[HN Gopher] We have jetpacks and we do not care ___________________________________________________________________ We have jetpacks and we do not care Author : zdw Score : 210 points Date : 2022-01-27 17:23 UTC (5 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com) | spaetzleesser wrote: | We also have supersports cars that can go 200 miles an hour and | accelerate 0-60 in 2 seconds but not many people have one. | Current jetpacks are certainly interesting but almost useless | besides maybe a few very specialized things. As are supersports | cars. And both are prohibitively expensive for most people. | MomoXenosaga wrote: | We have flying cars and nobody cares (unless you're a bored | millionaire). | m1117 wrote: | It's like the NFT of aviation | msie wrote: | I hate that particular jetpack design where the arms are tied to | maneuvering thrusters. I like the other one by jetpack aviation. | https://jetpackaviation.com/ | mrleinad wrote: | Sounds a lot like that quote from the 70s "there is no reason for | any individual to have a computer in their home." | | That held true until prices dropped and computers were actually | useful to individuals and not room-sized machines. | arduinomancer wrote: | Isn't it a huge problem that a jetpack is not fail-safe? | | With an airplane/paramotor you can still glide safely down if | your engine dies. | | What would happen if the jetpack engine fails mid air? | wutbrodo wrote: | Wouldn't a parachute work? I know very little about | flying/aerodynamics, so I might be missing something obvious. | gs17 wrote: | It would work in some cases, but if you're too low it won't | necessarily have time to slow you down enough. The record for | the lowest BASE jump is about 100 ft, and that wasn't a | surprise equipment failure. Parachutes would help in a lot of | situations, but you would still easily die in a lot of other | situations. | jonathankoren wrote: | Ballistic parachutes exist for light aircraft. Seems like | they'd work here as well. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballistic_parachute | darau1 wrote: | If I could afford it I'd buy it and learn how to use it to | commute to work and back (safely, of course). | capableweb wrote: | > They can't hold enough fuel for more than eight minutes of | flight - and even that's the upper end. Kerosene is heavy, burns | quickly, and a human can only carry so much. A battery would be | far better, but they're much heavier - at least for now. Someday | someone might invent a battery light and energy-efficient enough | to do better than kerosene, but, for now, you can only use what | you can carry, and that's not much. | | Seems there are good enough reasons for people to not really care | about jetpacks (yet). But it does seem like the military/law | enforcement could have some use for it, mainly for boarding | moving vehicles and/or scaling walls/barriers. | mikestew wrote: | If you think leaf blowers are loud and blow shit everywhere, wait | until folks have a leaf blower powerful enough to lift a human | being with its output. | | Point being, we never wanted them in the first place, we just | didn't know it. | sevenf0ur wrote: | My brother has flown one of these on a tether. They are | deafeningly loud and put out tons of heat so you need special | clothing and it needs to be cool downed after use. Have to fly | low to the ground or over water where you are better off with | other means of transportation. Not to mention this thing runs out | of kerosene in 10 minutes. Not practical for consumers in the | slightest. | pqdbr wrote: | Nobody cares because we have something better. It's called | paramotoring. | | Saying it changed my life wouldn't be an overstatement. The | ability to store it inside my sedan, travel anywhere, take off | with my own feet, fly anywhere for around 4 hours, and land | basically anywhere... is just magical. | JKCalhoun wrote: | You've got my attention. | | Been watching these kids with paramotors on YouTube blaze | across fields, drop in on a rural McDonalds.... It looks like | fun ... and safe enough? | pqdbr wrote: | It's the best thing you can do with your clothes on, lol. And | extremely safe. I've been flying for 4+ years and I never | even twisted an ankle. | | Actually, if you like adrenalin, I'd suggest looking | elsewhere. I did skydiving for many years before discovering | paramotoring, and they are completely unrelated activities. | | Yes, you can do high speed flying and "slalom" with your | paramotor, but 98% of us don't. It's a contemplation sport. | Like going on a bike ride or jetski ride with your friends, | but in 3 dimensions. It's all about the views, soaking up the | scenery, and having a good time in the sunset or in the | sunrise. If you live near the beach, you can fly all day; if | you live in the countryside, you'll probably fly early in the | mornings or in the sunset, due to the lower thermal activity | (it gets bumpy otherwise). | | If your engine fails ... you have a huge "parachute" that | sails 6 meters forward for ever meter down. Actually, every | single landing we do, we are either with our engine | completely shutdown or idling. I've had 3 malfuctions in | these 4 years; as long as you're flying watching your "safety | cone", you'll slowly glide to a pleasant landing. | | If your main glider fails (they don't, but our main enemies | are kites; their lines can cut through our lines like | butter), you still have a reserve chute that you can throw as | a last resort. | | If you fly over water, equip yourself with flotation devices. | There are many specific to paramotors that inflate | automatically. | | What defines the sport is the wing you choose. You'll get | trained by an instructor, and he'll guide you to the best | wing according to your weight and desires in the sport. | | Basically: | | - Get professional training; - Get a good equipment and a | wing suited to your weight; - Don't fly over water without | flotation; - Always watch your "safety cone" in the event of | an engine out; - Don't fly spirals near the ground (don't be | a showoff); - Beware of your weather forecast and land if | winds go over your comfort speed; | | You literally become a drone (mine is getting dust and never | flies anymore). It's incredible. If you have the chance, get | yourself trained, you'll add a whole other dimension to your | life. | [deleted] | asciimov wrote: | Nothing is safe, you just have to acknowledge the risk | involved and accept it. | | Risk is everywhere, if you accept the risk involved you may | find yourself having a good time. | 8bitsrule wrote: | Back in 1884 at Coney Island people paid a nickel and lined | up for a 600-foot ride (at _6 miles per hour_!) on the | first 'roller coaster'. (Some of them probably fainted!) | Toutouxc wrote: | > and safe enough? | | They're like motorcycles. Do everything right and it's almost | safe (someone else can hit you on the road and there are rare | meteorological phenomena able to bring a paramotor down, e.g. | a microburst), but even small errors can result in severe | injury or death. | jodrellblank wrote: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1Z8YT6w7Rc - guy flies to | 17,500 feet on his paramotor. | | I didn't know they were a thing before watching this. Amazing. | brailsafe wrote: | Dude takes off from a rather unsettling neighborhood, damn. | lsh123 wrote: | And also collide with planes: | | https://www.star- | telegram.com/news/state/texas/article256764... | Toutouxc wrote: | Well, paramotors are actually a bit less prone to mid-air | collisions (aside from showing off, wing tip bumping etc.), | because they're usually brightly colored, the pilots have | perfect visibility, they fly slow and usually pretty low | (lower than most airplanes). | imoverclocked wrote: | I think it's more due to the big sky theory. | | When flying even a modest GA aircraft VFR, there isn't | much time to react if you've been looking down at | foreflight/instruments for 30 seconds while heading | straight towards a paramotor which has no ADS-B out. This | says even more for IFR craft that move much faster. | austinl wrote: | I've just been getting into paragliding (i.e. without the | motor), and have been absolutely loving it. It blew my mind to | learn that by riding thermals, paragliders can essentially stay | in the air indefinitely. My longest flight so far has only been | about 15 minutes, but people are regularly in the air for | hours. | | For some more inspiration, check out "speed flying" -- | essentially, paragliding with skies: | https://youtu.be/UwWLnaME0CI | mrtksn wrote: | I used to do paragliding back in college, definitely prefer | it to paramotoring because no engine noise and much more | agile wings. | | However I wouldn't relate it with "speed flying" because | speed flying is a truly an extreme sport with extremely high | mortality but paragliding is a chill flying unless you choose | to make it extreme. | | Paragliding is so safe these days, the wings are very stable | and spontaneously return to airworthy shape if disrupted. | Flying is very chill, to do something at high speed you | usually need to build up energy by spiralling or swinging the | wing. | | Speed flying on the other hand uses much smaller wings and | that makes them very dynamic. They fly at much higher speeds | and they have high kinetic energy all the time which results | in very large movements even at small inputs from the pilot. | ngngngng wrote: | Utah has a couple spots that are popular for paragliding. | I'll never forget the time we visited one of the popular | launch spots and saw a man get so high within minutes that we | couldn't see him anymore. | wnolens wrote: | It's such beautifully "simple" system that makes so much sense. | I love it. | | lol @ bajillion dollar R&D jetpack with ai controlled thrust | vectoring | jedberg wrote: | TIL about paramotoring. I'd seen the rigs before but didn't | know the name. | | I googled it and the first thing that came up was a YouTube | video about the 5 most dangerous things about paramotoring. :) | petre wrote: | I wouldn't try paramotoring without doing at least a 6 month | paragliding course first. Which in fact I did when I was 21. | After I saw a colleague make a judgement error, fall from | 30ft, hit the ground and jump like a soft ball I became | stressed during flight. He had flown a DHV31 paraglider | though and was not experienced enough to fly that wing. | Current DHV1 wings are much more safer and very performant | compared to 2000 era wings that we've flown. Shortly after | the fall incident a guy I became acquainted with died during | a competition. I just gave up because it stopped being fun. | My instructor had an accident with a powered hang glider few | years afterwards. He still has a bad limp to this day. He has | always been very safety conscious and had at least 25 years | of prior aviation experience, parachuting and paragliding, | when his accident occured. | | Anyway, I find paramotors quite offensive because they make | an awful lot of noise and smoke and the pilot's position is | quite unnatural compared to normal paragliding because the | motor pushes him or her forward. Maybe when we'll have | electric paramotors under 10 kilos things will change for the | better. | | 1. https://www.dhv.de/en/testing/dhv-classification-of- | paraglid... | psyc wrote: | The transitive PTSD from your fellow pilots dying is real. | I quit after 800+ flights (including motored, and yes it is | incredible) after the 5th death of someone I'd either been | close to or at least on adventures with. Not to mention all | the broken vertebrae which is a lot more common than death. | In the span of a few years I saw three ridiculously | experienced instructors (one had like 8,000 flights) smash | into the ground, then spend 2 months in the hospital and a | year recovering. | | The fact that we know what mistakes they made is a red | herring. You'd have to be a fool to think you're going to | be the first paragliding pilot in history to never make a | potentially fatal mistake. One of them, a friend and a very | good pilot, simply pulled his brake half an inch too far. | It was a perfectly calm evening. | | There were two warring factions at my local mountain. One | organized around the idea that paragliding can be made | safe. My camp maintained that 'safe' and 'paragliding' | should never be in the same sentence without an 'isn't' | between them. Hikers always opened conversation with "Is it | safe?" The other camp would say "Oh yes, quite, and would | you like a ride for $200?" Our camp would try not to laugh. | I'd usually reply with, "Does it look safe?" We said it was | all about risks and percentages, with the understanding | that the risk of dying or being crippled with a slow glider | in perfect conditions is always > 0. | | I'm not saying it isn't worth it. It's totally worth it, | though it's easier for me to say since I got out unharmed. | Rather, I developed a discomfort that prevented me from | enjoying it. Not fear - but a kind of disillusionment. | Because even though my instructor said "It's not safe." | over and over, and even though I repeated it to others, | secretly I believed it was and it took 8 years for observed | events to wear that belief down. A big part of me hopes I | return, maybe after my parents are gone or I'm their age or | something. There is really nothing like it in the world and | I doubt anything I ever do will ever energize my soul the | way free flying did. | petre wrote: | Flying is nice but shaky and unpredictable weather still | makes me uneasy. If I'll ever try it again it will be in | a sailplane or a light airplane. | mtinkerhess wrote: | I found the same video it looks like all those dangers are | preventable? Don't do acrobatics at low altitude, don't fly | over water, don't start the engine on the ground, don't buzz | trees or other obstacles, don't get close to other paramotors | in flight. | savrajsingh wrote: | How/where did you get training? | yurishimo wrote: | You can find a club in most large cities. In the US at least, | the biggest problem is getting far enough away from the city | so you don't become a hazard to commercial plane traffic. | | I live in the DFW metroplex, and you have to drive almost 100 | miles out of the city to take-off and then you're pretty | limited on where you can fly due to the abundance of small | airports nearby. | | There are maps available that show what kind of airspace is | around you. I forget the specifics as it's a been a few years | since I looked into it, but there are different designations | for what/who is allowed to fly where and paramotors are very | low on the totem pole in terms of priority and access | allotments. | pqdbr wrote: | Just google for paramotor training, there are many schools in | the US. I suggest get training near the place you plan to do | most of your flying, because flying at the beach with | constant, laminar, mid-strong winds is very different than | flying at the countryside with bumpy and low-mid winds. | | If in doubt, learn to fly near the beach. The views are | amazing :) | jerf wrote: | It's a pet peeve of mine that people think that sci-fi authors | writing decades before the tech exists somehow got the design | right, just because Hollywood made some pretty moving pictures | that fired up your imagination. | | It's hard enough to design things in the real world when you've | got the tech in hand. There's no way to think that people got | it right decades earlier with even larger disadvantages. | | The reality is we don't have jetpacks because jetpacks | _suuuuuuuuuck_. Paramotoring turns out to make a lot more | sense. It may not be the picture in your head, but it can be | _real_. | | Also, we don't have flying cars because flying cars | _suuuuuuuuuck_. We don 't have heavy-duty voice interfaced | computers because they _suuuuuuuuuck_. We even have the tech | now for those, and they _suuuuuuuuuck_ as the only interface. | (They can work if you 're dedicated and have no alternatives, | as people program with pure voice interfaces, but they only use | them because they're the best alternative they have.) Computer | interfaces don't look like LCARS Star Trek interfaces because | those interfaces _suuuuuuuuuck_. And so on. | benjiweber wrote: | Android is starting to look quite LCARS | https://twitter.com/benjiweber/status/1457039757112922115 | 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: | The other side is my own pet peeve: thinking that sci-fi | authors were visionaries for putting something out there | before anyone else makes it real. One reason we don't have | flying cars could be battery tech, taking your example. | There's a ton of cool shit happening in aviation as batteries | improve. | Ekaros wrote: | Flying without lift from wings or like as people think of | sci-fi flying cars isn't practical, unless we break the | physics as we understand today. I honestly can't think of | anything more wasteful than hovering flying car... | the8472 wrote: | Jetpacks only suck due to the lack of a compact power source, | one of the things that's commonly handwaved in scifi. If we | had a magical power source they'd provide a more dynamic | flying experience than gliding. | jerf wrote: | They have a poor backup if a component fails, they're | either going to be blasting something hot or something very | fast out some set of ports which raises a lot of practical | issues, they're always going to be very loud, greasing them | up with enough AI to be safe for a normal person is going | to be a massive problem, they'll always be difficult to | control because such a small, fast thing is going to be | super responsive and thus very twitchy and difficult to fly | (or, to put it another way, "more dynamic flying | experience" is a _con_ , not a _pro_ ), and the list goes | on. | | Basically, a jet pack what you get if you take a minimal | safe flying vehicle based on jet propulsion, then you strip | away a huge number of components. The result is | intrinsically unsafe. | | Paramotoring isn't the safest thing either, but at least | it's humanly feasible. | didip wrote: | wow! I have seen this in real life but had no idea what's the | name. | | It definitely seems simpler and safer than jetpack. | danboarder wrote: | With sufficient flight controller integration and sensors & | software the jetpack form factor could be as easy to fly as a | self balancing Segway is to ride around. Current semi- autonomous | drone software like what we see in the Skydio 2 would be an | interesting direction for this tech, one would end up basically | riding a drone around at low altitude. I am optimistic for near- | future electric implementations and practical progression in this | type of e-mobility development. | [deleted] | JasonFruit wrote: | Ultralights and hang gliders are nowhere near as dead as this | article seems determined to assert, using anecdotes without data. | (How do I know? Also anecdotes, unfortunately, as their | deregulated nature makes data hard to come by.) But this article | paints the bleakest picture of personal flight possible, and I'm | not convinced they have the facts straight -- except about jet | packs, which are about as practical as a human cannonball. | jeffreyrogers wrote: | In Salt Lake City lots of people flew paragliders. But they | also have a great place to fly from that's close by. | duxup wrote: | When the jetpack can fly for me for the most part, I'm down with | it. | | Kinda like small drones. I own one, because it is easy to use. | zdw wrote: | It's basic physics - anything that can rapidly accumulates | potential energy in terms of gravity without a safe way to slowly | dissipate that energy as it is turned to kinetic can be | dangerous. | | See also how people get killed by falling tree limbs and | coconuts. | jonathankoren wrote: | Kinetic energy. Potential energy is perfectly safe. :) | jeffreyrogers wrote: | Skydivers solved that problem with parachutes. | AcerbicZero wrote: | We have shitty jet packs and we do not care. | csours wrote: | No mention of TikTok yet. How long until a motivated teenager | gets ahold of one of these and starts a trend? | mschuster91 wrote: | > With smaller aircraft, the trends are similar. Hang-gliding has | all but disappeared. Ultralight aircraft makers are barely | staying afloat. (One manufacturer, Air Creation, sold only one | vehicle in the US last year.) With every successive year, we have | more passengers and fewer pilots. | | Yeah, no surprise given that | | - planes are expensive to buy - even small ones are in the upper | five figures range | | - planes are expensive to operate: ~150-200$ in fuel per hour | IIRC, plus insurance, maintenance costs, hangar and | airport/landing strip fees | | - getting a license is expensive: even a basic private pilot | license will set you back ~7500-10000EUR, and on top of that come | type ratings and other extras (instrument flight, radio, ...) | | - _maintaining_ that license is expensive: you need to keep up | flight hours either in real flight or in (only a bit less | expensive) simulators, and there are severe restrictions on | passengers if you 're not on a commercial license | ramesh31 wrote: | Not to mention dangerous. Commercial aviation is exceedingly | safe -- safer than riding a train by passenger-incidents/mile. | But general aviation is about on par with motorcycle riding. | There was a big push in 60s/70s/80s to market general aviation | to the public as being the same as driving a car. But the | reality is that most people cannot and will not ever be able to | safely operate an aircraft without full automation. | Avlin67 wrote: | I had an opportunity to see it in action... well the guy took at | least 20min to set up and event 100meters away i was hooked by | the strong smell of unburnt kerozene.... in france you can barely | put a sticker on your car legaly - forget any idea of even pseudo | tuning - yet we are excited about gogo gadgeto burning flying | man. it is so startup nation... | todd8 wrote: | The real problem is the potential energy one has at even a low | altitude is enough to kill you, even without a jet powered | velocity towards the ground. | | A fall from just 100ft (~ 30m) is like being hit by a train | traveling at 54mph (87kph). Any malfunction at this height would | in a couple of seconds likely result in death. Without some sort | of anti-gravity belt I don't see jetpacks as being useful. | trgn wrote: | I sincerely hope we will never care. That in the US, our | mentality gets past this infantile fetish for powertools and | convenience. It's a vestige of high modernism, an adolescent | ideology that life must be mediated by technology. Scraping food | of a plate in the trash beget flushing food down the drain | through a garbage disposer. Athletics beget motorsports. It | crystalized in the 50s, oddly a decade where adults began to | watch cartoons like the Jetsons, like children. | | Jetpacks are the perfect example. It conflates the ability to fly | anywhere anytime with freedom. It is a toddler fantasy. Similar | to how cars for personal transport have not increased freedom, | but instead delivered obesity, fossil fuel dependence, and a | polluted, and threatening public realm. | | The aspirational city life of the future will be one of | sophistication and maturity. It will be the an improved version | of the city life of the pre-industrial age. Where the only sound | is the chatter of passerbys and their footsteps. At night, it is | quiet. Everything degenerate (human waste, cars, metros, ...) | will be pushed underground. The sky will be as pristine as in the | wilderness. | | In other words, it will be an environment where flying a jetpack | is sociopathic. | | This is not a personal fantasy. This kind of urban environment is | where people with means are moving to _today_. It is the main | program of every European city. The US is slow to shake these | destructive 50s ideals of transportation. But it is happening. | Hopeful to see it in my lifetime still. | analog31 wrote: | In my hometown the city code said the garbage disposer was a | measure against rats. | mrfusion wrote: | It's not that no one cares. We just want one that's under 20K, | has more than 45 minutes flight time, isn't loud or bulky, and is | extremely safe. | pqdbr wrote: | Not a Jetpack per se, but take a look at a paramotor. | [deleted] | titzer wrote: | I think society is exhausted from all the excitement. It feels | like people would be excited by jetpacks for about 5 minutes | and then return to their dopamine loops--primarily phones. | paxys wrote: | I can assure you if all of those happened it still wouldn't get | any significant adoption. What even is the use case beyond | joyrides at fairs? | mrfusion wrote: | I for one would commute with it! Fly by the lights and | traffic jams. | petercooper wrote: | And legal. A lot of places can't even get their heads around a | scooter that can go 15mph.. so I'm not sure jetpacks are going | to fly. | saftamihai wrote: | "not sure jetpacks are going to fly." I lol'd | addaon wrote: | The US has a truly incredible rule -- 14 CFR Part 103, | usually shortened to Part 103 -- that basically deregulates | ultralight aircraft, other than restricting their airspace | usage. The logic behind this rule is that it defines | ultralights tightly enough (low weight, low kinetic energy, | restricted use over populated areas) that you're probably | only going to kill yourself if something goes wrong; and what | can be more American than allowing that? | | The main defining features of a Part 103 ultralight are empty | weight (< 254 lbs, including battery but not including up to | 5 gallons of fuel, and with additional credits for parachutes | and floats), minimum flight speed (stall speed for a fixed | wing aircraft) of <= 24 kts or calculated equivalent (see AC | 103-7), and maximum horizontal flight speed of 55 kts (with | electronic or other artificial restriction of speed being | acceptable). | | Many of the "jetpacks" and other ultralight VTOL ideas being | explored right now easily fit within Part 103, so in the US | these certainly can fly, at least for very limited | recreational usage. | throwaway0a5e wrote: | The hand wringers and spineless politicians looking to | score a few cheap brownie points for advancing "safety" | will go after jet-packs if they ever become seriously | viable. Look at all the hand wringing over the unwashed | masses getting their hands on cheap and fast ebikes. Right | now nobody cares because they're just rare toys for rich | people. | brimble wrote: | No-one's freaking out about those parachutes with a | lawnmower engine & seat attached, and those have been | around for many years and can be seen flying all over (at | least) the rural Midwest. | | Now, flying them over other people's property or over a | city is, and should be, another story. | Dylan16807 wrote: | > Now, flying them over other people's property or over a | city is, and should be, another story. | | It's not "one of the most dreamed of forms of flight - | jetpacks" if you can't fly around town. | ashtonkem wrote: | Right, and that's probably never going to happen because | of noise issues alone. | WJW wrote: | Jetpacks are a little bit like the Elon Musk tunnel | digging startup: it is something you dream about when | stuck in traffic during your commute. | Dylan16807 wrote: | Sort of, but a tunnel network of that type is never going | to be able to handle many users, no matter how good the | design gets, while improved and safe jetpacks probably | could replace most of the cars on the road. | WJW wrote: | I doubt it, for basically the same reason that electric | bicycles are not going to replace most of the cars. They | might be great, but are not very nice for long commutes | in poor weather (while wearing fancy suits or | dresses/skirts). | | For jetpacks there is an additional huge problem with | safety flying over inhabited areas. Unless the jetpacks | are _meticulously_ maintained and inspected, we would see | people falling out of the sky on the daily. Taking the | maintenance state of most cars as an example, it seems | safe to state that it would be infeasible to expect the | general population to keep their jetpacks in an | acceptable state. | Dylan16807 wrote: | Electric bikes are also significantly slower than cars | and expose you to a lot of ground-based hazards, even on | the days with the best weather. | Tostino wrote: | It's honestly gone better than I expected as someone who | built their first ebike back in 2006. | kashkhan wrote: | SS 103.15 Operations over congested areas. | | No person may operate an ultralight vehicle over any | congested area of a city, town, or settlement, or over any | open air assembly of persons. | tshaddox wrote: | > you're probably only going to kill yourself if something | goes wrong; and what can be more American than allowing | that? | | I don't think the reason for this deregulation is that the | FAA doesn't care if you only kill yourself, but rather that | the number of people interested in doing this is and was | _in practice_ incredibly small. Yes, anyone _can_ go buy a | paramotor for $10,000 and probably figure out how to | operate it just well enough to be able to kill themselves, | but _in practice_ this is extremely rare. | | You can be sure that if it somehow became wildly popular | for people to buy these things and it was causing lots of | problems, the regulations would change. The exact thing | happened with the massive popularity of "drones," which | were similarly deregulated because the usage of RC aircraft | had also been limited to a small number of RC clubs around | the country. | the8472 wrote: | > including up to 5 gallons of fuel | | That's enough to reach critical mass of many fissile | elements. I wonder if it would be possible to build a | miniature nuclear rocket with enough thrust to lift a | human. The weight budget probably isn't enough to include | enough shielding. | jeffreyrogers wrote: | You would need to get regulatory approval to operate the | reactor. | outworlder wrote: | > It's not that no one cares. We just want one that's under | 20K, has more than 45 minutes flight time, isn't loud or bulky, | and is extremely safe. | | That's a paramotor. | | Still, not enough people care. | SideburnsOfDoom wrote: | > under 20K, has more than 45 minutes flight time, isn't loud | or bulky, and is extremely safe. | | These are of course, impossibly contradictory requirements for | a jet-engine device. | zxcvbn4038 wrote: | We have ray guns too but the batteries need a fork lift which | takes away all the fun! | | I guess in the mean time all the would-be Buck Rogers can save | the world by running over the aliens with their fork lift and | dropping heavy batteries on them. Board with a nail not included. | Animats wrote: | As usual, flying is easy, but landing is hard. Someone commented | on a previous generation of jetpacks that "knees are terrible | landing gear". | | What are they using for a turbojet engine? One of the great | frustrations of light aircraft is that nobody has been able to | make a cheap and reliable jet aircraft engine. It's possible to | make one small and light enough, but they don't seem to get any | cheaper below 6-passenger bizjet size. NASA put some effort into | this in the 1990s, and Williams tried, but all that happened was | that bizjets got a bit better. | chipsa wrote: | RC aircraft jet engines like: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JetCat_P400 | Animats wrote: | _" It is with unimaginable sadness that we announce the | passing of Jetman Pilot, Vincent (Vince) Reffet, who died on | the morning of 17 November during training in Dubai."_ | | Mfgr: (via Google Translate) _" The CAT JetCat model jet | turbines are designed exclusively for model flying and are | not suitable for any other purpose. Definitely not for people | or use goods or by any other means, except exclusively for | model aircraft, because any other uses lead to personal | injury or death can."_ | | There are low cost (well, US $10,000) jet engines, but they | are not human-rated. | taubek wrote: | I remember jetpack from opening of Olympic games in L. A. in | 1984. | | I was surprised to learn that jetpack used in James Bond movie | Thuderball from 1965 was a real jetpack. | dukeofdoom wrote: | Flying skateboards is what we are waiting for | TimTheTinker wrote: | > For decades, humans have said they want jetpacks, and for | thousands of years we have said we want to fly, but do we really? | Look up. The sky is empty. | | I have wanted to become a small plane or ultralight pilot since I | was in high school (I'm nearly 40 now)... it's just that with a | single income and kids, life is expensive and busy. | | I was astonished recently while watching _The Spirit of St Louis_ | (the 1957 Jimmy Stewart movie) - how as a young man Charles | Lindbergh drove into Souther Field, bought an army surplus Jenny | biplane for $500 cash (about $8000 in today 's dollars), and took | off immediately without any bureaucracy. Oh for that kind of | freedom! | | Maybe I'll do paramotor training with my kids when they're in | their late teens - but for now, I can only stare up at the sky | and dream (and occasionally watch YouTube videos of others living | that dream). | ashtonkem wrote: | Flying has gotten more expensive, but not that much more | expensive if you're really motivated. Kit airplanes can be | fairly cheap, $30k for a kitfox, and often can be maintained by | the owner because they're amateur built. | | The issue is the same as Lindbergh's day though. Amateur built | airplanes are not safe. | bener wrote: | You'll get there! Initial "trial" flying lessons can be | relatively cheap, and in my case the tutor was letting me take | off and land on my second lesson (with dual controls of course, | I wasn't very good) | dieselerator wrote: | I find the article interesting in that it provides us a first | person view of operating the machine. We get a perspective about | the current state of jetpack development. We become aware a timer | (ie, fuel gauge) is the primary flight instrument. I am happy to | read about this rather than needing to have the experience | myself. | hooby wrote: | People have always dreamed of flying... in highly varying | intensity. | | At the one extreme we got people afraid of flying and never | wanting to leave the ground at all - and at the other extreme we | have people absolutely obsessed with flying. | | But I think we have a reached a point where everyone along that | spectrum can get their fill of flying more or less easily. | | For a lot of people, taking a commercial flight and getting a | window seat might already be enough to scratch that flying itch. | | Those who want a bit more than that can easily book a flight in a | small propeller plane, or a helicopter or a hot air balloon. | | People who want even more can go paragliding, or hang gliding, or | sky diving. | | And those who want the most extreme flying package they can | possibly get - well those people no longer dream of jetpacks - | those people do fly wing-suits now. | | There's no niche left for the jetpack to fill - every type of | flying desire is already being served. And instead of going with | a jetpack, you could also choose something that's just as | exciting but a lot safer and cheaper - or something that's just | as dangerous but a lot more exciting and still cheaper. | | The jetpack was more fascinating while it was the most exciting | option imaginable, and more longed for, during a time when any | kind of flying was just out of reach for most people. | friendlydog wrote: | Hoverbikes seem more in reach for price and safety. | 3pt14159 wrote: | Yes. | | That's because they cost more than $300k and can only fly for ten | or so minutes. If they costed 1/10th that and could fly at the | very least 4x that then people would be losing their minds over | these things. They are fast enough. Cool looking enough. Etc. | Just bring down the price and up the range. | jakear wrote: | A bit like a hang glider? Article claims interest in them has | declined as well. | HALtheWise wrote: | A major reason for the decline in interest in hang gliding is | dramatic technical improvements in paragliders, which are | quite a bit more portable and cheaper for an increasingly | small performance hit. Combined interest in paragliders and | hang gliders is at an all time high. | mettamage wrote: | For the people suggesting paramotors as the actual jetpacks of | our time (in terms of promise), there never has been a paramotor | topic at the frontpage! | | I found this submission quite fun [1, 2]. | | It was submitted to HN twice and only got 4 upvotes (I used the | HN searchbar and typed: paramotor). | | [1] https://www.justine-haupt.com/blimpdrive/index.html | | [2] https://youtu.be/5pPJ-Z4vVyI | jokoon wrote: | Seems like using 4 rotors or jet engines around the pilot might | be a better solution. | jonathankoren wrote: | I keep thinking about about the Hiller VZ-1. Like standing on a | blender. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiller_VZ-1_Pawnee | | Which coincidentally, kind of makes an appearance in the | opening of Jonny Quest https://youtu.be/7gNBFmlNUfM?t=38 | ultra_nick wrote: | I had a project idea for a hoverpack instead of a jetpack. It | would only cancel gravity in short busts to enable people to | super jump over things. The reduced power needs lowered the total | price to around $5,000. No time to build it though. | seafoam wrote: | It would be good to understand the failure characteristics. | | Is the risk comparable to a wing suit, or a helicopter, or a | single-engine plane ? | mh- wrote: | I think the failure characteristics are pretty easy to | understand. | | They'd fall into two categories: | | - Sudden loss of power | | - Mechanical failure that results in unscheduled disassembly | | As these crafts have no aerodynamic surfaces like the 3 other | things you compared them to, the first category would result in | the rider falling from whatever height. (Minimum altitudes to | successfully deploy even a BASE parachute are higher than one | might think.) | | And well, the second category should be self explanatory. An | explosive failure of the stuff strapped to your back would just | create extra excitement or death before proceeding reverting to | the first failure mode. | lordnacho wrote: | There might be a missing scenario in your list: bag of | potatoes. | jpswade wrote: | This comes up every so often and I think the reality is, yes | people would like jet packs but they would prefer to be safe. | | Reminds me of this sketch. | | https://youtu.be/vDIojhOkV4w | jodrellblank wrote: | I love the quiet commentary of this Mitchell and Webb "Jump off | a cliff" sketch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTcBWo4Aj0g | | Compared to all the killer theme park attractions and extreme | sports. "It's all fine though?" "Yeah it's all fine". That's | enough. | BatFastard wrote: | that was perfect! | Toutouxc wrote: | Even helicopters burn fuel like crazy when hovering out of ground | effect, and the only reason we use them are their huge main | rotors that get some of that efficiency back when actually moving | at speed, and also because they're the only thing available. | | Anything fighting gravity with pure thrust is basically DOA at | this point, and double that for inherently inefficient propulsion | methods like jets. Ducted fans, maybe, but most likely not. And | that's still allowing for fossil fuels and huge fuel consumption. | Bring batteries into the equation and you can forget about | personal VTOL for anything longer than five minute hops. | [deleted] | dcchambers wrote: | People would love to fly, but in the magic carpet sense. When you | look at the dirty and dangerous physical reality of what a | jetpack is it's obvious why no one wants one. | schleck8 wrote: | It's so annoying how first generation technology is trashed by a | community that should know better. | | Of course it will be inaccessible and inefficient. | | Where is the spirit of innovation? | Ekaros wrote: | Cursory understanding of physics and chemistry. | | Fighting against gravity by exhausting anything is energy | inefficient. And there isn't really anything to fix that. It is | just fact of universe. | didip wrote: | In the Jetson, a jetpack doesn't have to care about fuel | capacity, safety of the pilot, regulations, and cost of | production. | | But in real life these are legitimate engineering constraints. | | Also, if you can scale up a drone to be a 1-person vehicle, I bet | it will be safer than jetpack. | stavros wrote: | We have, and as for safety, well... If you think a jetpack is | unsafe, wait until you see the blades on a drone. | Johnny555 wrote: | It's not so much that we don't care, but that the current | jetpacks are so expensive, hard to operate, low runtime, and so | unsafe that they just aren't relevant to most people. I'm not | sure that the technology will ever improve enough to make the | sci-fi style jetpack that anyone can use. | | The only jetpack I've seen that I'd actually be willing to use is | the kind that's more like a hose tethered to a water pump that | lifts you a few feet above the water, that one looks like it'd be | fun, with little chance of injury if it fails. | | https://www.jetpackamerica.com/ | jon-wood wrote: | They're completely impractical, that jet pack does indeed exist, | but there are approximately two people in the world who can | safely fly it untethered. Every now and again they'll pop again | with "mountain rescue experiment with jet pack" or "Marines | demonstrate boarding with jet pack", and every time it's just the | creator cosplaying as whatever service he's trying to sell it to | this time. | twobitshifter wrote: | Furthermore if you want the sensation of a jet pack, there's | the jet lev, which seems much safer. The article mentions that | this should only be flown over water on a tether, so what's the | benefit over a jetlev? | | https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s00SwPZ_1D0 | Animats wrote: | That's like the Flyboard, another water-jet system.[1] That's | the world champion flying. | | The Flyboard people now have the Flyboard Air.[2] This is a | real flying hoverboard, powered by what is believed to be a | group of model aircraft jet engines. It's not easy to fly. | They require 50-100 hours in the water-powered version before | attempting the jet-powered version. | | It's very cool, but it's for people who find skateboarding | stunts too easy. | | [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JhUSu8v2N4 | | [2] https://atlanticflyboard.com/flyboard-air | badrabbit wrote: | Could say the same about the wright brothers in the early | 1900s. Longevity of the flight and safe operation can only | improve in time. The question is does anyone care. People will | be scared of it and if not does it offer anything over cars? | It's not like you can fly it over private property , there will | be laws that regulate where you can fly it. | | Just give me hyperloop tunnels to overlap subways and freeways | and I am set. Especially with better bike lanes. | [deleted] | BlueTemplar wrote: | Aircraft were improved immensely by new materials since then. | But jetpacks are still impractical. Might we see the same | level of improvements _again_ in the next century ? (And even | if we do, wouldn 't "super planes/copters" _still_ be ahead | of jetpacks ?) | ashtonkem wrote: | > Could say the same about the wright brothers in the early | 1900s. | | Yes, you could. But that's not actually an argument that jet | packs will follow a same development path, it's just survivor | bias in action. | badrabbit wrote: | They may not, I was just saying we don't know what | developments will be made in the future. | mirekrusin wrote: | Exactly, we had "smartphones" before iphone as well and nobody | did care. | JKCalhoun wrote: | Hmmm... Not sure that Jetpack 2.0 will ever be a thing like | the iPhone was. | | Helicopters autogyro, planes glide, balloons (usually) lose | their lift slowly. | | A jetpack, like a rocket, is a thing that has no business | flying. Only a large, heavy-handed impulse of energy allow | them to oppose gravity. Without altitude and a parachute, | there is no Plan B for a jetpack engine failure, loss of | fuel, etc. | ehnto wrote: | I think a parachute would be pretty easy to accommodate, at | least an emergency one. Maybe it'll still hurt, but cut the | pack loose and hopefully you would survive. Not everyone | survives helicopter or plane engine failures either. | | I certainly don't think jetpacks are a relevant tool for | society outside of really niche use cases. If we don't even | trust people to fly small drones around the public safely | and without FAA regulation and licensing, in what dreamland | would we all be able to fly personal jetpacks to the shops, | or even recreationally? There are way cheaper, way safer | ways to get airbourne as a private aviation enthusiast, so | I can see why jetpacks really don't scratch enough itches | to have gained popularity. | marcosdumay wrote: | Parachutes have a minimum altitude, and jetpacks really | do not push people into flying high. (What is a problem | in more ways than that, because most of the things that | can make your flight safer need altitude.) | rhino369 wrote: | Blackberries were huge and growing. iPhone definitely | expanded the market faster than anyone dreamed. But it was | easy to see where the market would go before iPhone. | mirekrusin wrote: | If it was "easy to see" we wouldn't have iphone dominance. | rhino369 wrote: | Easy to see at a high level--phones with web, multimedia | support, and app support. Near impossible to guess what | exactly what would look like and when. | Ekaros wrote: | The pieces where there already, just good enough product | with good enough connectivity was missing. In the end | iPhone is nothing more than refined PDA... | WJW wrote: | I just want to point out that global iPhone market share | has been hovering between 15% and 20% for years. Android | has almost all of the rest. Iphones are not dominant. | ajb92 wrote: | Global market share is one kind of dominance, there are | others | inglor_cz wrote: | I had Nokia 7650 in 2004 and I am hopefully not-nobody... | these devices, although clumsy, paved the way to the modern | mobile ecosystem. | mirekrusin wrote: | Yes, maybe those jetpacks and micro flying machines will | pave the way to future electric-scooter-like flying. | pmontra wrote: | A lot of people had smartphones before iPhones. Basically all | the 3G phones sold in Europe since 2003. I was working for an | operator that got 3 M customers in its first year back then. | | Had they a touchscreen as good as iPhone's? Definitely not. | Did they had an internet connecting better than iPhone's? | Definitely yes because the original iPhone was only 2G. | | Anyway, this is only an analogy so let's don't get too much | into it. | | People don't care about jetpacks because they are crazy | dangerous and expensive. This makes them less practical than | jumping from a plane with a parachute instead of waiting for | it to land. | Tostino wrote: | Early adopters absolutely did care. | mirekrusin wrote: | I'm sure people who fly jetpacks absolutely do care about | jetpacks. | fartcannon wrote: | Quite a few of us cared. The teeming millions may not have, | but definitely more than nobody. | mirekrusin wrote: | Sure, I meant it in context, obviously some people did | care, otherwise they simply wouldn't exist at all, what I | meant is nobody = niche = not mainstream by any means. | fartcannon wrote: | I still think that's an understatement. Not that it | matters really, but did you forget about the ubiquity of | Blackberry's for nearly a decade prior to the iPhone? | wutbrodo wrote: | > Marines demonstrate boarding with jet pack", and every time | it's just the creator cosplaying as whatever service he's | trying to sell it to this time. | | Didn't an actual Royal Marine do this recently, in a training | exercise? | https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a38748085... | | This seems like exactly what we'd expect for a technology this | new and dangerous, and is certainly a step farther than "the | creator is the only one flying it". | | EDIT: Per other comments on this thread, apparently the Royal | Marine in question _is_ the creator | MR4D wrote: | We solved the stability for drones that cost as little as $20. | We'll solve it the same way for jet packs as well. | ashtonkem wrote: | We solved stability for a rigid drone that's symmetric and | designed for purpose. That's a lot different than solving for | stability for a variable size and weight human that's | wriggling around. | radley wrote: | > solving for stability for a variable size and weight | human that's wriggling around. | | Was solved for Segways. Just need the third axis and some | kind of special emergency landing solution (goo + inflato- | ball??). | ashtonkem wrote: | No, it's more complex than that. A Segway is counting on | the fact that it's sitting on the ground. The force | vector on the rider is purely a function of angle. A jet | pack has the issue that there is a moveable center of | gravity and moveable sources of thrust that feed back | into each other. It's doable, I'm sure, but it's also | much more complicated than a Segway + another direction. | MR4D wrote: | It's just a digital gimbal. Similar to a light drone in a | breeze. | guerrilla wrote: | I was thinking about this while watching a paraglider with | propeller yesterday. I was thinking, maybe you could use tiny | jets for this, but the question is why would you... this is | already perfect [1]. Seems like jetpacks are a solution looking | for a problem and at the same time highly impractical. | | 1. https://youtu.be/L1Z8YT6w7Rc | EliRivers wrote: | In his defence, Richard Browning, of Gravity Industries, was an | actual Royal Marine. Granted, reservist, but they still take | and pass the commando course. I ran into him a couple of times | in the service; while he's not in anymore, "cosplay" seems a | harsh term in his case. | ehnto wrote: | What were we expecting from jetpacks though, really? Is it not | more fair to suggest that the past was a little bit naive about | what it would take to operate a jetpack? They're still aircraft | after all, at the very least you're going to need pilots | license. | | There's no "bicycle" of jetpacks, you've got three axis of | movement and certain death in every direction but up, it's just | not a tool that belongs in the every-man's garage. | | I think the same can be said for the past's perception of what | flying cars would be like. You don't see your average joe | flying a helicopter to work, for the very same reasons you'll | never see personal flying cars be ubiquitous. | everdrive wrote: | > There's no "bicycle" of jetpacks, you've got three axis of | movement and certain death in every direction but up, | | Arguably, this could exist, and is a self-stabilizing battery | powered drone. | falcolas wrote: | > What were we expecting from jetpacks though, really? | | Drones, in the form of a jetpack. | | A little joystick in each hand with DJI levels of KISS, and | with the same DJI "Help I'm out of control!" button too. | Probably "return to home" too. | | We don't/can't have that, because there's no servo-mechanical | joints to be controlled in the referenced rocket pack system. | scythe wrote: | >There's no "bicycle" of jetpacks, you've got three axis of | movement and certain death in every direction but up, it's | just not a tool that belongs in the every-man's garage. | | There is a perfectly good flying vehicle that can be flown by | an ordinary person with a reasonable amount of training; it's | called a powered paraglider. However, it has the disadvantage | that it is _very_ large, and if the weather is not favorable, | you can 't fly. | | The analogy with a car would be "road sometimes spontaneously | turns into scree", and it would be very hard to design a car | that can cope with that. | andrei_says_ wrote: | To be completely honest my expectations of jet packs were | modeled by cartoons. | | I am admitting this publicly as a reminder to myself and | others for the fact that for the public, the process of | writing software is modeled by scenes of hackers in Hollywood | movies. | thereddaikon wrote: | I feel that improved control systems could go a long way to | making them more controllable. Look at RC aircraft, they used | to take a lot of practice to fly and even when mastered | required so much focus that they weren't useful for anything. | But now drones practically fly themselves and instead of | "flying" the drone, the pilot really just tells it where to | go. The flight software figures out the rest. | | There's no reason the same principles can't be applied to jet | packs. Add a gyro or two, gps etc to give it the data it | needs and the pilot should have a much easier time. | | The more difficult to solve problem is with endurance. They | are only good for 10s of seconds of powered flight. | sbierwagen wrote: | >certain death in every direction but up | | Up is also certain death, if you're not carrying bottled | oxygen. | tshaddox wrote: | > They're still aircraft after all, at the very least you're | going to need pilots license. | | I think a reasonable interpretation of the _promise_ of | jetpacks would be more like the "ultralight vehicles" | category (as it's called in the United States). These | vehicles require no registration or pilot certification. Some | are fairly traditional rigid airplane designs (just very | small and lightweight), but the category also includes | powered paragliders (AKA paramotors) and some of the smaller | powered parachutes. | | Where I grew up in the US these were fairly common to see in | the air, and no one thought it was odd that they didn't | require a pilots license. Perhaps for many people in many | areas the regulations or different, and it strikes them as | absurd to fly aircraft without a license? | Grimburger wrote: | Ironically where I live, it's far simpler to get a private | pilot's license than a provisional car license. | | It takes 25 hour in a plane to get a recreational license, | and 120 supervised hours logged in a car, for people who | don't have a relative to do the supervision and need to pay | and instructor, the cost comes out more than getting a | pilots license. | | Once that's done to be allowed on the road alone, they need | to get their 2nd provisional license a year later, then | full car license a year again after that, with additional | tests along the way. | dioxide wrote: | rocket man. | sandworm101 wrote: | >> There's no "bicycle" of jetpacks | | Grab any drone with a 200kg capacity (they do exist), hang a | lawn chair under it, and take to the sky. That's probably | safer. Jetpacks as a concept might get overtaken by the small | helicopters we today call drones. | ehnto wrote: | But would you let a child operate the drone chair? I think | you're right that drones would be some kind of safer, I | think it's the more likely of the two technologies to work | for personal aviation. | sandworm101 wrote: | If you want to get to work in the morning, then a drone | full of autopilots and AI is the safe and reliable way to | fly across the city. But for living the Ironman fantasy | of sailing through windows then you'll need a jetpack | with all the associated dangers. | NeuNeurosis wrote: | Funny you mention that. I just saw the below on reddit the | other day. | | https://explorersweb.com/jetson-one-giant-passenger-drone/ | echelon wrote: | Put a giant pre-inflated airbag around it and that might | not be unreasonable. | Animats wrote: | That's a nice piece of hardware. | | There are other big, people-carrying drones. eHang was | probably the first, in 2016. They've actually sold a few. | Price is above US$300K. They routinely fly above cities. | Like everybody else, they're battery-limited. Their limit | is about 30 minutes. | | All those un-shrouded spinning blades at low height are | worrisome. | dclowd9901 wrote: | And yet, it's quite easy to fly a drone in simple mannerisms. | The UX failure of the jet pack is refinement in software, | which drone makers have already figured out. | | The real issue is, with an 8 minute flight time, it's good | for demonstrations and that's it. | fishtoaster wrote: | I feel like you could describe cars the same way: | | You've got two axis of movement at 60mph. Stray a couple feet | left or right and you die in fiery inferno. Stop too fast or | too slow, same deal. Maybe appropriate for highly-trained | specialists, not for every-man's garage. | | My point is not that "cars are death machines no one should | own," although there are certainly those who hold that | opinion. Rather that inherently dangerous things can be made | relatively safe with enough systems around them: roads, | signs, traffic laws, licenses, seatbelts, and so on. | somehnacct3757 wrote: | The third axis adds the risk of a gravity impact to every | accident. Maybe it's solvable with some kind of failproof | parachute system, I dunno. I wouldn't invest in it. | | Showing that cars are scary doesn't disprove that flying | cars are more scary | kiliantics wrote: | I think it was a mistake to allow just about anyone behind | the wheel of a car. It results in upwards of 1 million | deaths per year, that's more than malaria. And that's not | including deaths attributed to air pollution. | silvestrov wrote: | The big difference is that cars have brakes and that coming | to a full stop will avoid most crashes. | | There is no good "emergency braking" for jetpacks, there is | not even "autorotation" as there is for helicopters. | nerdponx wrote: | I think maybe the problems are: 1) the extra axis of | movement means more operating complexity, and 2) there is | no equivalent of "5 mph in a parking lot" on a jetpack, | either you're flying or you're not. | bryanrasmussen wrote: | yes but the way to make cars safe is to - seriously | constrain their movements (all cars here move in this | direction, you can get off here, you can get on here etc. | ), have different types of licenses for different kinds of | cars, and limit their speeds based on location. | | Jetpacks, and the flying car, have more possible ways to | move. | | The Jetsons used to show the flying car working the way the | normal car did - highways in the sky - that's basically the | way it would have to work to be made safe, as long as there | are any sizable amount of users of the jetpack or flying | car. | | The jetpack has of course other hazards associated with it | such as the engine being really close to the human | operating it with significantly less shielding than one has | on the car. | | on edit: I think there might have been problems with the | car in some Jetsons and George had to parachute to safety, | arms crossed and a seriously miffed expression on his face. | bryanrasmussen wrote: | So all that said - what would be required of the flying | car for it to work well enough to supplant the car? (not | the jetpack, that will at best be the skateboard of the | sky) | | 1. It would have to be significantly faster, able to go | longer (makes sense this would be the case because | obviously you can fly quicker than you can drive so I | assume this benefit will be a gimme, but it has to be | significant for people to care. If you can make the | flight to grandma's house in 3 hours instead of 8 there | would be interest) | | 2. It would have to not cost very much more to own or to | run. | | 3. It would have to not be any less safe for drivers than | it currently is to drive - at the beginning this might be | the case because less drivers means more safe maybe. | | 4. there would probably have to be significant safety | features built in to keep flying cars from causing | catastrophic damage if they failed - this seems to right | there make it impossible because it has to not cost much | more than a normal car. | | 5. There would probably have to increase in automation of | cars to be able to detect when something wrong, when | someone breaking flight rules etc. | | 6. no internal combustion engine flying cars, because a | falling car with internal combustion engine is also a | potential bomb. | | so what are the benefits - we've already mentioned 1 but | are there others? | | Conceivably with a mass movement to flying cars instead | of cars the infrastructure of cars would no longer be | needed or need to be maintained. A utopian vision would | then be that all that land that is currently big packed | freeways get converted to parks etc. although a cynical | vision would say oh nobody would want to pay for that and | they turn into dystopian hellholes and kids go there to | get eaten by coyotes. | | Possible benefit #3 - to make safe have to have much | routes for everything but given that we have all the sky | conceivably there could be more routes, including | emergency routes that would be left to emergency services | or people registered for a possible quick route (quick | routes to hospital for birth etc.) All of this of course | implies flying cars with effective computer surveillance | of drivers. | | So I see these benefits to flying car - 1. quicker longer | trips enabled. 2. No longer need driving car | infrastructure 3. possible solutions to congestion are | still available with flying car. | | But does that mean it is doable. | | I think the needed functionality points basically cancels | out it ever working but maybe I am pessimistic, although | I do think that now we are actually getting to the point | where the necessary prerequisites for flying cars are | starting to be built - specifically good electric cars | and driving automation and services (but way early for | that, flying cars in 100 years at this rate) | edaemon wrote: | Jetpacks don't have brakes. Once you start moving, coming | to a stop is very difficult or very harmful. You have to be | a highly trained specialist to operate a jetpack _at all_ , | while you can gently learn to operate a car. | nwienert wrote: | I think this comment is reasonable and the replies to this | comment are filled with bad takes. | | Currently designed Jetpacks don't have brakes, or any | safety features really, but that's just a lack of | development. | | You could easily think of hundreds of safety features that | would make Jetpacks in a distant future seem pretty safe, | from auto pilot/recovery features, automated object | detection and avoidance, body suits with built in airbags, | better designed packs that give things like 100x better | articulation control, built in parachutes, the list could | go on forever really. | | Meanwhile cars actually have additional dangerous | properties: being stuck in very confined tracks where any | other user errors affect you, limited visibility, and a | massive amount of heavy metal surrounding you. | | I don't see why Jetpacks couldn't be as safe as a cars | given they had an equal amount of investment into safety as | we see modern cars. And to answer the article as to why | they aren't popular, it's pretty easy to see that they just | kind of suck as they are now, they need improvements in | nearly every dimension. | outworlder wrote: | The reason they are not popular is that we don't have a | practical power source. Flight times are measured in | minutes. And practical ones that could be used by anyone | would be much larger (think VTOL hang glider, not Bobba | Fett). | | Even with a practical power source, you know have an | immense amount of energy stored right next to your body. | You need to be able to direct said energy in a safe way. | Good luck. | | There's only so much airbags can do. Imagine where you | would locate those airbags. Cant be pressed against the | body either (airbags can cause horrible injuries). | Parachutes won't help close to the ground. | iainmerrick wrote: | I think there are a couple of key differences that you're | underplaying. | | First, for usage of cars in society, there's a nice | gradual curve where an early slow unreliable car is still | somewhat useful, and a faster car is a bit more useful, | etc, and that's what allowed them to get off the ground | (as it were). There's a vastly higher threshold before | jetpacks start being usable and useful. | | Second, cars are relatively fail-safe in that if you take | your foot off the accelerator the car will coast to a | halt. Lots of cars can easily come to a safe stop | together -- traffic jams are bad but not immediately | life-threatening. | | Jetpacks aren't nearly as failsafe because if you stop | flying you need to land (or more likely, crash-land). | | Planes have the same two advantages over jetpacks, | because even a slow or unreliable plane is useful because | it can carry cargo; and most planes can glide a bit which | helps reduce the risk of crash landings. | notahacker wrote: | Apart from anything else, the minimum viable car was | pretty much as safe as modern cars (probably actually | harder to kill yourself in the original car with its | 10mph top speed), and just as intuitive to operate | safely. The safety advances came later to deal mostly | with problems which arose later (speed and other cars and | boredom from long distance low effort driving) | pdonis wrote: | _> inherently dangerous things can be made relatively safe | with enough systems around them: roads, signs, traffic | laws, licenses, seatbelts, and so on._ | | While this is true, the issue is that what is required for | "enough" can vary very widely. In particular, what would be | "enough" for jetpacks (and flying machines more generally) | is a lot more than what experience has shown to be "enough" | for cars. Some indications of why that is are the frequency | of airplane accidents involving experienced pilots, who | have had a lot more training on how to fly a plane than | anyone gets on how to drive a car, and also the amount of | time and effort and the level of continuing human | supervision required to keep commercial air travel as safe | as it is, even though that also involves experienced pilots | and has the support of many complex systems. | moralestapia wrote: | Your engine dies while driving, nothing happens. | | Your engine dies while flying, good luck, pal. | outworlder wrote: | > Your engine dies while flying, good luck, pal. | | In a jetpack, yes. Good luck. Drone, good luck too. | | Airplane? You glide down. | | Helicopter? You autorotate down. | nwienert wrote: | If only we had an invention that used air resistance to | slow falls... | ben_w wrote: | Parachutes don't work well enough for this hypothetical. | | Are there full body airbags? Could that even work? | HeyLaughingBoy wrote: | > Are there full body airbags? Could that even work? | | Let me know if you find out. I have _got_ to get one :-) | notahacker wrote: | If only that invention wasn't supposed to be strapped to | the same part of the person's anatomy as the jetpack, | with the result being that no practically working | implementation combining the two exists... | nwienert wrote: | That's not an intractable problem by a mile. | notahacker wrote: | It's also not the solved problem your snark implied. I | mean, someone's been working on it for decades and his | solution is _fly over water as much as possible_! | | (As other posters have alluded to, parachutes won't save | you at low altitudes. In the mean time, it's further | weight on your back on a device which is already | difficult to control, and not really optimal for | releasing next to jets of hot kerosene either) | r00fus wrote: | Do parachutes help when you lose control 50ft off the | ground? Deploy time is probably too short. Also lateral | speed may be fatal enough with a jetpack. | chipsa wrote: | Rocket deployed parachute. Kinda like https://en.wikipedi | a.org/wiki/Cirrus_Airframe_Parachute_Syst... | | Speeds up deploy time by making the deploy happen, | instead of waiting for gravity/airflow to deploy it. | nwienert wrote: | Body airbags or similar would likely work for lower | altitude. | ehnto wrote: | It's not really a "new frontier being misunderstood" | though, it's very clear what it's value proposition is, and | it's also clear from our history with aviation so far, what | the challenges are. As I said in another comment, we don't | even trust people to fly small drones without certification | and FAA regulation, there's good reason for that, being in | the air is nothing like being on a road. | jancsika wrote: | To answer your question-- people in the past were | expecting what has happened with small drones. Namely, | that there'd be a metric fuckton of them, and that | regulators would have to scramble to keep order before | angry townsfolk began firing their rifles up at in the | sky at them. | marcosdumay wrote: | Yeah, people in the past overestimate how eager people | are to take obvious risks. | | To be fair, the eagerness of people to do activities that | feel risky but actually aren't makes that prediction | harder than it looks at first. | InitialLastName wrote: | > we don't even trust people to fly small drones without | certification and FAA regulation, there's good reason for | that, being in the air is nothing like being on a road. | | We don't trust people to operate cars on a road without | DMV certification, FMVSS regulations, and a substantial | amount of liability insurance. | hunterb123 wrote: | I feel somewhat in the middle between both of your | opinions. | | The "average joe" in some regions may not fly regularly, | but around here there's many farmers with Cessnas that do | routine work. | | Currently, if you have a use for it and are somewhat | competent, it's practical to fly and not out of reach for | the common man. | | But in no near future do I see them reducing the | restrictions, flight hours, air traffic protocols, etc. | | That being said, I don't see much practicality for a | jetpack other than sport or rescue. | ehnto wrote: | That's a big part of my reasoning, there are some | fundamental impracticalities to personal aviation that | limit it to particularly niche use cases. Those don't | really change just because it's a flying car or jetpack. | | I can of course picture a world where there are automated | skyways, and electric AVs guide themeselves from abode to | shopping mall airport, I'm not without imagination. But | I'm not hopeful. | jabbany wrote: | Actually, the high level question in here is quite | interesting (and has even been discussed in some sci-fi). | | Humans evolutionarily think about movement with a 2 | dimensional mindset because for much of our history we only | needed to think about 2d movement. It's why even modern | flight is centered around the idea of stacking multiple 2d | environments (via elevation / flight levels) and then just | ignoring that 3rd dimension for the most part. | | This is why something like a car is operationally intuitive | -- humans don't need training to quickly pick up the | interface for one, even a kid could operate a 2d vehicle. | The systems around them mainly manage the risk around | _conflict_ introduced by having multiple actors. | | This is also where a plane (or submarine, or jetpack) is | fundamentally different. The systems around those need to | manage not only conflict but also our sensory deficiencies. | It's very easy to get disoriented in 3d movement (it's very | easy to lose the ability to tell up from down) and there | have been plenty of plane crashes due to this. That's why | pilots need to infer their orientation from instruments | rather than just their senses. That's also why flying cars | and jetpacks are not widely available -- the amount of | training just to operate such devices _alone_ is already | very high, let alone having to manage conflict in addition | to that. | marcosdumay wrote: | > It's why even modern flight is centered around the idea | of stacking multiple 2d environments | | That's for sharing the space. It's not only a set of | stacked 2D environments, those are also divided in road- | like spaces, with a limited number of junctions. | orthoxerox wrote: | Cars are mostly 1d vehicles in practice, unless they are | bumper cars. We try really hard to minimize 2d | interactions between cars by stacking multiple 1d | environments (lanes) and ignoring the 2nd dimension for | the most part. Where we cannot ignore it we try to make | it safe by adding turn lanes, roundabouts, traffic lights | or building interchanges. | eshack94 wrote: | You raise some interesting points here that I had not | previously considered with respect to flight/submarines | vs. land vehicles/boats. That third dimension must | introduce a lot of cognitive load, even before conflict | of other vessels/aircraft enter the scene. | jabbany wrote: | There's some sci-fi (that I cannot remember off the top | of my head) that actually uses this as a plot point. | | I may be misremembering, but the idea is there's a | special race of humans who have continued to evolve | living in low gravity (space) environment, and the | terrestrial human (those living on planets) governments | would hire them as space mercenaries because they're at a | huge advantage when it comes to 3d combat compared to | training some terrestrial guy. | hedgewitch wrote: | You don't mean The Expanse, do you? | at_a_remove wrote: | This was a limitation of Khan in the second Star Trek | film. | | There is a trilogy of books written covering Khan's life | and it very subtly shows why Khan has this difficulty, | but never points at it and shouts. | usefulcat wrote: | I had always thought of that line as metaphorical ("two | dimensional thinking"), but that's a very interesting | idea, and fits well with the final battle that | immediately follows it. | forgetbook wrote: | Ender's game; maybe not what you're referring to (based | on your description), and also uses 3d navigation as a | plot point ('The enemy is down') | dTal wrote: | >It's why even modern flight is centered around the idea | of stacking multiple 2d environments (via elevation / | flight levels) and then just ignoring that 3rd dimension | for the most part. | | Generally you want to fly at a constant altitude because | climbing and descending require energy transfers. Humans | have little trouble coping with the concept of | 3-dimensional flight, indicated by the enduring | popularity of combat flight simulators, but aircraft that | aren't built for combat physically struggle (and even in | those that are, such flight demands careful energy | management). | jherdman wrote: | > Humans evolutionarily think about movement with a 2 | dimensional mindset because for much of our history we | only needed to think about 2d movement. | | Citation required? If you hang out with a child you | quickly discover that their world is quite three | dimensional. Heck, climbing is a fast growing sport. | Again, three dimensional. We're made to run, jump, and | climb. Three dimensional. | rpdillon wrote: | I've worked for several years with children, and have | also piloted aircraft. 3D is _tough_, at least for me. | aaaaaaaaaaab wrote: | >Heck, climbing is a fast growing sport. Again, three | dimensional. | | Ummm... no? The surface of a mountain is still two | dimensional. | lolc wrote: | A mountain surface is 2.5 dimensional. If you allow for | the fractal part. | brianr wrote: | Climbing is two-dimensional, not three - on any given | part of a wall or tree, you can move left-right and up- | down but not in-out. | wahern wrote: | 1) People, especially kids, jump between and across | structures all the time. | | 2) Humans are great at throwing and catching objects, | even with complex, changing trajectories--bouncing off | walls, etc. | | 3) We have two innate senses that are clearly adapted to | 3 dimensions: stereoscopic vision and proprioception. | | What makes those behaviors relatively intuitive is | constant acceleration. In a sense constant acceleration | makes everything 2D. (Or 2.5D?) When humans need to track | objects which independently accelerate along 3 axes, then | there's a much stronger case for an environment alien to | humans. (Counter point: hunting birds, though I believe | hunters prefer to take their shot when birds are | beginning or ending their flight. But notably the most | salient characteristic there is acceleration, not merely | relative movement in 3D space.) | | Yeah, the more that I think about it, you get much more | predictive power by emphasizing acceleration, not spatial | dimensionality. And I don't think that's being pedantic; | the distinction matters. When you look at studies of how | the brain processes motion, constant acceleration (at | least along 2 of 3 axes, unless/until hitting another | object) is often one of the key assumptions that seems to | be built into our cognition. | | For example, tracking many objects moving independently | in 3D space is pretty darned difficult for | humans.[citation needed] But that probably has more to do | with relative motion (and thus relative acceleration) | than with the number of dimensions as a human can track | _two_ such objects surprisingly well, especially if they | have a third, fixed reference independent from | themselves. | | Would be curious to compare & contrast studies of spatial | cognition between marine animals and terrestrial animals, | though. | sirspacey wrote: | Love this framing. Feels like the three body problem is | relevant. | pwinnski wrote: | Kids don't act in true 3-D, they act in Doom-like 2-D. It | gives the appearance of 3-D, but the Z-axis is barely off | zero. Climbing swaps X and Z, but is still 2-D. | | If it helps, think of what everybody else is calling | "3-D" as "no obvious primary axis." | jabbany wrote: | From NASA: https://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/9-12 | /features/F_Hu... | | "When there is no visual input as is common in many | flight situations, we rely more heavily on our vestibular | sense for this information. However, in flight and in | space, our vestibular system, _which is designed to work | on the ground in a 1g environment_, often provides us | with erroneous or disorienting information." | | We have a system to somewhat understand and orient | ourselves in 3d obviously, but it has quirks because | evolution tuned it to work best on the ground + assuming | 1G of gravity as "down". | | Orienting in 3d is not intuitive for us. We can do it but | we need a _lot_ of help to do it safely. | ipaddr wrote: | Your quote talks about 1g gravity not that 3d is not | intuitive. A 3d world with 1g could be intuitive. | [deleted] | Afton wrote: | > __on the ground__ in a 1g | ouid wrote: | Planes and submarines treat down as special because down | is genuinely special. We would have some other | abstraction if this were not the case. | jabbany wrote: | It _is_ special but we cannot perceive it correctly. We | do not have an absolute sense of "down" (and our absolute | sense of "forward" and "backward" are based on a assuming | fixed "down"). | | We sense "down" based on assuming that 1G of acceleration | is the "down" position. This is fine if you're | stationary. This is fine if you're moving in 2d. But | accelerate in 3d and all of a sudden you can get | completely disoriented because the "down" you're latching | on to could be any acceleration vector. | | We _can_ manage this, but it is an acquired skill and we | need instruments to help us. Pilots (and especially | fighter pilots or astronauts who truly experience a lot | of 3d acceleration) need to train for years to acquire | this skill. | | Can you imagine training an average person years just to | _use_ a jetpack? That's why we have jetpacks and yet most | people don't care. | lazide wrote: | Most of the astronaut and pilot training on this, btw, is | to completely ignore what our internal intuition is and | use instruments and direct math - for the reason you're | talking about, but also because especially at the | astronaut level ALL intuition related to speed, | direction, etc. is generally wrong. for pilots it's often | only _mostly_ wrong, but using intuition and flying IFR | is not going to work for long. | | For an astronaut in orbit, going 'up' means accelerating. | Going 'down' means slowing down. Going sideways (in the | way we typically think of it) involves changing velocity | in least 2 vectors twice, etc. | hateful wrote: | The answer here is what we have in drones. Drones can | stay perfectly still in the air now. A flying car or | personal "jet pack" would be the same. The usable system | would provide all the stabilization of a drone and your | controls would be just that of a car, with a separate | setting for altitude. | | And just like cars, you wouldn't be flying it randomly, | we'd have to build "lanes" at different heights, etc. You | don't drive your car randomly through buildings. In fact, | connecting to a network and having it fly for you would | be the most likely scenario. | | Not to say that there wouldn't be "free flight" parks | around. | mountainriver wrote: | I donno the mandolorian maybe?! | jvanderbot wrote: | Someday, helicopters will operate like video games, due to | complete flight software stabilization and abstraction of the | horrifically complicated control surfaces. This is already | starting. But uptake is slow[1] | | At that time, we can revisit jetpacks and use onboard | software to completely abstract the horrifically complicated | control problem. | | 1. https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/23977/why- | arent... | ehnto wrote: | I agree and it's pretty incredible, but I think to enable | popularization of it as personal transport you'd need to | abstract the pilot away entirely. Automate the whole | journey, from a system that's aware of all other journeys. | That still can't account for all dangers, but at least | people wouldn't be flying into each other at 100mph | outworlder wrote: | At 25k USD for the cheapest helicoper blade, I don't see | them getting more popular even if they become trivial to | fly. | | Tiny jet turbines are expensive too. | BlueTemplar wrote: | Wouldn't mass manufacturing significantly drive these | costs down ? Fuel costs however... | ThrustVectoring wrote: | > They're still aircraft after all, at the very least you're | going to need pilots license. | | The FAA is amenable to allowing people to operate small | personal for non-commercial purposes _without_ a license. If | you do not take passengers and do not operate it in time, | place, and manner that creates a hazard for others, there 's | a very real "if you kill your own damn self that's your | problem" regulatory mentality. | | What you actually need a license for is to exceed | speed/weight/fuel limitations designed to ensure these | conditions. If you're going for a part 103 ultralight craft, | that's 55 knots / 254 pounds / 5 gallons of fuel. Might be | hard to design a usable jetpack under these constraints. | outworlder wrote: | > What were we expecting from jetpacks though, really? Is it | not more fair to suggest that the past was a little bit naive | about what it would take to operate a jetpack? They're still | aircraft after all, at the very least you're going to need | pilots license. | | You need a pilots license, but you don't need fine motor | coordination skills across your entire body PLUS a lot of | core strength, in addition to all the problems with moving in | 3d. | | For this 'jetpack' you are essentially balancing your weight | between your back and arms. If you get it wrong for a split | second, you'll kiss the ground. It's inherently unstable and | tiring since you have jet turbines strapped to your arms. | | An aircraft is stable. Let go of the controls and it will | keep flying. | | The closest aircraft comparison would possibly be with a hang | glider, except even there your weight is supported and you | are essentially just shifting it around. | | Many jetpacks in fiction were envisioned to work more like | drones. Tell it where to go and it would do the rest. Iron | Man would be similar to this thing, except it is described as | a fully mechanized suit (plus artificial intelligence), which | magically takes care of some of these problems. | | Ultimately, 'jetpacks' will probably never exist. There's an | inherent physics limitation when trying to strap a whole | human body to the side of something small (and generally | depicted as being strapped on your back, Bobba Fett style). | The center of mass is off. | KineticLensman wrote: | > since you have jet turbines strapped to your arms | | So soldiers that use them would need guns strapped to their | feet? | dreamcompiler wrote: | The stability issues could easily be fixed with more | closed-loop control. The much more serious issues are heat | and the limited fuel supply. | jonathankoren wrote: | Agree. This is the same reason why I'm skeptical on | flying cars. There's so many fender benders. I don't want | a Jetta crashing through my roof. | | Sure, general aviation is safer than driving (e.g. less | accidents per vehicle, and less accidents per hour/mile), | but general aviation is more dangerous than commercial | aviation. I suspect there's something going on with | maintenance, training, and available safety features. | Seems like lowering the barrier of entry to flying is | simply going to increase the accident rate because | there's just more less skilled people flying. | | Of course most flights crash on takeoff and landing, and | conceivably that would be automated, so maybe I'm just | being paranoid. Still seems impractical, if for no other | reason space restrictions on the ground. | lazide wrote: | Commercial aviation gets to pick from the cream of the | crop and fully professionalizes it's pilots - it's all | they do, all the time. That means staying current | (keeping habits fresh, remembering key details, etc) | happen easier. | | Considering how low the frequency is for your your | typical GA pilot, it's honestly a wonder it works as well | as it does. | carabiner wrote: | GA is actually less safe than driving. It's about as safe | as riding a motorcycle: | https://inspire.eaa.org/2017/05/11/how-safe-is-it/ | | GA aircraft crash every day in the US. They don't make | the news outside of aviation circles because only 1-2 | people are affected. Often the occupants survive. | rictic wrote: | If battery tech continues to improve at current rates then | certainly electric jetpacks will be possible and practical, | if there's still demand (and we don't destroy ourselves one | way or another). Without doing the math though it might be | many decades. | mdavidn wrote: | Unlikely. The specific energy of jet fuel is more than 40 | times that of batteries, and I don't see batteries | improving by an order of magnitude. A jetpack would need | 40 times more battery mass than fuel to produce the same | thrust for the same duration. Of course, the weight of | the batteries require even more thrust... | earleybird wrote: | Nailed it. | | Even in cars where there they do a bunch of gliding | (rolling) batteries are just becoming plausible (looking | back over time). | alisonkisk wrote: | XMPPwocky wrote: | "There's an inherent physics limitation when trying to | strap a whole human body to the side of something small | (and generally depicted as being strapped on your back, | Bobba Fett style). The center of mass is off." | | While obviously wasteful and goofy, there's always the | option of putting an _upwards-pointing_ (i.e. pushing down) | thruster at the rear of a jetpack like a lever arm. | asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: | I was thinking that eventually they could design some | kind of powered attachment between the arm pods and the | backpack. It would accentuate your desired movement while | relieving stress. Maybe they could control it with a | Neuralink implant so that there won't be accidental | movements due to buffeting. Then if you had that you | could build an AI to make it mostly user-error-proof. | | To be clear, this is all pie in the sky nonsense, but | it's fun to think about. It would _still_ be terribly | impractical, but maybe it could be made reliable enough | that using it over land would not be immediately fatal to | most ordinary people who would want to try it. | rowathay wrote: | " this is all pie in the sky nonsense" | | Nah, only the Neuralink part. | mbrameld wrote: | > An aircraft is stable. Let go of the controls and it will | keep flying. | | That's true for most fixed-wing aircraft, but it's | certainly not true for most rotor-wing aircraft. I'd | estimate you've got about a second, if you're lucky, | between letting go of the cyclic in a Robinson R22 and | unrecoverable loss-of-control. | evilos wrote: | Even with loss of power for rotary wing aircraft don't | you have the option to auto rotate to the ground? | kevin_thibedeau wrote: | You have to have enough forward speed. Auto rotation is a | joke in a real emergency most of the time. | elpatoisthebest wrote: | The problem with Robinson helicopters specifically (older | R-22 & R-44 more than most) is their very low mass rotor | system, which results in very low inertia. The time you | have to recover is significantly shorter than other high | inertia systems on other helicopters. | | Their very low cost makes them pretty common for schools | and instruction in general, but the low inertia (and | resultant fatalities early in its operation) was | significant enough that the FAA requires a Robinson | specific endorsement. | lazide wrote: | I wouldn't be so sure. Fundamentally this is a control | input/feedback/positioning/power problem - one we don't | currently know how to model or control in an automated | fashion. | | With the right mental model and control/power systems, it | wouldn't have to be much different from riding a unicycle. | Helicopters have similar issues (it's a bit like balancing | a spinning bowling ball on the end of a stick in practice - | yet many people are licensed and safe helicopter pilots) | | I'm guessing it's something that not everyone can do, but | something a large percentage of people (20%+?) can do if | they spent the time learning and it was systematized | usefully. | funkaster wrote: | I think the part that's missing (besides the knowledge and | understanding of the operation in the airspace) is enough | (automatic) assistance that its manipulation can be done by | someone with the sake skills that any GA pilot could have. | jayd16 wrote: | I think we probably expected something closer to a motorcycle | as far as danger and accessibility. | chrisseaton wrote: | > the creator cosplaying as whatever service he's trying to | sell it to | | That guy is an actual Royal Marine Commando - he's not | cosplaying. | ch4s3 wrote: | I think the point is that when you see demos, it's always him | dressed up as a marine, mountain rescuer, etc and not someone | else. | hammyhavoc wrote: | What difference does it make who demonstrates it? All that | matters is application, performance, and whether it is fit | for purpose. | ch4s3 wrote: | I think the earlier posters are pointing out that no one | else seems to be able to safely operate the thing, which | suggests that it might not be fit for purpose. | Dylan16807 wrote: | The amount of training matters. If it's always him, that | has some implications on how hard it is to turn into a | product. | | And a quick demo doesn't do a good job of showing fit for | purpose either. Maybe performance. | hammyhavoc wrote: | I can see this potentially having some usefulness if | refined, but from a strictly practical perspective, I | can't see many pilots surviving a boarding if the vessel | has any firearms. It just lacks maneuverability. | chrisseaton wrote: | You (obviously) combine it with fire support. Just like a | ladder or helicopter assault on a ship, or an infantry | attack on land, or really any other military manoeuvre. | hammyhavoc wrote: | Sure, I don't disagree here. My point is that whether it | is fit for purpose remains to be seen or whether it's a | solution in search of a problem versus alternatives. | toqy wrote: | Isn't the point being made that there is nobody else | capable of demonstrating it? | samstave wrote: | Question: How impracticable is the following: | | --- | | you have a machine with micro-thrusters (of whatever fuel- | source) | | It is driven by modern drone tech for stability. | | How driven, super simplistic maths for establishing | thrust.telemetry.balance... | | How the FUCK has this not been solved? | | A belt of jets. They fly you without killing or burning you. | | We are significantly evolved for this to happen... | | Seriously. This is a solvable thing. Do it. | jollybean wrote: | That's legit R&D. | | Marines storming a ship is an obvious use case where the high | cost will be accounted for (i.e. we have a lot of expensive | gear for specific purpose) and it's a practical scenario. Coast | Guard same. And certainly other forces. If we can get the gear | to be very easy to use and practical, it could very much enable | a kind of acute mobility. | | There's little direct use beyond that, however, the development | of the technology could yield other things as we learn to make | those little jets cheap, efficient and intelligent. | | Those systems could absolutely be deoployed onto drones, which | opens up a world of use cases. | xtracto wrote: | Exactly, right there in the article theres a highlighted quote | mentioning this: | | > Now, the flight duration is too short, and the degree of | difficulty too great. But this was also the case for the Wright | brothers | | I think the next step for Jetpacks is to develop automated | navigation/stabilization systems. We want a Jetpack for which | the normal state is flying at a stable height, then with some | kind of 3D joystick we can move steadily up, down, front, back | and sideways. I think all of this is currently achievable but | too expensive to implement. | | Also, the amount of energy required to lift a person is just to | high, so until better ways to store energy are developed, the | "backpack" form factor for storing energy will not cut it for | practical flights. | outworlder wrote: | Better and safer too. We need to not only store incredible | amounts of energy, but do it in such a way that's safe to do | so next to your chest :) | BizarroLand wrote: | Maybe it's silly, but I want wings on my jetpack that are | large enough that I can glide, but also that can sheath | themselves into each other. | autokad wrote: | it does feel like we made lots of progress though. as we need | less fuel for them, they get easier to use, and safety improves | we should start seeing some real use cases | walrus01 wrote: | a widely usable 'jetpack' would actually be more like a ducted- | fan coaxial octocopter that you wear, with flight | stabilization/onboard flight controller not very dissimilar | from a large commerical cinema filming octocopter. | | if it relies on the person's skill to fly it and has a 5-10 | minute max flight time, of course it'll be a niche thing... | falcolas wrote: | Theoretically, if you could add adjustable _mechanical_ | joints, you could hook up a flight controller to it and fly | it. Could you add the necessary joints and motivators and | stay inside a reasonable weight? Not so sure. | walrus01 wrote: | with arducopter and common COTS flight controllers people | have made monocopters that use servo motor controlled | vanes: | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Pu-KDuxUwU | andi999 wrote: | I think with a active control unit safe operation should be | possible. There are fighter jets that cannot be flewn manually | (unstable flight behaviour). Probably range and use case is the | problem. | ArnoVW wrote: | While indeed people do not use jetpack in a day-to-day manner, | they are becoming slightly more 'available' than you portray. | | See this video where one of the corridor crew members | participates in a jetpack training. | | https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-R5xYaqQo4k | | I think it's more precise to say that they are currently a toy | for the rich. | JoeAltmaier wrote: | " And this is the tragedy of jetpack technology. They can't hold | enough fuel for more than eight minutes of flight " | Borrible wrote: | Yes, why don't we care? Inquiring minds need to know! | | https://qz.com/1667783/why-doesnt-the-military-have-jetpacks... | citizenpaul wrote: | Jetpacks are only useful if there is no infrastructure. You can | get a motorcycle for <$500 that is infinity more useful than a | $500,000 jetpack. Hop on the road and get where you want in a | moment. | | Plus a jetpack requires special licensing and pre approved flight | plans, ect. | | Jetpacks are only a toy, a very, very expensive toy as they are | now. | hirako2000 wrote: | it's rather $300,000, but at the burning rate of several litres | of kerosene per minute, your budget isn't far off reality of | actually owning one and using it. | byw wrote: | Or even a light helicopter. You can get a Robinson R22 (2-seat) | for around $300k new, or R44 (4-seat) for around $500k. | twobitshifter wrote: | A Honda Grom is still $3500, but I don't think that weakens | your point about cost. However, similarly to jet packs, | autogyros, ultralights, and paramotors, motorcycles are not as | popular in the USA, due to safety concerns. So even though | motorcycles are very useful and cheap, people don't ride them | much. I think the same would be true of a $3500 jet pack. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-01-27 23:00 UTC)