You can get model aircraft jet engines with enough power for this.[1] Various human-carrying craft have been built that way, such as the Zapata Flyboard.[2] But the engines have a lifespan measured in hours and not enough reliability for carrying humans. That's why all the demo videos of these things are over water, or tethered.
People have been trying to build small, cheap jet engines for decades. "Small" has been done. Cheap, no. Below bizjet size, the price doesn't go down much. Which is why general aviation is still running mostly on pistons. The 1960s Williams jetpack (not the Bell rocket belt) used an engine intended for cruise missiles.
If they've cracked the small jet engine problem, there's a big market for those, without trying to package them as jetpacks or motorcycles. Otherwise, it's just another demo rig.
The video is a bit suspicious. It's very quiet. You can hear the boats over it. It doesn't blow stuff around. It doesn't move his clothing. It doesn't ripple the water even at low altitude. Other videos of small jet engines are very noisy and have lots of jet blast.
> The startup’s most pertinent problem is creating the autonomous stabilization technologies that will make flying the Speeder effortless and safe.
looks like a smokescreen for marketing to the tech crowd. Everyone is going to believe they can solve the stabilisation problem: that's "just software" and we see demos of robots solving stabilisation problems all the time. Building a jet engine that's an order of magnitude better (cheaper, more reliable) than the industry has managed in 50 years, but with more or less the same tech? That's the kind of problem you can't just solve with machine learning.
We have actually teamed up with a company called AMT Netherlands to build our custom engines. The engines are not cheap because most of the companies are making them in very very small batches. We are currently increasing our numbers so the numbers are coming down considerably. We are actually currently working on a small thrust class turbofan which would solve a lot of issues that turbojets present. If you check out our videos we have flown all over the world for different companies like RedBull. We have also flown at many over land events like the Austrian F1 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZpMLyAOFiQ)as well as at The Festival of Speed at Goodwood (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvELzB7jY_0?).
> You can get model aircraft jet engines with enough power for this.[1] Various human-carrying craft have been built that way, such as the Zapata Flyboard.[2] But the engines have a lifespan measured in hours and not enough reliability for carrying humans. That's why all the demo videos of these things are over water, or tethered.
All engines have lifespans measured in hours. Jetcat engines have service intervals of 25-50 hours, which usually involves bearing replacements, inspection, cleaning etc.
Non-RC small engines have very normal service intervals of 1000s of hours, right on par with large jet engines and as long or longer than piston engines. The JFS100[1] is slightly more powerful than a JetCat 550, and is a bona fide helicopter engine. Helicopters[2] have used small <100 hp turbojet engines for decades. They're cheap and incredibly reliable. Those JFS 100s go for <$4,000.
They don't have the same power/weight ratio as jetcats because they're used to drive props- there is no demand for tiny jet engines because props are more efficient and jets require too much reduction for slow speed personal aircraft.
> The video is a bit suspicious. It's very quiet. You can hear the boats over it. It doesn't blow stuff around. It doesn't move his clothing. It doesn't ripple the water even at low altitude. Other videos of small jet engines are very noisy and have lots of jet blast.
This is excessively incredulous. The flyboard is well documented and perfectly reasonable. These people balance on jets of water without computers and jet engines are built to be trimmed in to match each other closely. Otherwise you'd have planes going in to flat spins when they pushed the throttle too hard.
He never goes near the water in that video, it's loud as hell, the only boat you can hear is a cigarette boat (which is basically a drag car), and he's wearing full leathers. Of course they aren't rippling. How would they fake a video like this[3]?
> But the engines have a lifespan measured in hours
I think it's slightly more correct to say that they have a service interval measured in hours. The jetcat ones require service every 25h of use, but there are other companies that require service less frequently, although the highest interval I found is 100h.
Those Jetcat engines are listed for sale here http://www.zedjet.com/jetcat-turbines.html with prices from £1700 to £5000 which doesn't seem so crazy expensive. Not sure about the reliability.
> [small jet engines, price, piston engines for GA]
Another important reason is fuel consumption. Jet engines in general are extremely thirsty, AFAIK the only reason they became (unexpectedly!) competitive with piston engines is that they allow the planes to fly so much higher where the air is thinner.
In addition, small turbines are even less efficient than big ones.
The sound, I think, is coming from a large headset like the ones prominently worn by the ground crew. I don't think it's the pilot's headset, as it does diminish a bit at the greatest range, and I would expect some radio talk between the pilot and the crew. I suspect they are noise-canceling headsets, as there is something about how it sounds that reminds me of vacuuming with a noise-canceling headset on.
Small has been done and cheaper is always possible, but significantly reducing the noise of jetpacks would require an amendment to the laws of fluid dynamics.
As for visible effects of the jet: at liftoff, the tether, that was detached by one of the crew just before, blows around a bit. I am trying to decide if you can see the jet as a distortion of the background, or whether that is an artifact of video decompression. The best opportunity for seeing it appears to be just after liftoff, when the right engine nozzle is seen with the cruise ship behind it, but there doesn't seem to be much of an effect there. As he approaches for landing, the netting around the pad appears to be blown around.
> That's why all the demo videos of these things are over water....
I thought they were over water due to FAA regulations. From an article about Larry Page's Kitty Hawk Flyer. [1]
> > In the US, the Flyer falls under the FAA's rules for ultralight aircraft, meaning no pilot's license is needed so long as it's flown over water or "uncongested areas."
One of the excellent things about YC is how they are completely unphased by moonshots. I don't know of any other organization that is nearly as supportive of ideas that would literally be called crazy other places.
3.5 years ago my cofounder were working on what was actually becoming an okay telecom referral business at the YC Fellowship, but my cofounder and I weren't happy. Pretty much every partner there enthusiastically told us that we should definitely consider doing our totally insane idea to try and bring modernized commercial agriculture to smallholder farmers in subsaharan Africa.
We started our moonshot and it's still growing. I think the only people who really believed in us were us and my parents and a couple YC partners, and a couple people at Accion Venture Labs. That was all we needed though.
By the way, I still think our company is a moonshot. Starting a moonshot company is stressful, it's foolish, it's a thousand mistakes to crawl out of, and by far the most rewarding professional decision I've ever made. Any moonshot worth taking will have a real shot at changing the course of human history, and I'm much happier to have a 0.5% chance of ending hunger then to have a 30% chance of a medium amount of wealth.
>One of the excellent things about YC is how they are completely unphased by moonshots.
I have never seen YC as a company investing in moonshots. Most of the companies that get accepted seem to be building products for developers or similar saas businesses. Some of their recent biotech investments are a bit more cutting edge, but full of moonshots, YC is not.
They're VCs. They have to bet on moonshots, because they bet on a lot of companies, most of which fail. If they don't bet on crazy ideas, it means the few that succeed, will only succeed like a "regular" company would succeed - with some nice just above positive cashflow, growing in the next 20 years to somewhat sustainable business - nice and slow. This will not fuel financing other 100s of companies that have failed.
What they need in every company they fund is at least a potential of astronomical exponential fast growth, if it succeeds. That's why many of these can be called "moonshots".
If the upside in a company is only to be "mildly successful" - they are not for VCs. The upside has to be explosive (even if there is a low chance of it).
>>One of the excellent things about YC is how they are completely unphased by moonshots.
On the other hand, it's not like they're betting the farm on a moonshot. They've funded over 1400 companies so they can afford to take chances, $150K for 7%. Who knows...after all they make their money of very few companies.
I'm not sure I'd call that a moonshot. Difficult and maybe crazy, but modern agriculture clearly already exists and works, unlike driverless cars for example.
I wish there was a "moonshot" for something like The Kidney Project (https://pharm.ucsf.edu/kidney) A project to produce an artificial kidney. It was kept alive by small donations by kidney patients over the years. Now maybe on better footing and closer to human testing. But still nothing funded like these pie in the sky moonshot project that people will care nothing about in a few years.
These don't look safe, even assuming perfect mechanical reliability, because humans will be piloting them over major population centers.
Humans are generally dumb and inattentive, and this particular vehicle looks like it would attract especially dumb humans who'd use them to try dumb things. Since they won't need any piloting certification, this is basically offloading risk onto everyone on the streets below.
I'd feel more comfortable if this were automated only. Then I'd at least be assured there'd be an organization held accountable, rather than a risk-seeking human who'd be dead anyway if it crashed.
If it were automated and had perfect mechanical reliability, then the only real issue is the noise pollution. Which still is going to be an issue, because these jets put out significant noise, and I haven't seen anything in the last 10-20 years since Moller's flying car prototypes to suggest that progress is being made there.
I love scifi as much as the next person here, but there's a lot of problems to solve before we put loud flying missiles in the hands of untrained adrenaline junkies flying over population centers.
That's why I don't think we would ever have flying cars either. We can barely handle driving on flat surfaces and I suspect most people on the road only get by idly emulating simple line following machines rather than actually engaging the whole situation.
It takes a third party to orchestrate busy sections of our current flying vehicles, planes, so I can't see any alternative to full automation of a mass of flying cars.
Indeed. If your car's power cuts, or breaks fail - the odds of you surviving are incrementally getting higher every year we're on the road. Cars are getting safer and safer, but surely part of that is due to the fact they're on the ground.
If I'm even 10 metres under the ground, flying at 50km/h, if this device fails, of the battery runs out, you're not gonna live to the tell the tale. There is no parachuting, no way of gliding safely to the ground (like planes and helicopters). What is the safety net?
I can't ever see a world where even a minority of the population adopt flying cars. The chance of catastrophic failure (death) is too high.
I live on Moffett Field next to the 101 -- the vehicles from the 101 are far more annoying than the airplanes. Just listen to traffic noise pretty much in any urban or suburban environment. The Caltrain sounds like -- well, a freight train. My point is that if we cared about noise pollution, we'd be paying more attention to the everyday noise all around us and developing technology such as a hypothetical road surface that absorbs sound or finding ways to make the loud train horns unnecessary. The noise from trains and roads is far more obnoxious than any airplane sounds.
Given how many days of the year the roads are frozen and/or snow covered where I live, the safety trade-off might be worth it. Just so long as the max height is only about half a meter off the ground (hovering, not flying).
I'm having trouble finding good references to cite [1], because the internet doesn't have a long-term memory, but early reactions to the automobile were identical to this. People had never tried to maneuver machines faster than a horse could pull one.
The driving skills that we take for granted now, that seem to come naturally for so many people, were totally nonexistent a little over a hundred years ago. Our brains can now process lots of things moving at different rates of what would have been bewildering speeds to any human not that long ago. We negotiate traffic and anticipate tricky situations and have developed rules that help coordinate the chaos.
Yeah, there are a lot of collisions and deaths all the time, and there are a lot of people who aren't great at it. But even the not-great ones are capable of something that nobody was when the automobile was introduced.
Lots of things turn out better than we expect just because most people don't really want to die. If it were possible for people to fly around overhead in some kind of personal vehicles, my guess is most folks would learn how to handle it.
I am a motorcycle nut and aviation nut since birth.
I’ve also jumped out of a dozen aircraft types via static line and ram air free fall chutes.
And I enjoy paragliding.
There’s nothing more I would like to see than a new form of personal flight.
However, I don’t see the viability of this thing at all.
Likely due to my having been in close proximity to the Martin Jetpack slow motion disaster over the last decade.
Reliability, repeatability, infallibility, safety, Certification, and classification.
All tall barriers to entry for recreational/commercial/civil aviation.
What would excite me would be an autonomous vertical lifting body that can lift a 200kg box over 200km, using 5-6 high reliability motors that can survive the failure of 1 or 2 motors as a result of mechanical failure or enemy fire.
For use in both commercial and military applications.
A reliable, agile, boring container carrier.
An oversized coffin shaped container that can fit 80%+ of high value commercial and military and commercial items, including personnel/casualty CASEVAC.
Why are we not building an autonomous platform around the carriage of a specifically calculated cube container?
Like a mini aerial 20ft or 40ft shipping container.
Glenn Martin and Martin Jetpack [0] (Glenn left the company in 2015 though) has been trying to build and bring to market something similar for the past decade (development has been going on decades before that). There's apparent commercial, private, and government interest in the device, but somehow that hasn't actually manifested into a finished and delivered product.
When Glenn spoke to a group of potential investors (which I was somehow a part of) back in 2011 you'd think that they were on the cusp of having a finished product and a stack of orders from the US DOD, a variety of commercial organisations, and dozens of rich people who want a personal aircraft. Technically Martin Jetpack still exists, but it has failed to bring anything to market, despite having millions of dollars poured into the company [1]
I struggle to see how Jetpack Aviation is going to achieve what Glenn and his company failed to do. They don't even have a flying prototype or a physical mockup, only some cool CAD models that look like they were made by some high school kid who's watched Star Wars a few too many times.
Jetpacks and flying motorbikes look cool, but on a practical basis they just aren't useful. They don't fly high enough or fast enough, and they can't operate in high wind or poor weather. For military/government use they aren't suitable and there just aren't enough rich people who want an expensive flying toy to sustain the market.
For me the moonshot problem I'd like to see solved would be trash. Literally! I've been to New York the first class world city where they pile plastic bags full of trash outside the houses and been to leafy suburbs in Europe where they put these bags in boxes and leave them outside too. Meanwhile in developing countries trash causes real pollution and health issues. But in all places it's people create waste and the waste accrues and then the waste then may be moved about. One possible solution for non recyclables would be some kind of composting / incineration-generation device to convert the trash into organics and/or electricity.
"The Speeder is “at least” two years of development time away from ending up in customer hands."
vs.
"Joby Aviation has spent the last decade developing their own electric motors and their current VTOL design from the ground up." [0]
I'd guess that it's at least two years after development has completed in order to get through final certifications for whichever regulatory agencies have a say in this.
I hate this for so many reasons. One of those 'future' products like clear glass screen and bendable phones that are just, well, stupid. Am I the only person that sees that?
Maybe I have a different definition of the word, but I wouldn't describe this as a moonshot. A "moonshot" is something incredibly hard to do that will have a huge impact on society if you manage it. Building a (really cool) $380k toy won't impact very many people at all.
Alright, let’s say we get the ALL the safety issues squared away. And let’s also assume they strap a cold fusion reactor to this too, so you can fly it around the world without stopping...
Can you imagine how fucking LOUD one of these things would be? Regular motorcycles drive my crazy with the noise from their ICEs. Now what if they had jet ingines one them instead? That alone should be enough to get these things banned.
If this isn’t a sign of how out of touch some people in Silicon Valley has become, I don’t know what is.
Thanks for keeping us inspired and trying to bring the future to now. Few thoughts & questions after reading the article & comments here...
Some of the reasons Tesla has succeeded that may be relevant for Speeder:
-Safety: Tesla's construction has allowed their vehicles to have the highest crash ratings. Removing an engine & simplifying the frame have helped.
-Driverless: Tesla has popularized & legitimized much of the technology that is trending towards driverless cars.
-Performance: The Tesla Roadster was the moonshot (no pun intended) since it kicked off the brand while being sexy both design wise and by its performance. When electric car was associated with the nerdy, economical Prius, Tesla flipped that stereotype on its head.
-Infrastructure: Tesla created the ecosystem to maximize the customer experience. From purchase/service/charging, Tesla independently set up the touch points to minimize friction.
My advice would be to go the SpaceX route instead of the Tesla route. You can go both and I'm sure you already are. Just remember that the regulatory environment will stall major headway for consumers. For military/government applications, this can be fast tracked and see applications right away. Those learnings can satisfy regulatory concerns and be the beta test needed.
I thought that YC was only interested in stuff that "scales"? This is just a toy for wealthy type-A thrill-seekers. How big of a market is that?
Seems sort of like a premium jet-ski that flies, but is even louder and more annoying, and has far more property damage potential in addition to being capable of producing even more gruesome accident scenes than crotchrocket motorbikes.
I think they should go for it, but I expect they'll be as popular as Bugatti Veyrons.
They won't be able to see anything through the body of the thing (gotta squint at a little display to understand what the heck you're flying towards?).
All their weight is going to be on their crotch (and, like, the front part of it) or maybe their stomach.
Their neck is going to be fighting gravity in the most awful way.
Powered flight is a matter of boring straight lines, at least outside the Star Wars universe. If all the technical details are solved, we might discover that the toy appeal just isn't as big as expected. Or are there many motorcyclists that prefer straight roads? Doing curves withhold reason (like on a big flat open surface) would be much exciting either.
For SAR applications, another interesting application of the control advances from the drone market might be a powered rescue winch harness: use the line for power delivery from the helicopter mothership and as a safety fallback, but gain hugely increased agility and precision from using a local set of fans for lift instead of swinging under the helicopter as a passive pendulum load. It would make helicopter rescue from steep slopes much less risky and open up vertical walls (or even overhangs) for helicopter access.
I suspect that what they're offering is not only feasible but achievable with modern technology. The glut of cheap sensors and research into dynamic, multi-axis control thanks to drones makes it easier for something like this to come into being. However, I am skeptical about their ability to build something that can fly for a long distance due to the low energy density of current technology. Even with a gas powered turbine system, their efficiency is capped at around 30%? Theoretically, heat recovery can boost that to 85%, but that equipment is heavy and it's complicated to mount https://www.wbdg.org/resources/microturbines . I don't know the answer to this question but I do hope that they find out!
Good luck guys! You're solving some really Hard problems here.
I love so many things about this, yet at the same time I don't get the positioning of this product.
1 - Is this is a product for consumers who buy $300-500K super sports cars?
2 - Is this targeted to the consumers who buy private planes?
3 - Is this for search and rescue market?
Group 1 - I don't know. Why not buy a drone-based technology that runs on batteries that might be cheaper and perhaps more reliable. Yes, it may not have the same energy density of batteries, but you can get your 20 min of thrill, super charge it and fly again for another 20 min.
Group 2 - I don't see this being comfortable, they'll buy a single engine plane with seats for 4 that is more comfortable and you don't freeze, or for more adventures people a trike at a fraction of a cost would do fine.
Group 3 - For search and rescue, you probably go as a team of 2-3 people and if you're rescuing people you need to bring them back. So you'll need a fleet of these. I understand helicopters are expensive, but once you add a few of these, then you're compete with a true and tested helicopter model.
Maybe at the end of the day, they'll make this autonomous, put a few missiles on it and then sell it to the pentagon. It's agile and fast and probably can make an argument for its tactical advantages.
[+] [-] Animats|7 years ago|reply
You can get model aircraft jet engines with enough power for this.[1] Various human-carrying craft have been built that way, such as the Zapata Flyboard.[2] But the engines have a lifespan measured in hours and not enough reliability for carrying humans. That's why all the demo videos of these things are over water, or tethered.
People have been trying to build small, cheap jet engines for decades. "Small" has been done. Cheap, no. Below bizjet size, the price doesn't go down much. Which is why general aviation is still running mostly on pistons. The 1960s Williams jetpack (not the Bell rocket belt) used an engine intended for cruise missiles.
If they've cracked the small jet engine problem, there's a big market for those, without trying to package them as jetpacks or motorcycles. Otherwise, it's just another demo rig.
The video is a bit suspicious. It's very quiet. You can hear the boats over it. It doesn't blow stuff around. It doesn't move his clothing. It doesn't ripple the water even at low altitude. Other videos of small jet engines are very noisy and have lots of jet blast.
[1] http://www.jetcat.de/jetcat/Kataloge/JetCat%20ENGINES.pdf
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7feIt5PRvUw
[+] [-] dmurray|7 years ago|reply
> The startup’s most pertinent problem is creating the autonomous stabilization technologies that will make flying the Speeder effortless and safe.
looks like a smokescreen for marketing to the tech crowd. Everyone is going to believe they can solve the stabilisation problem: that's "just software" and we see demos of robots solving stabilisation problems all the time. Building a jet engine that's an order of magnitude better (cheaper, more reliable) than the industry has managed in 50 years, but with more or less the same tech? That's the kind of problem you can't just solve with machine learning.
[+] [-] abock1|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hwillis|7 years ago|reply
All engines have lifespans measured in hours. Jetcat engines have service intervals of 25-50 hours, which usually involves bearing replacements, inspection, cleaning etc.
Non-RC small engines have very normal service intervals of 1000s of hours, right on par with large jet engines and as long or longer than piston engines. The JFS100[1] is slightly more powerful than a JetCat 550, and is a bona fide helicopter engine. Helicopters[2] have used small <100 hp turbojet engines for decades. They're cheap and incredibly reliable. Those JFS 100s go for <$4,000.
They don't have the same power/weight ratio as jetcats because they're used to drive props- there is no demand for tiny jet engines because props are more efficient and jets require too much reduction for slow speed personal aircraft.
> The video is a bit suspicious. It's very quiet. You can hear the boats over it. It doesn't blow stuff around. It doesn't move his clothing. It doesn't ripple the water even at low altitude. Other videos of small jet engines are very noisy and have lots of jet blast.
This is excessively incredulous. The flyboard is well documented and perfectly reasonable. These people balance on jets of water without computers and jet engines are built to be trimmed in to match each other closely. Otherwise you'd have planes going in to flat spins when they pushed the throttle too hard.
He never goes near the water in that video, it's loud as hell, the only boat you can hear is a cigarette boat (which is basically a drag car), and he's wearing full leathers. Of course they aren't rippling. How would they fake a video like this[3]?
[1]: http://nyethermodynamics.com/jfs100/index.html
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VxwRo9jzwg
[3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQzLrvz4DKQ
[+] [-] asdfasgasdgasdg|7 years ago|reply
I think it's slightly more correct to say that they have a service interval measured in hours. The jetcat ones require service every 25h of use, but there are other companies that require service less frequently, although the highest interval I found is 100h.
[+] [-] tim333|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mpweiher|7 years ago|reply
Another important reason is fuel consumption. Jet engines in general are extremely thirsty, AFAIK the only reason they became (unexpectedly!) competitive with piston engines is that they allow the planes to fly so much higher where the air is thinner.
In addition, small turbines are even less efficient than big ones.
[+] [-] mannykannot|7 years ago|reply
Small has been done and cheaper is always possible, but significantly reducing the noise of jetpacks would require an amendment to the laws of fluid dynamics.
As for visible effects of the jet: at liftoff, the tether, that was detached by one of the crew just before, blows around a bit. I am trying to decide if you can see the jet as a distortion of the background, or whether that is an artifact of video decompression. The best opportunity for seeing it appears to be just after liftoff, when the right engine nozzle is seen with the cruise ship behind it, but there doesn't seem to be much of an effect there. As he approaches for landing, the netting around the pad appears to be blown around.
[+] [-] lnsru|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Cactus2018|7 years ago|reply
I thought they were over water due to FAA regulations. From an article about Larry Page's Kitty Hawk Flyer. [1]
> > In the US, the Flyer falls under the FAA's rules for ultralight aircraft, meaning no pilot's license is needed so long as it's flown over water or "uncongested areas."
[1] https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/kitty-hawk-flyer-electric...
[+] [-] scottlocklin|7 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moller_M400_Skycar
FWIIW Moller's project is a great example of why this is hard.
[+] [-] dmayman|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tyingq|7 years ago|reply
It doesn't even seem to move the clothing of the guy that ducks behind him around 2:30.
There are a few paint flakes that come off and blow around a bit at 2:50 or so.
[+] [-] votingprawn|7 years ago|reply
Five engines in the render, assume 1 is redundant:
705lbs to metric: 3134N. Divide by 4 = 784N which is _exactly_ the max thrust of a Nike.
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] razorbladeknife|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] estsauver|7 years ago|reply
3.5 years ago my cofounder were working on what was actually becoming an okay telecom referral business at the YC Fellowship, but my cofounder and I weren't happy. Pretty much every partner there enthusiastically told us that we should definitely consider doing our totally insane idea to try and bring modernized commercial agriculture to smallholder farmers in subsaharan Africa.
We started our moonshot and it's still growing. I think the only people who really believed in us were us and my parents and a couple YC partners, and a couple people at Accion Venture Labs. That was all we needed though.
By the way, I still think our company is a moonshot. Starting a moonshot company is stressful, it's foolish, it's a thousand mistakes to crawl out of, and by far the most rewarding professional decision I've ever made. Any moonshot worth taking will have a real shot at changing the course of human history, and I'm much happier to have a 0.5% chance of ending hunger then to have a 30% chance of a medium amount of wealth.
[+] [-] bredren|7 years ago|reply
Now I work on an enterprise saa. Much happier with the saas, but maybe it is a life stage thing.
[+] [-] giarc|7 years ago|reply
I have never seen YC as a company investing in moonshots. Most of the companies that get accepted seem to be building products for developers or similar saas businesses. Some of their recent biotech investments are a bit more cutting edge, but full of moonshots, YC is not.
[+] [-] Erlich_Bachman|7 years ago|reply
What they need in every company they fund is at least a potential of astronomical exponential fast growth, if it succeeds. That's why many of these can be called "moonshots".
If the upside in a company is only to be "mildly successful" - they are not for VCs. The upside has to be explosive (even if there is a low chance of it).
[+] [-] billydbones|7 years ago|reply
+1 to your experience of the role YC plays, and +1 to what y’all are doing at Apollo
[+] [-] onetimemanytime|7 years ago|reply
On the other hand, it's not like they're betting the farm on a moonshot. They've funded over 1400 companies so they can afford to take chances, $150K for 7%. Who knows...after all they make their money of very few companies.
[+] [-] IshKebab|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pkaye|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] snowmaker|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] npunt|7 years ago|reply
Humans are generally dumb and inattentive, and this particular vehicle looks like it would attract especially dumb humans who'd use them to try dumb things. Since they won't need any piloting certification, this is basically offloading risk onto everyone on the streets below.
I'd feel more comfortable if this were automated only. Then I'd at least be assured there'd be an organization held accountable, rather than a risk-seeking human who'd be dead anyway if it crashed.
If it were automated and had perfect mechanical reliability, then the only real issue is the noise pollution. Which still is going to be an issue, because these jets put out significant noise, and I haven't seen anything in the last 10-20 years since Moller's flying car prototypes to suggest that progress is being made there.
I love scifi as much as the next person here, but there's a lot of problems to solve before we put loud flying missiles in the hands of untrained adrenaline junkies flying over population centers.
[+] [-] ehnto|7 years ago|reply
It takes a third party to orchestrate busy sections of our current flying vehicles, planes, so I can't see any alternative to full automation of a mass of flying cars.
[+] [-] deanclatworthy|7 years ago|reply
If I'm even 10 metres under the ground, flying at 50km/h, if this device fails, of the battery runs out, you're not gonna live to the tell the tale. There is no parachuting, no way of gliding safely to the ground (like planes and helicopters). What is the safety net?
I can't ever see a world where even a minority of the population adopt flying cars. The chance of catastrophic failure (death) is too high.
[+] [-] Florin_Andrei|7 years ago|reply
Can't imagine the stupid s%%t some are going to do in 3D.
[+] [-] aussieguy1234|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] briandear|7 years ago|reply
I live on Moffett Field next to the 101 -- the vehicles from the 101 are far more annoying than the airplanes. Just listen to traffic noise pretty much in any urban or suburban environment. The Caltrain sounds like -- well, a freight train. My point is that if we cared about noise pollution, we'd be paying more attention to the everyday noise all around us and developing technology such as a hypothetical road surface that absorbs sound or finding ways to make the loud train horns unnecessary. The noise from trains and roads is far more obnoxious than any airplane sounds.
[+] [-] dmayman|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scj|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thaumaturgy|7 years ago|reply
The driving skills that we take for granted now, that seem to come naturally for so many people, were totally nonexistent a little over a hundred years ago. Our brains can now process lots of things moving at different rates of what would have been bewildering speeds to any human not that long ago. We negotiate traffic and anticipate tricky situations and have developed rules that help coordinate the chaos.
Yeah, there are a lot of collisions and deaths all the time, and there are a lot of people who aren't great at it. But even the not-great ones are capable of something that nobody was when the automobile was introduced.
Lots of things turn out better than we expect just because most people don't really want to die. If it were possible for people to fly around overhead in some kind of personal vehicles, my guess is most folks would learn how to handle it.
[1]: Best I could do for now: https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan-histor...
[+] [-] chriselles|7 years ago|reply
I’ve also jumped out of a dozen aircraft types via static line and ram air free fall chutes.
And I enjoy paragliding.
There’s nothing more I would like to see than a new form of personal flight.
However, I don’t see the viability of this thing at all.
Likely due to my having been in close proximity to the Martin Jetpack slow motion disaster over the last decade.
Reliability, repeatability, infallibility, safety, Certification, and classification.
All tall barriers to entry for recreational/commercial/civil aviation.
What would excite me would be an autonomous vertical lifting body that can lift a 200kg box over 200km, using 5-6 high reliability motors that can survive the failure of 1 or 2 motors as a result of mechanical failure or enemy fire.
For use in both commercial and military applications.
A reliable, agile, boring container carrier.
An oversized coffin shaped container that can fit 80%+ of high value commercial and military and commercial items, including personnel/casualty CASEVAC.
Why are we not building an autonomous platform around the carriage of a specifically calculated cube container?
Like a mini aerial 20ft or 40ft shipping container.
[+] [-] toomanybeersies|7 years ago|reply
When Glenn spoke to a group of potential investors (which I was somehow a part of) back in 2011 you'd think that they were on the cusp of having a finished product and a stack of orders from the US DOD, a variety of commercial organisations, and dozens of rich people who want a personal aircraft. Technically Martin Jetpack still exists, but it has failed to bring anything to market, despite having millions of dollars poured into the company [1]
I struggle to see how Jetpack Aviation is going to achieve what Glenn and his company failed to do. They don't even have a flying prototype or a physical mockup, only some cool CAD models that look like they were made by some high school kid who's watched Star Wars a few too many times.
Jetpacks and flying motorbikes look cool, but on a practical basis they just aren't useful. They don't fly high enough or fast enough, and they can't operate in high wind or poor weather. For military/government use they aren't suitable and there just aren't enough rich people who want an expensive flying toy to sustain the market.
[0] http://www.martinjetpack.com/
[1] https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&...
[+] [-] thinkingemote|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 11thEarlOfMar|7 years ago|reply
vs.
"Joby Aviation has spent the last decade developing their own electric motors and their current VTOL design from the ground up." [0]
I'd guess that it's at least two years after development has completed in order to get through final certifications for whichever regulatory agencies have a say in this.
[0] https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/08/the-electric-aircraft-is-t...
[+] [-] gpm|7 years ago|reply
Have to imagine that there are search and rescue/fire fighting/military uses for this technology, manned and unmanned.
[+] [-] matthewfelgate|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] onion2k|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baron816|7 years ago|reply
Can you imagine how fucking LOUD one of these things would be? Regular motorcycles drive my crazy with the noise from their ICEs. Now what if they had jet ingines one them instead? That alone should be enough to get these things banned.
If this isn’t a sign of how out of touch some people in Silicon Valley has become, I don’t know what is.
[+] [-] orky56|7 years ago|reply
Some of the reasons Tesla has succeeded that may be relevant for Speeder: -Safety: Tesla's construction has allowed their vehicles to have the highest crash ratings. Removing an engine & simplifying the frame have helped. -Driverless: Tesla has popularized & legitimized much of the technology that is trending towards driverless cars. -Performance: The Tesla Roadster was the moonshot (no pun intended) since it kicked off the brand while being sexy both design wise and by its performance. When electric car was associated with the nerdy, economical Prius, Tesla flipped that stereotype on its head. -Infrastructure: Tesla created the ecosystem to maximize the customer experience. From purchase/service/charging, Tesla independently set up the touch points to minimize friction.
My advice would be to go the SpaceX route instead of the Tesla route. You can go both and I'm sure you already are. Just remember that the regulatory environment will stall major headway for consumers. For military/government applications, this can be fast tracked and see applications right away. Those learnings can satisfy regulatory concerns and be the beta test needed.
[+] [-] crispyambulance|7 years ago|reply
Seems sort of like a premium jet-ski that flies, but is even louder and more annoying, and has far more property damage potential in addition to being capable of producing even more gruesome accident scenes than crotchrocket motorbikes.
I think they should go for it, but I expect they'll be as popular as Bugatti Veyrons.
[+] [-] gameguy43|7 years ago|reply
They won't be able to see anything through the body of the thing (gotta squint at a little display to understand what the heck you're flying towards?).
All their weight is going to be on their crotch (and, like, the front part of it) or maybe their stomach.
Their neck is going to be fighting gravity in the most awful way.
[+] [-] usrusr|7 years ago|reply
For SAR applications, another interesting application of the control advances from the drone market might be a powered rescue winch harness: use the line for power delivery from the helicopter mothership and as a safety fallback, but gain hugely increased agility and precision from using a local set of fans for lift instead of swinging under the helicopter as a passive pendulum load. It would make helicopter rescue from steep slopes much less risky and open up vertical walls (or even overhangs) for helicopter access.
[+] [-] areoform|7 years ago|reply
Good luck guys! You're solving some really Hard problems here.
[+] [-] eftpotrm|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] salimmadjd|7 years ago|reply
1 - Is this is a product for consumers who buy $300-500K super sports cars?
2 - Is this targeted to the consumers who buy private planes?
3 - Is this for search and rescue market?
Group 1 - I don't know. Why not buy a drone-based technology that runs on batteries that might be cheaper and perhaps more reliable. Yes, it may not have the same energy density of batteries, but you can get your 20 min of thrill, super charge it and fly again for another 20 min.
Group 2 - I don't see this being comfortable, they'll buy a single engine plane with seats for 4 that is more comfortable and you don't freeze, or for more adventures people a trike at a fraction of a cost would do fine.
Group 3 - For search and rescue, you probably go as a team of 2-3 people and if you're rescuing people you need to bring them back. So you'll need a fleet of these. I understand helicopters are expensive, but once you add a few of these, then you're compete with a true and tested helicopter model.
Maybe at the end of the day, they'll make this autonomous, put a few missiles on it and then sell it to the pentagon. It's agile and fast and probably can make an argument for its tactical advantages.
edit: typo
[+] [-] myrandomcomment|7 years ago|reply