Hacker News Reader

Comment by Nextgrid | Hacker News Reader

Could it be some kind of marketing stunt to drum up attention around jetpacks ahead of an official announcement? It's irresponsible, unsafe and illegal, but you can't deny that it works - they've made the news.

View on HN

To poke the bear that is the federal government in such a loud and aggressive way is a good way to bring the full weight of the federal government down on such a company. Air travel is vital to our modern economy. To weaken its perceived safety and security in the name of profit would not end well for them.

Absolutely, but you write like we don't have startup CEOs doing stupid immature things [1] frequently...

[1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1026872652290379776

Elon Musk's immaturity may affect the perceived legitimacy of his own company, but his actions don't affect the perceived legitimacy of an entire category of the economy like such a jetpack exploit would.

It seems extremely likely that the market cap of Tesla is larger than the market cap of all jetpack companies combined. In any case you assume that any such CEO is concerned with the fate of other companies in the same space, an assumption for which the proof is extremely lacking.

Car in Mars orbit.

worth ninety-seven billion.

his tweets hurt my butt.

A startup that waited until they had a high-functioning product doing what it's actually supposed to do, and then launched their PR campaign? unlikely.

If your scenario was accurate they would have registered a domain and put up a bunch of staged photos and doctored video footage, then initiated a media blitz about how they've solved the biggest challenges and are taking investment.

this is the second time in a couple months a jetpack has been reported flying at LAX though, and nobody has claimed credit. If it only happened once and then we all learned who it was during the initial press cycle, i could see it being a marketing stunt. but violating restricted airspace multiple times without anybody finding out who you are is a pretty bad marketing stunt.

it might be some startup testing their experimental aircraft, but if it is they're either bad at marketing, bad at navigating, or both.

It would be less dangerous if they had ADS-B so that other planes could actually see them. There are small units that are not so expensive, so no excuse to not have one in such a dense controlled air space.

But then everyone would know who it was and exactly where it was, is, and is going.

Presumably, the person flying a freaking jet pack around the LA Area has enough money and smarts to know these things... and I doubt they want to be found.

I look at it this way. If I was going to pull this stunt, I know I am going to get into a lot of trouble as is. So with ADS-B, I can at least let other planes see my GPS/Altitude and I can leave all the other data empty. This does not provide who I am, but shows at least some attempt to mitigate risk. The FAA are all about mitigating risk. Also less likely I would get a face full of prop. The person doing this could turn it back off at lower altitude to avoid people seeing where they landed.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com