Why this and not single-rotor collective pitch? There's no good explanation in the marketing material.
SureFly – a personal helicopter designed for safe and easy flight
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Re: SureFly – a personal helicopter designed for safe and easy flight
#22I'm very skeptical of their claims of "unparalleled safety". Thanks to "autorotation"[1] regular helicopters can safely land in most situations even with complete power failure. The claims of safety of this craft seems to derive from N+1 battery redundancy which isn't that impressive. They say they have 8 independent motors, but don't say how many are needed to stay aloft. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autorotati…
Could it be because autorotation requires a skillful, vigilant pilot, and the redundant systems of this machine help avoid urgent need for it?
Re: SureFly – a personal helicopter designed for safe and easy flight
#23Most of the work of the helicopters I see involve long flight times and/or the ability to carry some sort of not-insignificant payload (camera/sensors/pesticides/people).
This doesn't seem to address either of those situations very well. And with 1 seat to sell, you aren't going to be getting many short charter flights.
Re: SureFly – a personal helicopter designed for safe and easy flight
#24A part of me thinks this is really cool tech and it would be amazing for anyone to be able to just hop aboard their personal helicopter and fly wherever they want, but then another part of me thinks of the future this would create, skies no longer clear, filled with objects buzzing around and what hell that would be, on top of the already stressful and crazy life we have now. It's the kind of situation where I think…
I empathize but I think that attitude is an artifact of the age we grew up in. I'm sure equestrians felt the same way when those rackety automobile contraptions started zooming around.
I don't know. Just because I haven't been exposed to it yet and it's not the new normal doesn't necessarily mean it's an objectively better world.
And speaking of automobiles, I feel like a lot of cities are actually fighting back against that now, creating pedestrian-only areas etc... I like the autonomy and mobility that cars offer as much as anyone else, but I sure do enjoy the peace of a quieter country side, and I'm afraid with this technology, even that would go away: there would be no place left to escape the madness.
In my opinion, progress is what makes the world a better place overall for humans, as in better quality of life, not what makes the world a shinier place with new toys, even though we might be getting better and better at creating those.
At the end of the day, the cons far outweigh the pros here for me.
Re: SureFly – a personal helicopter designed for safe and easy flight
#25I'm very skeptical of their claims of "unparalleled safety". Thanks to "autorotation"[1] regular helicopters can safely land in most situations even with complete power failure. The claims of safety of this craft seems to derive from N+1 battery redundancy which isn't that impressive. They say they have 8 independent motors, but don't say how many are needed to stay aloft. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autorotati…
Should be four or less considering each arm has two props. (Unless the motors aren’t powerful enough)
Re: SureFly – a personal helicopter designed for safe and easy flight
#26Most of the work of the helicopters I see involve long flight times and/or the ability to carry some sort of not-insignificant payload (camera/sensors/pesticides/people). This doesn't seem to address either of those situations very well. And with 1 seat to sell, you aren't going to be getting many short charter flights.
The rest of your comment seems right to me, but the title says "personal helicopter"; charter flights are not personal use.
Re: SureFly – a personal helicopter designed for safe and easy flight
#27A part of me thinks this is really cool tech and it would be amazing for anyone to be able to just hop aboard their personal helicopter and fly wherever they want, but then another part of me thinks of the future this would create, skies no longer clear, filled with objects buzzing around and what hell that would be, on top of the already stressful and crazy life we have now. It's the kind of situation where I think…
I empathize but I think that attitude is an artifact of the age we grew up in. I'm sure equestrians felt the same way when those rackety automobile contraptions started zooming around.
Those rackety automobile contraptions! Don't get me started! :)
I am half serious though, cars are annoyingly loud and (obviously) dangerous. I'm loving the eerily quiet electric vehicles. And cities creating carless areas of town or carless days.
Re: SureFly – a personal helicopter designed for safe and easy flight
#28A part of me thinks this is really cool tech and it would be amazing for anyone to be able to just hop aboard their personal helicopter and fly wherever they want, but then another part of me thinks of the future this would create, skies no longer clear, filled with objects buzzing around and what hell that would be, on top of the already stressful and crazy life we have now. It's the kind of situation where I think…
I share this concern, and it will probably be awful in the beginning. However, that being said, I thought i'd hate living next to an airport, and I live by one right now. The sounds of planes over my head are often ignored and I enjoy looking up and seeing a plane coming in for a landing. So what I thought I would hate I actually grew to enjoy. People adapt, that's actually what we're really good at.
Re: SureFly – a personal helicopter designed for safe and easy flight
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
The BMI chart maxes out healthy weights at 192. So unless you have two NBA players or something, it should work well for most but perhaps not all healthy people.
Average weights (no median, sorry) from the CDC ( https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/body-measurements.htm ): >Men: 195.7 pounds >Women: 168.5 pounds So this could carry an average man, average woman, and under 36 pounds. At that point, the weight of your clothing or a bottle of wine becomes very important.
Yes, I did say healthy, which a good half of the USA isn't.
but that still implies a 100m person market, just in the USA, and people in other developed countries tend to be closer to the "healthy" range. There are lots of healthy people out there.
In short, I don't think this will be the make-or-break for flying cars...
Re: SureFly – a personal helicopter designed for safe and easy flight
#30I'm very skeptical of their claims of "unparalleled safety". Thanks to "autorotation"[1] regular helicopters can safely land in most situations even with complete power failure. The claims of safety of this craft seems to derive from N+1 battery redundancy which isn't that impressive. They say they have 8 independent motors, but don't say how many are needed to stay aloft. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autorotati…
Small "personal" helicopters like the Robinson R22 are quite difficult to autorotate safely in a real emergency, due to low rotor inertia. [0]
For the SureFly, Hypothetically if loss of several motors caused the aircraft to be unable to maintain altitude, the aircraft would not suddenly drop like a brick, but drift down to a controlled landing.