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Comment by mikeash | Hacker News Reader

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.

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And yet, WRT your last paragraph, SUVs still sell, so there remains some kind of market for swiss-army-knife-cars.

The vast majority of SUVs on the roads are just larger cars. They're minivans without the stigma of sliding doors.

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.

I've driven a minivan, and I've driven a few SUVs, and even before I was a parent, I knew that I'd much rather have a minivan than an SUV.

Now I just have to fight my wife about it, who'd rather have a small SUV...

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...

That styling tricks people into thinking they have more space.

> 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.

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