Live data from Hacker News

YC's latest moonshot bet is a startup building a $380K “flying motorcycle”

techcrunch.com

91–100 of 313 posts

Re: YC's latest moonshot bet is a startup building a $380K “flying motorcycle”

#91
YC: it's bullshit that you manually pushed this post back to the top of the site after it started dropping down the front page (due to having way more comments than points).

It's fine if you're going to treat posts about YC companies as ads that are immune from voting and other site mechanics, but then you need to label them as ads.

Re: YC's latest moonshot bet is a startup building a $380K “flying motorcycle”

#92
post #90

Glenn Martin and Martin Jetpack [0] (Glenn left the company in 2015 though) has been trying to build and bring to market something similar for the past decade (development has been going on decades before that). There's apparent commercial, private, and government interest in the device, but somehow that hasn't actually manifested into a finished and delivered product. When Glenn spoke to a group of potential investo…

Our tech could not be more different to the MJP. Theirs was a gasoline engine powering a pair of ducted fans. Too many single points of failure and never able to keep the engine cool, not possible to fly much faster than 60mph. Ours is 1/3rd the size, will fly at 4x the speed. We’ve flown our jetpacks all over the world. We already have a development agreement with the US Navy. They are perfect for overt (perhaps not…

It's exciting to see y'all working on this. I'm all for the Buck Rogers-style innovation.

I'm curious, how high have you actually flown it? Up to 15,000 ft? That sounds absolutely terrifying.

Re: YC's latest moonshot bet is a startup building a $380K “flying motorcycle”

#93
post #77

When I was younger, I had a motorcycle accident. I survived but barely and required close to two years of rehabilitation. You won't survive an accident in this thing.

Did your motorcycle have all kinds of advanced gyros, inertial sensors, radar/lidar sensors, and control loops?

Seems like your comment is a bit like someone in the 1900s pointing at an early car and saying, "I fell off a horse once and nearly broke my neck. You won't survive an accident in that contraption." He wouldn't have been entirely wrong, but he wouldn't have been right, either. His comment would have added nothing useful to the discourse.

Re: YC's latest moonshot bet is a startup building a $380K “flying motorcycle”

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could YC pro-actively get in touch with the folks already working on the project? Sounds like they would be your best bet at success.

That's a good idea. I just emailed them.

It's already people at UCSF anyways so that's less complicated already.

Re: YC's latest moonshot bet is a startup building a $380K “flying motorcycle”

#96
post #90

Glenn Martin and Martin Jetpack [0] (Glenn left the company in 2015 though) has been trying to build and bring to market something similar for the past decade (development has been going on decades before that). There's apparent commercial, private, and government interest in the device, but somehow that hasn't actually manifested into a finished and delivered product. When Glenn spoke to a group of potential investo…

Our tech could not be more different to the MJP. Theirs was a gasoline engine powering a pair of ducted fans. Too many single points of failure and never able to keep the engine cool, not possible to fly much faster than 60mph. Ours is 1/3rd the size, will fly at 4x the speed. We’ve flown our jetpacks all over the world. We already have a development agreement with the US Navy. They are perfect for overt (perhaps not…

Hey first things first I respect what you're doing. A 1% chance of success is worth it here. That being said... You are literally exactly this with your comment...

> When Glenn spoke to a group of potential investors (which I was somehow a part of) back in 2011 you'd think that they were on the cusp of having a finished product and a stack of orders from the US DOD, a variety of commercial organisations, and dozens of rich people who want a personal aircraft.

Re: YC's latest moonshot bet is a startup building a $380K “flying motorcycle”

#97
post #77

When I was younger, I had a motorcycle accident. I survived but barely and required close to two years of rehabilitation. You won't survive an accident in this thing.

Did your motorcycle have all kinds of advanced gyros, inertial sensors, radar/lidar sensors, and control loops? Seems like your comment is a bit like someone in the 1900s pointing at an early car and saying, "I fell off a horse once and nearly broke my neck. You won't survive an accident in that contraption." He wouldn't have been entirely wrong , but he wouldn't have been right, either. His comment would have added…

Um, yes, actually. Humans are capable of all of those things. The problem usually arises when they decide to do something stupid, or somebody else decides to do something stupid and it involves them.

Re: YC's latest moonshot bet is a startup building a $380K “flying motorcycle”

#98
Maybe I have a different definition of the word, but I wouldn't describe this as a moonshot. A "moonshot" is something incredibly hard to do that will have a huge impact on society if you manage it. Building a (really cool) $380k toy won't impact very many people at all.

Re: YC's latest moonshot bet is a startup building a $380K “flying motorcycle”

#99
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our tech could not be more different to the MJP. Theirs was a gasoline engine powering a pair of ducted fans. Too many single points of failure and never able to keep the engine cool, not possible to fly much faster than 60mph. Ours is 1/3rd the size, will fly at 4x the speed. We’ve flown our jetpacks all over the world. We already have a development agreement with the US Navy. They are perfect for overt (perhaps not…

It's exciting to see y'all working on this. I'm all for the Buck Rogers-style innovation. I'm curious, how high have you actually flown it? Up to 15,000 ft? That sounds absolutely terrifying.

No we haven’t to 15k ft, we’ve modelled that. We’ve flown at approx 7k ft above mean sea level in alps

Re: YC's latest moonshot bet is a startup building a $380K “flying motorcycle”

#100
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4 - Quidditch

I love this idea. I've always wanted a way to play Quidditch, and short of someone building a Quidditch court into an orbiting space station, couldn't think of how you would do it. This is the answer!

Probably not quite what you are thinking of: https://www.iqasport.com/what-is-quidditch/
Post reply on HN