Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwaway0a5e | Hacker News Reader

The hand wringers and spineless politicians looking to score a few cheap brownie points for advancing "safety" will go after jet-packs if they ever become seriously viable. Look at all the hand wringing over the unwashed masses getting their hands on cheap and fast ebikes. Right now nobody cares because they're just rare toys for rich people.

View on HN

No-one's freaking out about those parachutes with a lawnmower engine & seat attached, and those have been around for many years and can be seen flying all over (at least) the rural Midwest.

Now, flying them over other people's property or over a city is, and should be, another story.

> Now, flying them over other people's property or over a city is, and should be, another story.

It's not "one of the most dreamed of forms of flight – jetpacks" if you can't fly around town.

Right, and that’s probably never going to happen because of noise issues alone.

Jetpacks are a little bit like the Elon Musk tunnel digging startup: it is something you dream about when stuck in traffic during your commute.

Sort of, but a tunnel network of that type is never going to be able to handle many users, no matter how good the design gets, while improved and safe jetpacks probably could replace most of the cars on the road.

I doubt it, for basically the same reason that electric bicycles are not going to replace most of the cars. They might be great, but are not very nice for long commutes in poor weather (while wearing fancy suits or dresses/skirts).

For jetpacks there is an additional huge problem with safety flying over inhabited areas. Unless the jetpacks are meticulously maintained and inspected, we would see people falling out of the sky on the daily. Taking the maintenance state of most cars as an example, it seems safe to state that it would be infeasible to expect the general population to keep their jetpacks in an acceptable state.

Electric bikes are also significantly slower than cars and expose you to a lot of ground-based hazards, even on the days with the best weather.

It's honestly gone better than I expected as someone who built their first ebike back in 2006.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com