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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.
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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.
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).
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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.
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.
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> 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…
This thing in particular has a parachute. I bet from 300 feet it doesnt have time to save you or let you glide to a spot without people under you, but from 3,000 feet it would.
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.
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> 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.
If it became a real problem, it would be easy enough to do something like a mandate built in breathalyzers
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…
However, quadcopters are mainly useful because they are simple and cheap. Once you add the amount of redundancy necessary to safely carry a human (I am not convinced they have hit that bar here) it's no longer cheap, and it makes sense to spend a bit more on a helicopter, which is much more efficient.