Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Jetson One – Personal Electric Aerial Vehicle

jetsonaero.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 246 posts

Re: Jetson One – Personal Electric Aerial Vehicle

#161

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

Jnr wrote: post #157

Lacks the safety features of airplanes (gliding) or helicopters (autorotation), has terrible rotor placement and small air time. I would advertise it as "your personal death machine". :) No amount of money would make me use that thing. EDIT: Ok, sorry, it says it has a parachute, but I still would not use it.

Parachutes have a minimum altitude. For standard human chutes, that’s 300 feet (100 meters) or so.

Not sure what the ceiling is on this. They don’t have footage of it going too high.

You only need to fall 30 feet (10 m), to buy the farm. Less, in many cases (depending on how you fall, and onto what).

Re: Jetson One – Personal Electric Aerial Vehicle

#162

Post by Cederfjard »

unwind wrote: post #126

I found this [1] article when I started googling the people in the company, I thought this quite from their CTO Tomasz Patan was fun: Vi vill inte att folk ska köpa vår produkt och krascha den direkt, så vi har sålt till välkända personer främst i USA som skulle få för mycket skit om de gjorde dumheter med den which translates to (note: native Swedish speaker, but not a certified translator): We don't want people to…

They may have updated the article since you wrote your comment, but as of when I’m reading it, it’s attributing that quote to Peter Ternström, the other founder and CEO.

Re: Jetson One – Personal Electric Aerial Vehicle

#164

Post by namibj »

pininja wrote: post #112

With a 20 minute flight time (and is that with any safety margin remaining? Doesn’t say.) at ~60mph I can only make a 10 mile round trip. 20 miles of each landing spot has a charger (and I doubt there’s weight budget to carry a decent charger with me). It’s a very cool kit for hobbyists but there are very few missions this can fly with utility.

Actually, the power density of a charger shouldn't be an issue for this. You can get very dense systems if you're willing to cool them appropriately (the frequencies you can use thanks to modern GaN and SiC transistors allow for very compact inductors and make switched capacitor converters feasible for mains voltages).

10 kW/kg is not even exotic anymore, and I doubt you'd want to charge at more than 100 kW with an on-board charger, anyways.

Re: Jetson One – Personal Electric Aerial Vehicle

#165

Post by 2sk21 »

runlevel1 wrote: post #47
ricardobeat wrote: post #19

Isn’t it crazy that Moller spent decades trying to get the basics of their flying car, only to give up inches from the finish line? Tech has evolved so fast in the past few years that a brand new vehicle like this can go from design to production in a few years, and anyone can build a rough working prototype in their backyard.

The liquid fuels Moller used had much better energy densities than batteries, but it never flew without a tether. The Jetson One claims to have 20 minutes endurance, which is very impressive, but still impractical. I'm not so sure the finish line is within sight yet. This is closer to an ATV than it is to a scooter. It even looks a bit like a Honda Pilot ATV with propellors. It could attract more folks than a traditi…

I had no idea that Honda had first used the name Pilot for an ATV!

Re: Jetson One – Personal Electric Aerial Vehicle

#166

Post by namibj »

t0mas88 wrote: post #136
syntaxing wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because smaller prop means you need to spin faster to hit the same airflow. And efficiency usually drops by x^2 as a function of rotation velocity. Also, at high speed you have vacuum issues near the tip of the blade. Therefore, having four small rotors can easily be up to a magnitude less efficient than a helicopter.

Efficiency drops by "propeller" speed and then falls off a cliff when the prop tips go super sonic. So you really can't just make them bigger and spin faster.

If you have scimitar blades, this isn't an issue up to ~Mach 1.5 if the airspeed remains well subsonic.

Re: Jetson One – Personal Electric Aerial Vehicle

#167

Post by ginko »

pininja wrote: post #112

With a 20 minute flight time (and is that with any safety margin remaining? Doesn’t say.) at ~60mph I can only make a 10 mile round trip. 20 miles of each landing spot has a charger (and I doubt there’s weight budget to carry a decent charger with me). It’s a very cool kit for hobbyists but there are very few missions this can fly with utility.

If you live in Vanvikan that would be just the right range to cross the Trondheimsfjord to Trondheim, slashing the usual commute by ferry by a factor of 5 or so.

https://www.google.com/maps/dir/vanvikan/trondheim/@63.49028...

Re: Jetson One – Personal Electric Aerial Vehicle

#168

Post by hwillis »

Jnr wrote: post #157

Lacks the safety features of airplanes (gliding) or helicopters (autorotation), has terrible rotor placement and small air time. I would advertise it as "your personal death machine". :) No amount of money would make me use that thing. EDIT: Ok, sorry, it says it has a parachute, but I still would not use it.

Electric motors can autorotate just fine: https://youtu.be/QADYnVeHQOQ

You can't descend quite as slow as a normal engine because the motor has somewhat more friction at low RPM, even though it's similar to free-spinning at higher RPM. That makes for a rougher final approach but just as much glide distance and control.

Small rotors will make it more of a hassle but should still be quite safe. Even if you do end up touching down hard, there's way less angular momentum stored up and you wouldn't have the chaos of giant blades exploding. Of course there's still the batteries, since li-ion cells have only slightly less energy than kerosene when burned.

A parachute is... not the kind of safety feature that should be relied on. Parachutes take >100 feet to open properly. 20 foot falls can easily be lethal.

Re: Jetson One – Personal Electric Aerial Vehicle

#169

Post by noduerme »

tweedledee wrote: post #46
noduerme wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. No one ever said waverunners were a practical form of transportation, but they still sell millions of them. This does look like a really fun personal toy, though. I can easy imagine some rich dudes taking them for Endor-style races through the forest up here.

That would involve Endor-style crashes, it would be insanely dangerous. Flying FPV drones gives much of the same feeling without the all the death.

I live in a forest between a river and a winding road... I see people do craaazy shit all the time, from death races in expensive sports cars on the road to wave running way too close to the dock to loading paintball guns with ball bearings and shooting them in the woods; and I'm telling you it's not if someone does an Endor race with this thing, it's when.

Re: Jetson One – Personal Electric Aerial Vehicle

#170

Post by gorgoiler »

Very cool, especially the demo video which eventually loaded.

Something on their website smells a little whiffy and bovine though:

”[our mission] is to change the way we travel and make the skies available for everyone”

Erm. Everyone? I don’t think so. Your mission is to give the 0.1% yet another way to be jerks, only this time with added noise!

Post reply on HN