181–190 of 313 posts
This is an ambitious and cool project, but it is not a "moonshot" and it's sure not a "moonshot of moonshots". This kind of ridiculous hyperbole just dilutes our language.
The first "moonshot" was when a nation state developed a manned space programme to land people on the moon. A flying motorbike, no matter how cool it is, is nowhere close.
"Y Combinator’s $150,000 investment is an early step for the moonshot effort" :eyeroll:
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.
YC pays for this site. Why on earth shouldn’t they be able to re-position posts manually? As near as I can tell they have at least two full-time moderators who do a spectacular job, even though they don’t understand my sense of humor ;) Where do you get off on telling them what to do with their own property?
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…
They're VCs. They have to bet on moonshots, because they bet on a lot of companies, most of which fail. If they don't bet on crazy ideas, it means the few that succeed, will only succeed like a "regular" company would succeed - with some nice just above positive cashflow, growing in the next 20 years to somewhat sustainable business - nice and slow. This will not fuel financing other 100s of companies that have faile…
Kudos to the team!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd want it if it didn't work so well to be honest. People in the Bay Area complain about how terrible public transport is. Try living in the midwest or southeast. I frequently dreamed of having my own personal Rocketman style jetpack or something to avoid that terrible commute. If I had the funds I'd buy one of these things without a second thought.
10-22 minutes of flight time doesn’t seem like it has commuter applications. I’d guess that for regulatory and safety purposes you wouldn’t be allowed to overfly a city, and you’d probably need to take off and land somewhere safe as well. This is for amusement, not flying over traffic.
For example, for someone who works at the Googleplex in Mountain View, 10 minutes gets you to Fremont (less oppressive housing market), 15-17 minutes gets you to Santa Cruz or SF/Oakland, and 22 minutes could get you to places as far away as Gilroy or Concord. All of these are spitball estimates, but they are directionally correct.
“As the crow flies” distances are deceptively short, and the impact this could have on housing markets, commuter towns, and “suburbs” could be huge. One could imagine a scenario in which the savings on housing would easily make one of these bikes look downright cheap (e.g., house in Mountain View versus similar house in Fremont). While there are issues of whether one would want to live in Mountain View or Fremont, the fact is that the option will exist in a way that sucks less than spending ridiculous amounts of time on the Bay Area highways and interstates.
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…
Earl I’m so so glad you did, and it’s been such a fun ride to witness. +1 to your experience of the role YC plays, and +1 to what y’all are doing at Apollo
2- FAA will never certify such a thing. This leaves only the experimental option, with all that entails commercially.
3- Ballistic parachutes : They are very heavy and it costs 10k to repack every couple years. Plus it's basically a rocket firing out of the plane, another hurdle.
4- Insurance : Who would insure such a thing ? It is hard enough for a certified GA plane.
5- Noise restrictions of two to four jet engines in an era of going full electric, even for planes (pipistrel anyone ?)
6- Autonomous drones can be made, that fly and land alone. Yet, we don't have any GA plane doing the same and have to pass complex exams in order to fly an aircraft. It will be the same for that one, not necessarily because it will be needed to pilot it, but to guarantee airspace security.
7- Good luck with talking on the radio with all the noise + wind. Once again, this is mandatory in many airspaces and probably all where such a machine would be useful.
8- Weather : I guess you probably have never ridden a motorbike in the pouring rain. Now imagine being cold to the bones and having to keep managing that aircraft, navigating and communicating. Good luck with that.
9- Loads of comments mentioning Tesla and SpaceX. Well, there is a sizeable difference with them : the market size. This company is also facing stronger regulation than Tesla, while having not a hundredth of the funding.
10- Numbers are already bad for GA airplanes with autopilot and al. But any failure on such a thing would almost certainly result in death. + Ballistic parachute opening requires man to be strapped to aircraft.
All things factored in, it feels like yet another project surfing on CAD generated hype, out of touch with most real world problems and justifying it's existence through being a "Moonshot". But we are yet to see any successful moonshot. Let me explain : Companies like SpaceX or Planet where built enhancing the tech that was already there and R&D could be done with ridiculous amounts of funding. Musk's track record was also incredible at the time, with two major exits (Zip, PayPal).
It is sad to see history repeating itself so often: You are basically promising what helicopters were supposed to become and yet they are far from ubiquitous despite their high efficiency, speed and load carrying abilities. I do believe in some VTOL projects but most of them are ridiculous and won't go out of the R&D phase.
Best of luck in any case. I am ready to invite you for dinner should you manage to have a working prototype in two years.
S
Earlier quoted context omitted.
YC pays for this site. Why on earth shouldn’t they be able to re-position posts manually? As near as I can tell they have at least two full-time moderators who do a spectacular job, even though they don’t understand my sense of humor ;) Where do you get off on telling them what to do with their own property?
TBH, moderators do a crappy job and go on power-trips way too often.
In my view, I am frequently down voted because people don’t seem to get my sense of humor or because they tend to be precious liberal snowflakes. I view that as my problem. I am a guest here, and it’s important for me to behave according to the customs of their house.
But I feel the overall product is amazingly good considering they deliver it to us at the low low price of free, and with essentially no advertising distractions. That’s a pretty precious thing in my humble opinion.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean... we're trying to end human hunger for a few hundred million people. Thank you for believing in us? No one has ever told me that it sounds more plausible than driverless cars. I'm torn between puffing up my chest and taking the compliment.
That's a moonshot. I am a native Nairobian, and would like to know how you will revolutionize the sector. Biggest employer, biggest component of GDP but still extremely low yields, low income and inefficient with lack of adaption of tech.
Basically, we start from "What is the best/highest ROI product we could sell a farmer" and then work backwards to make the rest of the business happen. It's required a ton of infrastructure and ground game, things that people in the developed world take for granted are huge problems here.
Let's get coffee?