I really don't get some people's obsession with jetpacks. Is it just because they look cool?
what is it that jetpacks allow you to do?
'Gravity' is testing their use in search and rescue on a mountain, pretty cool.
The race to create working, practical personal jetpacks
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Re: The race to create working, practical personal jetpacks
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
Come on, I 100% realize that jetpacks will probably always be impractical/unsafe. Although, I think there’s a lot of allure in the same way that there is for motorcycles. I imagine you would get this sense of free flying, like a bird — it just seems fun. And if we somehow magically engineered past the energy and safety problems, you’d have mobility like a helicopter, but without needing the helicopter pad in cities.…
Jetpacks are unsafe when users can manipulate them and potentially crash them, or ignore safety warnings etc.. It's a lot safer if they are flown by AI. Possibly only reverting to manual control in an emergency and then only for a controlled AI assisted landing. For example. That could prevent the scenario where terrorist with TNT strapped to his belt flies into a buildng. On the other hand: People could still muck w…
> > It's a lot safer if they are flown by AI
It would completely defy its purpose .
It looks like Level 4/5 automation will never be achieved for cars , the good thing about that is not having to deal with the psychological problems that come with it.
Cars, bikes, motorbikes, boats,jetskis….and jetpacks.
People love them because it makes them feel in control as they are the ones at the wheel
Re: The race to create working, practical personal jetpacks
#13Ubiquitous personal jet packs would offer a level of convenience and mobility that would make it nearly impossible to keep strangers off my balcony.
Re: The race to create working, practical personal jetpacks
#14I’m so excited about these. I think the coolest thing would be exploring areas that are hard to hike to. But I really want a good safety story. Maybe it needs airbags all around to turn you into a giant beach ball if something goes wrong? Or at least a lot of redundancy.
I think user error is a much biggest risk than technical failure. Unless you can make the jetpack prevent you from doing stupid things, like Airbus airplanes which disallow the pilot going outside the safety envelope. Maybe you can have a safety mode, which doesn't allow you going over 5 m height and 30 km/h speed, or something like that.
Restricting to under 5m height is much less safe than restricting to only over 10m height except at specific landing sites. I can't imagine you'd ever want that restriction.
Re: The race to create working, practical personal jetpacks
#15I really don't get some people's obsession with jetpacks. Is it just because they look cool?
If I had more time and money than I knew what to do with, and there are a lot of people in this class these days, I would be quite interested in obtaining a jetpack.
Re: The race to create working, practical personal jetpacks
#16If there were a perfectly reliable, super easy to use jetpack: you would not be allowed to use it. Even if the technology were there, so are powerlines, helicopters, and other jetpack users. Besides that, there are billions of dollars of security fences around government and other installations like power plants. I doubt they would let that be basically nullified, and would fight tooth and nail to prevent the sale of…
Except for safety issues, all those issues exist with drones, and you're still allowed to fly drones. More likely is that certain areas would be blocked / limited.
Re: The race to create working, practical personal jetpacks
#17I really don't get some people's obsession with jetpacks. Is it just because they look cool?
what is it that jetpacks allow you to do?
Ideally: Travel point-to-point, rather than constrained by roads, turns, intersections, all competing with similarly-constrained traffic. Congestion en route would largely go away (although we would probably adopt "lanes" of travel analogous to what the airlines use) and would be replaced by congestion at popular destinations (again, much like the busiest hub airports).
I think a more feasible variant of this is a small platform on which the pilot would stand or sit, or from which s/he would hang, lifted and driven by the equivalent of multiple battery-powered drones.
Re: The race to create working, practical personal jetpacks
#18Re: The race to create working, practical personal jetpacks
#19Re: The race to create working, practical personal jetpacks
#20Not that a jetpack appeals to me at any level, but this seems like exactly the type of project that should not be developed in a race.