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Jetson One – Personal Electric Aerial Vehicle

jetsonaero.com

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Re: Jetson One – Personal Electric Aerial Vehicle

#31

Post by ctvo »

kumarvvr wrote: post #24

We have gained so much in terms of technological progress, consistently reducing the energy required to go from point A to point B, it surprises me how we are again increasing it for getting from point A to point B. The concept is great, but the push for mass market adoption bugs me. These things are not efficient modes of transport. It takes a lot of energy to move one person from A to B.

> The concept is great, but the push for mass market adoption bugs me.

> These things are not efficient modes of transport. It takes a lot of energy to move one person from A to B.

Will you not entertain the possibility that a form of travel using geodesic distance may be more efficient? Going from Brooklyn to Manhattan and bypassing traffic, for example (a small body of water where flying across would be more efficient for those not familiar)? Or iterative improvements to it, if it gains adoption, would improve whatever numbers you're using for your energy requirements? Or that it may reduce our need to make new infrastructure, and that may also reduce energy costs?

There are a lot of things here to be so certain.

Re: Jetson One – Personal Electric Aerial Vehicle

#32

Post by ramanujank »

This is an amazing outcome! Three cheers to the founders and the team working on this project/company. As with most tech, it does seem like a Pandora's Box in terms of outcomes. Especially regulatory/safety issues.

I come from India, where median folks have a complete and utter disregard for traffic rules and safety regulations. I can't begin to think how we would adopt a technology like this. I mean, how would we start, how would traffic merge? Can we restrict/regulate the flow of vehicles in thin air?

The fact that this is a tech+social problem interests me even more.

Re: Jetson One – Personal Electric Aerial Vehicle

#33

Post by FunnyLookinHat »

jawns wrote: post #4
auslegung wrote: post #3

I swear I saw something like this in some kids magazine 30 years ago. It was supposedly powered by a vacuum motor. I now understand that can’t possibly work, but for many years I thought it could. I’d love it if someone else knew what I’m talking about and could send me a link to the magazine article. I assume it wasn’t trying to be a joke, this was a relatively serious kids magazine, but maybe I’ve been wrong.

It was a regular advertisement in the 1980s and 1990s in Boys' Life magazine, published by the Boy Scouts of America. Picture of the ad: https://www.reddit.com/r/nostalgia/comments/7jrpbu/this_hove...

I built one of these with my dad (the version with only a single skirt) in the sixth grade - it was awesome! Unfortunately, the skirt we created wasn't quite even around and couldn't hold enough pressure for me to ride it, but that didn't stop my younger sister from riding.

Building this started a several years long obsession with hovercrafts. Multiple science fair projects, digging on the internet, etc. My family ended up taking a trip to Europe and I was able to ride across the channel from Calais to Dover on a giant hovercraft. Literally a dream come true at the time. Too bad I was also 14 and super embarrassed by my parents' attempts to take pictures, etc. ;-)

Re: Jetson One – Personal Electric Aerial Vehicle

#34

Post by tweedledee »

omginternets wrote: post #18
syntaxing wrote: post #16

I never understood why startups are so infatuated with quadcopter designs. Just design a small electric gyro-copter and you'll get 10X range and half the complexity.

Doesn’t that require a runway?

Some gyros can jump-start, as in pre-spin their rotor fast enough for vertical take off. It would add a bit of complexity but it'll still be relatively simple.

Re: Jetson One – Personal Electric Aerial Vehicle

#35

Post by tshaddox »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #12

Almost looks like a ground-effect vehicle. Doesn’t go too high; which may not really be an issue. Just high enough, so tarmac isn’t necessary. I seem to recall a discussion on HN, where it was explained that quadcopters don’t scale up too well. I don’t remember the reasoning. The one thing that concerns me about commodity-level flying vehicles, is the way people drive the ones that are stuck on the ground. I would wa…

I’m not sure what reasons there would be for quadcopters not scaling up well. Bigger rotors should be more efficient like with any other aircraft. Perhaps there are scaling issues with quickly changing the speed of larger rotors to maintain flight control? That could be resolved by using variable-pitch rotors, although at that point you’ve lost the key advantage of multirotors (which is their mechanical simplicity) and you’re probably better off with just one even bigger rotor with cyclic pitch control (i.e. a helicopter).

Re: Jetson One – Personal Electric Aerial Vehicle

#36

Post by TylerE »

notatoad wrote: post #29

> Start and Land anywhere you want. Make your garden or terrace your private airport I assume this is wildly illegal in most jurisdictions?

Not especially.

No different than a helicopter.

Hell, plenty of farmers that have a Piper Cub or similar and operate off their acreage.

Re: Jetson One – Personal Electric Aerial Vehicle

#37

Post by leetcrew »

29athrowaway wrote: post #20
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.

Moller tried making an actual car-sized vehicle with 2 seats. The Jetson One produced a minimalistic 1 seat vehicle.

yes, kudos to them for bringing it to market ($90k seems almost reasonable for this sort of contraption), but it's a much less ambitious vehicle. the aircar was supposed to cruise at 300 mph with an 800 mi range. this thing maxes out at 63 mph and has twenty minutes of flight time, so only about a 20 mile range. even if I were somehow allowed to do it, the jetson would barely make it from my house to my office.

Re: Jetson One – Personal Electric Aerial Vehicle

#38

Post by dtgriscom »

syntaxing wrote: post #15
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #12

Almost looks like a ground-effect vehicle. Doesn’t go too high; which may not really be an issue. Just high enough, so tarmac isn’t necessary. I seem to recall a discussion on HN, where it was explained that quadcopters don’t scale up too well. I don’t remember the reasoning. The one thing that concerns me about commodity-level flying vehicles, is the way people drive the ones that are stuck on the ground. I would wa…

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.

The comment was "quadcopters don’t scale up too well"; you're explaining the reverse.

Re: Jetson One – Personal Electric Aerial Vehicle

#39

Post by veonik »

TylerE wrote: post #36
notatoad wrote: post #29

> Start and Land anywhere you want. Make your garden or terrace your private airport I assume this is wildly illegal in most jurisdictions?

Not especially. No different than a helicopter. Hell, plenty of farmers that have a Piper Cub or similar and operate off their acreage.

From what I gather, this is considered an ultralight class airplane. These do not require license or certification, at least in the US.

Re: Jetson One – Personal Electric Aerial Vehicle

#40

Post by anonporridge »

ctvo wrote: post #31
kumarvvr wrote: post #24

We have gained so much in terms of technological progress, consistently reducing the energy required to go from point A to point B, it surprises me how we are again increasing it for getting from point A to point B. The concept is great, but the push for mass market adoption bugs me. These things are not efficient modes of transport. It takes a lot of energy to move one person from A to B.

> The concept is great, but the push for mass market adoption bugs me. > These things are not efficient modes of transport. It takes a lot of energy to move one person from A to B. Will you not entertain the possibility that a form of travel using geodesic distance may be more efficient? Going from Brooklyn to Manhattan and bypassing traffic, for example (a small body of water where flying across would be more effici…

Mass use of flying cars is fundamentally infeasible on any realistic timescale for a huge list of reasons beyond energy inefficiency. Accidents are catastrophic. The noise would be insane. Minor body damage that wouldn't matter for a car could cause the whole thing to crash. You'd need a complex traffic control system that would never be allowed to miss a beat without risk a Kessler syndrome like event.

And in your water example, building a bridge would be drastically better for a high traffic use case.

In cases where you can't justify infrastructure build out, it will still be more efficient to use all terrain ground vehicles.

And no, hovering in the air and fighting gravity ever moment of active travel will never be anywhere close to the efficiency of a rolling vehicle.

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