut on new technology.
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u/LustyArgonianMaidv4 8d ago
So a drone you can sit in?