For drone-style helicopters, I find the Volocopter (https://www.volocopter.com/de/) the most intriguing concept. The designers of the Volocopter took extreme care for redundancy. It can keep flying with up to 6 of the 18 rotors failing. Even the electric system and the controls have multiple redundancies. The first craft already got licensed for flying in Germany.
SureFly – a personal helicopter designed for safe and easy flight
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Re: SureFly – a personal helicopter designed for safe and easy flight
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
I share this concern, and it will probably be awful in the beginning. However, that being said, I thought i'd hate living next to an airport, and I live by one right now. The sounds of planes over my head are often ignored and I enjoy looking up and seeing a plane coming in for a landing. So what I thought I would hate I actually grew to enjoy. People adapt, that's actually what we're really good at.
An average plane carries around 150 to 200 people and planes are used only for long distances. Living in a world where the affordability of these are like cars, would be far worse, I imagine.
Unlike cars, these machines would not be tightly packed into roads, concentrating the noise and pollution; likely they'd have to keep a serious distance.
Also, with a top speed of 70 mph and range of 70 miles, it does not look like a great daily-commuter vehicle. This device looks like a good fit for an expensive urban fast-jump service, or a good solution for places where roads are hard to build, like going to a forest hike or a mountain trip.
Re: SureFly – a personal helicopter designed for safe and easy flight
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think everyone must have felt this way about automobiles. And by and large, it's worked out just as horribly as they imagined: our communities are divided by dangerous moats we call "roads" -- death traps which we must painstakingly teach our children to avoid, if we dare let our children wander outside on their own anywhere near them in the first place.
I don't get the point - are you suggesting we'd be better off without automobiles? Would we go back to horses? What about global logistics? Agriculture?
We'd be better off with dense cities where automobile is not the primary means of transportation. Like e.g. NYC or many European cities.
Cars and large trucks should mostly belong to highways and country roads.
Re: SureFly – a personal helicopter designed for safe and easy flight
#64> 1 hour of fuel > 70 mph speed This means that the maximum legal range with FAA-mandated fuel reserves is 46 miles (assuming no wind). Also despite shots of it on a driveway, it would most likely be impossible to actually take off or land on your driveway due to local ordinances in most cities. Oh and it doesn't appear to be properly equipped for IFR, so clear weather operation only.
Rotorcraft fuel requirements are different from airplanes. Under VFR it's first intended point plus 20 minutes, day or night.
thanks, will edit
Re: SureFly – a personal helicopter designed for safe and easy flight
#65I'm very skeptical of their claims of "unparalleled safety". Thanks to "autorotation"[1] regular helicopters can safely land in most situations even with complete power failure. The claims of safety of this craft seems to derive from N+1 battery redundancy which isn't that impressive. They say they have 8 independent motors, but don't say how many are needed to stay aloft. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autorotati…
They got a parachute, and with a rotor layout like this, attaching a parachute safely is pretty simple.
Going down on a parachute is not exactly comfortable, but at least you're not going to crash at the earth like a falling rock. It turns a catastrophic crash into an unpleasant but likely quite safe collision.
Re: SureFly – a personal helicopter designed for safe and easy flight
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't get the point - are you suggesting we'd be better off without automobiles? Would we go back to horses? What about global logistics? Agriculture?
We'd be better off with dense cities where automobile is not the primary means of transportation. Like e.g. NYC or many European cities. Cars and large trucks should mostly belong to highways and country roads.
NYC is a very far way from being a carless paradise. Yes, lots of people walk or take transit. But, especially in Manhattan, many streets are choked for a good chunk of the day.
Re: SureFly – a personal helicopter designed for safe and easy flight
#67Just reading through the about page... Where is the aircraft/rotorcraft experience in upper management? There are many reasons that helicopters are dominant at the scale of human transport (some of which have been brought up in this comment thread) and multicopters are prevalent at smaller (drone-size) scales...
All of this is to say I'm extremely skeptical.
Re: SureFly – a personal helicopter designed for safe and easy flight
#68A part of me thinks this is really cool tech and it would be amazing for anyone to be able to just hop aboard their personal helicopter and fly wherever they want, but then another part of me thinks of the future this would create, skies no longer clear, filled with objects buzzing around and what hell that would be, on top of the already stressful and crazy life we have now. It's the kind of situation where I think…
If we can have self driving cars, sure these can be self flying then you don't have to worry.
With your AR eye glasses and earbuds, it can clean out the clutter showing you a clear blue sky and eliminate all the buzzing.
Re: SureFly – a personal helicopter designed for safe and easy flight
#69A part of me thinks this is really cool tech and it would be amazing for anyone to be able to just hop aboard their personal helicopter and fly wherever they want, but then another part of me thinks of the future this would create, skies no longer clear, filled with objects buzzing around and what hell that would be, on top of the already stressful and crazy life we have now. It's the kind of situation where I think…
I wouldn't worry about that. Most people can't even drive cars in "2D" safely, never mind helicopters. The general public will never be given the skies, unless the flights are automated.
Re: SureFly – a personal helicopter designed for safe and easy flight
#70A part of me thinks this is really cool tech and it would be amazing for anyone to be able to just hop aboard their personal helicopter and fly wherever they want, but then another part of me thinks of the future this would create, skies no longer clear, filled with objects buzzing around and what hell that would be, on top of the already stressful and crazy life we have now. It's the kind of situation where I think…
I wouldn't worry about that. Most people can't even drive cars in "2D" safely, never mind helicopters. The general public will never be given the skies, unless the flights are automated.
It's much harder to hit something in the air.