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

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

#111

Post by ux-app »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #93
Jerry2 wrote: 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…

Automobiles were death traps for approx 80 years, it's just that the utility outweighed the risk. Not sure the same can be said about flying bikes.

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

#112

Post by gpm »

If you stop viewing this as a "flying motorcycle rich person toy" and start viewing it as a "vtol jet engine based drone" it's quite cool.

Have to imagine that there are search and rescue/fire fighting/military uses for this technology, manned and unmanned.

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

#113

Post by WA »

ehnto wrote: post #74
npunt wrote: post #42

These don't look safe, even assuming perfect mechanical reliability, because humans will be piloting them over major population centers. Humans are generally dumb and inattentive, and this particular vehicle looks like it would attract especially dumb humans who'd use them to try dumb things. Since they won't need any piloting certification, this is basically offloading risk onto everyone on the streets below. I'd fe…

That's why I don't think we would ever have flying cars either. We can barely handle driving on flat surfaces and I suspect most people on the road only get by idly emulating simple line following machines rather than actually engaging the whole situation. It takes a third party to orchestrate busy sections of our current flying vehicles, planes, so I can't see any alternative to full automation of a mass of flying c…

Agree on the flying part, not so much on the line following machine. If you think about it: think about the vast amount of cars and miles driven every day. Think of the sheer number of decisions every driver has to make all the time. I think it’s a wonder that the traffic accident rate is rather low.

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

#114

Post by probe »

bredren wrote: post #106
estsauver wrote: post #104

One of the excellent things about YC is how they are completely unphased by moonshots. I don't know of any other organization that is nearly as supportive of ideas that would literally be called crazy other places. 3.5 years ago my cofounder were working on what was actually becoming an okay telecom referral business at the YC Fellowship, but my cofounder and I weren't happy. Pretty much every partner there enthusias…

I’ve raised for and run two moonshot concepts that failed. Now I work on an enterprise saa. Much happier with the saas, but maybe it is a life stage thing.

Really fascinating - can you talk a little bit more about your experiences?

You always hear about trying moonshots but I’ve never heard someone who went reverse and was happier!

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

#115

Post by [deleted] »

ux-app wrote: post #111
CamperBob2 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Automobiles were death traps for approx 80 years, it's just that the utility outweighed the risk. Not sure the same can be said about flying bikes.

[deleted]

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

#116

Post by taneq »

dmayman wrote: post #70
rmason wrote: post #23

They promised my generation flying cars growing up. They never, not a single time talked about flying motorcycles. I don't mean to be negative but here's a few questions: What happens when you hit turbulence? What happens if you get caught in a rainstorm? What happens if you fly into a flock of birds? What happens when you fly into lightning on a clear day? None of those have to be fatal in an airplane, but potential…

We probably have the highest wing loading of any aircraft, therefore the impact of turbulence is much less than fixed wing or helicopter. The pilot has belly strap and lock holding them to vehicle unless they need to release in an emergency in which case it has pyro cutter. In rain you’d get wet just like riding a motorcycle on the road. The engines keep running fine. Flying into birds is not recommended for any airc…

Thankyou for sticking around and answering so many questions!

My first thought was "why is the pilot hunched over the intakes?" immediately followed by "holy hell that wing/disc loading must play hell on power requirements and fuel consumption, how does that work?".

You mention a scale model elsewhere, is there any video of it available online?

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

#117

Post by dmayman »

benj111 wrote: post #88

So if you lie on top of a ducted fan like that, how is it not going to impede airflow? Also what happens if you have a loose thing on your person that gets sucked into the fan. The image looks nice and Sci fi, but that design isn't practical.

The airflow works, we’ve modelled it. Pilot needs to wear similar jacket to current standard motorcycle jacket. No loose change in pockets

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

#118

Post by Judgmentality »

probe wrote: post #114
bredren wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve raised for and run two moonshot concepts that failed. Now I work on an enterprise saa. Much happier with the saas, but maybe it is a life stage thing.

Really fascinating - can you talk a little bit more about your experiences? You always hear about trying moonshots but I’ve never heard someone who went reverse and was happier!

I can't speak for the person you're responding to, but as someone who also started (and failed) a moonshot company I can chime in. To grossly oversimplify, failure (especially when you put everything into something) can make people jaded. The breaking point for everyone is different, but eventually you just don't want to try the pie-in-the-sky idea because you remember how painful the failure is, how many years of your life you lost, how many relationships damaged or ruined, personal debts accrued, etcetera.

At some point you want to minimize stress and just take an easy job that pays a shitload of money and you value your free time more than your career.

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

#119

Post by Gatsky »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #75

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…

Look that's all fine but you must surely realise where you are posting this, and that in the future your comment can only be either irrelevant or held up as an example of people making predictions that turn out to be wrong.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

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