The Era of 'Jetsons'Personal Flying Vehicles is 1 year away | Hacker News Reader

The Era of 'Jetsons'Personal Flying Vehicles is 1 year away

axios.com

3 pointsanjel8 comments

> Learning to fly a Jetson ONE takes about five hours of training, D'haene tells Axios. The pilot uses intuitive joystick controls to go up or down and to accelerate and steer, while the flight computer handles the complicated stuff — like keeping the aircraft stable.

Sure, and I learned how to drive a car in 10 minutes in a parking lot, but learning to do it safely, in a real environment, around other cars and people, was and still is the hard part.

Now try doing that in three dimensions instead of two. I don't think flying cars should be allowed until they can be fully autonomous.

You’re probably right, but I wonder if it won’t be quite so hard since there’s very little to crash into once you’re a few hundred feet up. I’m not talking about in big cities with skyscrapers of course. In theory, one day there could be quite a lot of traffic in the sky from these but by then I’m sure there will be regulations, licenses, etc

Flying cars are just another type of light aircraft. And light aircraft are allowed. What we shouldn't allow are are exceptions to aircraft type certification and pilot licensing rules.

How come that environmental impact isn’t even mentioned in a 2023 piece on personal flying?

Such as? It's electric so power grid demand or treetop towing is all can think of?

Defying gravity consumes orders of magnitude more energy than ground-based transportation, which means you need much more batteries per person transported. Producing batteries has a horrible environmental footprint. Producing them just for the luxury of personal flying is beyond irresponsible.

Even assuming that my arguments may be flawed or entirely wrong, I still can't believe how an article about private flying doesn't afford a single paragraph to even stop and think about the impact.

Such a mindset is what keeps climate change going and going.

Good! It's been 5-10 years away since at least 1985. How long will it be 1 year away?

www.jetson.com

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