The Flyboard Air is an extreme sports device. It's really cool, but very hard to fly. It's from the people with the water-jet Flyboard. Here's someone really good on that.[1] The Flyboard Air people insist that people get good on the water-jet version before even trying the jet-powered one.
Agreed, I think he was quoted as saying that anybody who'd want to try the Flyboard Air would need 10,000 hours or so on the water version. A lot of time.
You have to re-pack the chute, which either requires an advanced certification or the expense of paying someone to do it for you. Either way, a lot less convenient than fueling up your tank.
Well, that's the other thing: this is a one-way trip, unless I can get jet-pack fuel, just anywhere I decide to land. How much fuel does the landing song and dance take? Seems like it's a lotta hovering just right.
And wait a minute: packing a chute requires advanced certification, but we'll let just anyone go around with the jet pack? :)
And who's gonna go jet packing without a safety system, like a parachute anyways? That thing cuts out, there's no, "Guess we'll glide this to the ground" failure mode.
As much as I appreciate the Flyboard Air, and really truly think it's impressive, my inspiration for a personal flight device is more along the lines of what Jetman has been using. Vertical take-off and landing - in my opinion - are stupidly wasteful "necessities" that only compound the problem of being able to have a decent amount of flight time.
A wing for lift is, to me, essential if a personal flight device is ever going to be compelling. I'm working on a different invention right now, but in time I do hope to return to my ParaWing concept, which combines modern scientific findings and design with composites in mind to have a lot of performance potential. Seems dangerous as all get out but that's the fun.
If you want to be able to fly around like this at low altitude, why not just get a powered paraglider? Cheaper, safer, longer flight time and you can buy one today?
VTOL and speed would be two major differences I see, but I agree with the overall theme that existing solutions tend to get unjustly ignored. I especially liked this bit:
"There is some talk of having two jetpacks on top of every skyscraper in China."
Sure, you could have a near-experimental jetpack which requires significant training to fly safely and which costs a quarter of a million dollars, or you could spend $2,500 on a standard airplane emergency parachute which any random bozo can use safely with about three minutes of "here's how you buckle the straps, and here's the ring you pull."
Same basic thing for a these weird hybrid car/airplane contraptions they call "flying cars." For less money you can buy a great car, a great airplane, another great car for your most frequently visited destination, and have enough money left over for rental cars for all your other destinations for the rest of your life.
Which is too bad, because sliding doors are one of their best features. As a parent, I've taken to parking next to minivans at the grocery store and whatnot, because I know how careful kids typically are when opening doors. Sliding doors = no dings.
Small SUVs are curious things. Being large would seem to be somewhat essential to the function and nature of an SUV. Making it small would seem to make it just a regular car but with external styling that mimics the look of an SUV...
> standard airplane emergency parachute which any random bozo can use safely with about three minutes
I would argue that there would be very few people with zero parachute experience that with just three minutes training could jump from a building and not die catastrophically at the bottom.
Uh? I think that you're overestimating the danger of parachutes:
1) they can open automatically
2) for total beginners without training, round (army styles) parachutes would be a possibility.
Then there are only two rules to learn: 1) keep your feet together and 2) keep your legs 'semi flexed'.
And if you forget the rules then you usually break an ankle not 'die catastrophically'.
Ah sorry, it's not the parachute that will kill you... It's slapping into the sides of buildings at a great rate of knots, and then getting tangled in the chute a hundred metres above the street.
Guys that go base jumping off buildings have years of practice, and they're aware of how risky it is doing a low altitude jump around objects.
BASE jumping is complicated by the fact that it's something people do with some frequency. That changes the safety requirements a lot: a risk of death of one in a thousand is way too high for a hobby, but it's OK for an "escape from a burning skyscraper" rescue system. It's also complicated by the fact that it's usually illegal, meaning that you want to make a clean landing so you can run away. Getting your parachute tangled on a lamp post would be a failure for a BASE jumper, but a win for a rescue system.
There are emergency parachutes made for pilots that are intended to be used with essentially no training. They do see some use, and they work. They are not the same as a typical skydiving parachute, they're made to be more forgiving. You may still be injured on landing, but you'll be a lot less injured than if you jumped without it.
presumably the answer is "hovering" and "VTOL", otherwise you're totally right. And if you want to fly, but only sorta want vtol, then still you should get a powered paraglider for a fraction of the cost and risk.
It's interesting that hovering, VTOL and small size are only important at the beginning and end of your flight. Maybe there's room for some kind of hybrid that takes off and lands like a small compact flyboard, but unfolds wings while cruising for better fuel efficiency? No idea how that would look though.
Where's Pentagon in all this? I would think they'd be the first to find a practical use for it. Much faster than a paraglider, and much easier to deploy than a helicopter.
I can imagine a group of commandos crossing the enemy lines at 100mph to sabotage something or other, or a spy escaping back to the safety of his own side. At least there has to be a movie based on this. Like, a jet-troops vs. jet-troops fire-fight.
> I would think they'd be the first to find a practical use for it.
Problem is, the pilot is SUCH an easy target. A helicopter can survive pretty heavy fire, and a glider doesn't care about a couple bullet holes in the wings.
Hit the jetpack, though, and the pilot goes either up in flames or dies of massive impact deceleration.
Always was so fascinated by this until I got my PPL. Now I just fly and wonder why I was waiting for a mystical new machine. In retrospect it was just a weird mental block.
Just go fly a glider, UL or, VLA. Buckling up feels like putting on a wing backpack, I promise. They become an extension to your body after about 50h of flying. Most importantly these flying machines are available right now. Also they work really well. Mindbogglingly well. There are ULs that can fly 1000km on 15 gal. With about 100h of experience you can fly a glider 500km and more.
I hear you say but it's expensive. Glider flying can be quite affordable, like 2000 bucks/year affordable. It's more flying anyways especially when you live in a mountainous area. Many clubs also let you reduce the fees when you help maintain the gear.
I hear you say it takes a lot of training. Well, you are pretending to be a bird. Chances are you will welcome the training until you feel very comfortable in the air. I never thought the required training is tedious. It's really part of the fun.
In short, If you want to to fly it's more doable than you may think and tiny flying addons (aka jetpacks) are generally overrated.
And we thought leaf blowers and car alarms were bad enough. I really, really hope I don't have to listen to one of my neighbors firing up one of those things in his backyard, any time soon. And I'd even more hate to be... a "resident" of his goldfish pond.
This looks like a really fun toy. Like others I've wondered when material science and miniaturization were going to span a credible jet engine at "backpack" sizes. The noise has to be pretty incredible though.
My take on them is that they won't be practical but like supercars I'll wish I owned one anyway. Now if I could just challenge Elon Musk into making it electric and practical ...
Unfortunately it's still really, "Personal flight [for fun and thrills]..." We're still not any closer to everyone jetting around as a general mode of getting from point A to B, and won't with anything like this kind of technology.
That's interesting, I wonder what happens if you take one of the current prototypes and hover off the ledge of a canyon... Will you drop suddenly and go splat, or will you keep altitude? Intuition says the former, but I'd like to know objectively.
If you're flying high enough before going over the cliff, you'd keep hovering... it's no different than a helicopter. These jets can definitely fly that high.
That said, if you're not flying high enough... if it's just the jet pushing air against the ground... you will go splat.
If you include a very effective collision avoidance system, then I'm in.
I'd use it for frickin' everything. Commuting would be so nice without having to sit in traffic.
Eastern Massachusetts rush hours are brutal. Just zoom straight to your destination using an "as the crow flies" route, and rely on the auto-pilot and collision avoidance to take care of the actual steering while you check your email.
20 miles in 12 minutes. Sweet.
I would just be slightly concerned about collisions with birds.
By the way, if fuel is unlimited, then we could have flying restaurants. They'd have names like High Altitude Café, Cloud Starbucks, etc.
Submitters: the rule on HN is not to rewrite a title unless it is misleading or linkbait. If a subtitle is more informative, it's ok to use that. (We've done so here, because the title is a question and we all know what that triggers.)
Omg, Hanlon's razor totatlly predicts that Occam's razor will says that because of Betteridge's law of headlines the original title of the article is soooooo clickbait...
Jetpack Aviation JB-9/JB-10 (from this article): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3AwBSwFV2I
* Specs from http://jetpackaviation.com/:
Flyboard Air: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEDrMriKsFM* Specs from http://zapata-racing.com/flyboardair-en: