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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”

#191

Post by deanclatworthy »

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…

Indeed. If your car's power cuts, or breaks fail - the odds of you surviving are incrementally getting higher every year we're on the road. Cars are getting safer and safer, but surely part of that is due to the fact they're on the ground.

If I'm even 10 metres under the ground, flying at 50km/h, if this device fails, of the battery runs out, you're not gonna live to the tell the tale. There is no parachuting, no way of gliding safely to the ground (like planes and helicopters). What is the safety net?

I can't ever see a world where even a minority of the population adopt flying cars. The chance of catastrophic failure (death) is too high.

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

#192

Post by csa »

nikofeyn wrote: post #128

why? (an honest question.) what problem does it solve?

My guess is that the biggest use cases will be relatively “boring” logistics problems. I use quotes because logistics problems are not typically considered sexy, but they sure are the foundation of a lot of businesses when properly executed.

If you start including ideas like military uses and public safety uses, which typically have substantial logistical components, then I imagine the scope of possible problems that this solves becomes more obvious.

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

#193

Post by dmurray »

Animats wrote: post #153

Where are they getting the engine? You can get model aircraft jet engines with enough power for this.[1] Various human-carrying craft have been built that way, such as the Zapata Flyboard.[2] But the engines have a lifespan measured in hours and not enough reliability for carrying humans. That's why all the demo videos of these things are over water, or tethered. People have been trying to build small, cheap jet engi…

Agreed, this seems like a huge problem and this

> The startup’s most pertinent problem is creating the autonomous stabilization technologies that will make flying the Speeder effortless and safe.

looks like a smokescreen for marketing to the tech crowd. Everyone is going to believe they can solve the stabilisation problem: that's "just software" and we see demos of robots solving stabilisation problems all the time. Building a jet engine that's an order of magnitude better (cheaper, more reliable) than the industry has managed in 50 years, but with more or less the same tech? That's the kind of problem you can't just solve with machine learning.

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

#195

Post by thaumaturgy »

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…

I'm having trouble finding good references to cite [1], because the internet doesn't have a long-term memory, but early reactions to the automobile were identical to this. People had never tried to maneuver machines faster than a horse could pull one.

The driving skills that we take for granted now, that seem to come naturally for so many people, were totally nonexistent a little over a hundred years ago. Our brains can now process lots of things moving at different rates of what would have been bewildering speeds to any human not that long ago. We negotiate traffic and anticipate tricky situations and have developed rules that help coordinate the chaos.

Yeah, there are a lot of collisions and deaths all the time, and there are a lot of people who aren't great at it. But even the not-great ones are capable of something that nobody was when the automobile was introduced.

Lots of things turn out better than we expect just because most people don't really want to die. If it were possible for people to fly around overhead in some kind of personal vehicles, my guess is most folks would learn how to handle it.

[1]: Best I could do for now: https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan-histor...

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

#196

Post by rplnt »

Sorry, but this is Kickstarter-mockup-level stupid. Those are done by oblivious people (usually just games) or with malicious intents (most of the stuff you find on kickstarter). This is definitely the second one. The sad thing is, it might not make a bad investment as it can pull in much more cash before failing.

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

#197

Post by cousin_it »

Since there's no need to keep the aircraft small while it's in the air, my ideal personal flight solution would be a combination of ducted fans for safe vertical takeoff and landing, and large wings that unfold or inflate in flight for much higher efficiency / gliding.

Edit: apparently there's a ton of engineering problems with both ducted fans (stability) and folding wings (unfolding in flight is tricky). No idea if this approach is feasible.

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

#198

Post by Firadeoclus »

estsauver wrote: post #170
FBT wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is true: right at this very moment, billions of people have enough food do eat. It is a worthy task to try to extend that to the hundreds of millions who are not there yet, but it's hardly something that has never been done before, unlike driverless cars. That doesn't mean it will be any easier (or harder), but it does mean that it is less of a "moonshot".

Yah, it might also be different connotations on moonshot. If you believe a moonshot has to be something new + unlikely/hard then it's definitely not a moonshot. If you think a moonshot is something that's just incredibly unlikely but potentially super valuable, it definitely is. Empirically, at least two investors who had put money into successful early-stage driverless cars and one who put money early into Planet La…

To me one implication of a moonshot is that you're aiming to hit a small target, and a miss is a miss no matter how close you get.

You made "end[ing] human hunger for a few hundred million people" your goal, but it isn't the case that anything short of that equals complete failure. Even if you only got a fraction of the way that'd be a massive success in my view.

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

#199

Post by CodeWriter23 »

matthewfelgate wrote: post #159

I hate this for so many reasons. One of those 'future' products like clear glass screen and bendable phones that are just, well, stupid. Am I the only person that sees that?

You’re not alone. And don’t even get me started on the Minority Report UI.

But I am down with the foldable phone idea. (I know you said bendable)

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

#200

Post by jaclaz »

Well, idea, instead of selling them, you could rent them like "Byrd" or similar.

Since the sale price is in the order of magnitude of 1,000 times that of an electric scooter, the cost of a ride should roughly go from US$1+0.15 per minute to US$ 1,000,00+150,00 per minute ...

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