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Jetson One – Personal Electric Aerial Vehicle

jetsonaero.com

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Re: Jetson One – Personal Electric Aerial Vehicle

#51

Post by tshaddox »

leetcrew wrote: post #44
tshaddox wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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) a…

helicopters also have one major advantage for manned applications: autorotation. there's at least a chance to survive loss of power in a helicopter. a quad with no power just falls.

Autorotation is a great thing to have when your motor fails, but presumably multirotors would at least make up some reliability by having several motors and presumably being able to safety land when one motor fails.

Re: Jetson One – Personal Electric Aerial Vehicle

#52

Post by anonporridge »

tweedledee wrote: post #50
anonporridge wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can also take gondolas to the top of mountains, but people still climb them, putting themselves in unnecessary risk of death for the same views. There will always be some subset of people willing to do crazy dangerous things when similar safe alternates exist. And I for one am excited to see the race footage.

I've flown FPV drones through forests, it's insane. The reaction speeds needed are crazy. It is almost impossible to last a day without crashing. I'm sure there are lots of fun things to do with it, but Endor style races is not one of them. The people willing to do things that crazy don't last very long.

You could say the same thing about free solo climbing.

Yet people still do it (and regularly die) and keep pushing the limits of what we thought was possible.

Re: Jetson One – Personal Electric Aerial Vehicle

#54

Post by mortenjorck »

From the video, it looks like this craft is limited to about 10 feet in altitude (certainly as high as I’d want to go, but I imagine their primary market at first is going to be thrill-seekers). And yet that’s really all you need for a lot of point-to-point transport, especially in rural areas (which I also imagine will be the only legal places to fly these for the foreseeable future).

Re: Jetson One – Personal Electric Aerial Vehicle

#55

Post by tweedledee »

dtgriscom wrote: post #38
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.

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

They are explaining how quadcopters don't scale very well. You may be misunderstanding the explanation. The surface area covered by the rotor is much less for quadcopters and it is difficult to make up for that. Plus small rotors are less efficient. One upside for quadcopters is simplicity but that advantage diminishes with scale.

Re: Jetson One – Personal Electric Aerial Vehicle

#56

Post by ctvo »

kumarvvr wrote: post #41
ctvo wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Will you not entertain the possibility that a form of travel using geodesic distance may be more efficient? I completely agree. But for mass market personal aerial vehicles, regulation would eventually force vehicles to fly close to ground (for safety of self and others, better fall 30 feet than 300 feet) In this scenario, geodesic distance hardly makes any difference. Personal aerial vehicles are never going to be…

> Personal aerial vehicles are never going to be safe. Not for the lack of innovation or technology, but for human nature. Ever see how many people drive their cars with the "check engine" lights on? Or how many fail to get theirs serviced in time, or change the oil in time? The mass market is not fit to drive their own personal aerial vehicles.

> There are niche uses, such as medical emergencies, policing, etc. Putting these into the hands of everyone is a disaster waiting to happen.

Listing all of the things that could go wrong with a technology hasn't worked well for us. Imagine doing this exercise for the automobile. New infrastructure, a slip of the hand killing pedestrians, etc..

I acknowledge that there are many issues.

What I see:

The price point is reasonable enough that if there isn't regulatory enforcement, some employees at big tech will start flying these things along the water from downtown San Francisco to work / in-person meetings, saving them 2 hours a day. Convenience and time at this price point is very appealing to a certain demographic outside of any general nerding out over futuristic tech. The same conditions exist in New York City. If this is allowed to happen, this space is interesting, but of course, we're talking about ~20 vehicles over 2-4 years here.

Re: Jetson One – Personal Electric Aerial Vehicle

#57

Post by LVDOVICVS »

leetcrew wrote: post #44
tshaddox wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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) a…

helicopters also have one major advantage for manned applications: autorotation. there's at least a chance to survive loss of power in a helicopter. a quad with no power just falls.

This machine includes a fast-deploying ballistic chute.

Re: Jetson One – Personal Electric Aerial Vehicle

#58

Post by [deleted] »

mortenjorck wrote: post #54

From the video, it looks like this craft is limited to about 10 feet in altitude (certainly as high as I’d want to go, but I imagine their primary market at first is going to be thrill-seekers). And yet that’s really all you need for a lot of point-to-point transport, especially in rural areas (which I also imagine will be the only legal places to fly these for the foreseeable future).

[deleted]

Re: Jetson One – Personal Electric Aerial Vehicle

#59

Post by tweedledee »

anonporridge wrote: post #52
tweedledee wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've flown FPV drones through forests, it's insane. The reaction speeds needed are crazy. It is almost impossible to last a day without crashing. I'm sure there are lots of fun things to do with it, but Endor style races is not one of them. The people willing to do things that crazy don't last very long.

You could say the same thing about free solo climbing. Yet people still do it (and regularly die) and keep pushing the limits of what we thought was possible.

I am aware crazy people do exist. It's a matter of degree and I would suggest that flying this thought a forest Endor style would be far more dangerous than free solo climbing.

Re: Jetson One – Personal Electric Aerial Vehicle

#60

Post by kumarvvr »

ctvo wrote: post #56
kumarvvr wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Will you not entertain the possibility that a form of travel using geodesic distance may be more efficient? I completely agree. But for mass market personal aerial vehicles, regulation would eventually force vehicles to fly close to ground (for safety of self and others, better fall 30 feet than 300 feet) In this scenario, geodesic distance hardly makes any difference. Personal aerial vehicles are never going to be…

> Personal aerial vehicles are never going to be safe. Not for the lack of innovation or technology, but for human nature. Ever see how many people drive their cars with the "check engine" lights on? Or how many fail to get theirs serviced in time, or change the oil in time? The mass market is not fit to drive their own personal aerial vehicles. > There are niche uses, such as medical emergencies, policing, etc. Putt…

> Listing all of the things that could go wrong with a technology hasn't worked well for us

I am did not list anything wrong with the technology.

My point is that human nature itself is at fault. Would you trust a flying machine in the hands of a drunk driver? But, no amount of regulation / laws / punishment will deter such incidences.

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