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Comment by causi | Hacker News Reader

Twenty minutes of flight time is reasonable for a drone with swappable batteries. It seems next to useless for manned flight. In comparison the cheapest airplane, the Cessna 175 Skylark, has a flight endurance of 4.3 hours.

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Seems more analogous to a helicopter than a cessna. VTOL makes it a lot easier to actually use this. You don't need to go to an airstrip - as a rich person toy that means its much more readibly available. As a method of transportation that means that opens up a lot of trips - probably primarily commuting - even if you are limited to 32 km range and destinations where you can arrange a clear area to land.

Helicopters can auto-rotate if you lose power, I'd be interested to see what it's like to deadstick land one of these. I guess that's what the whole-aircraft ballistic parachute system is for? IIRC in other airframes if you deploy that it's basically a write off.

the dead sticking result is probably measured by meters below grass

The good news is that, at 343 pounds when empty, they won't need to dig too deep to recover your body.

They have parachutes for airplanes.

edit:

I didn't read the end of the comment that mentioned the whole-airplane system already, apologies.

Right, but if you deploy the parachute you can kiss your airplane goodbye. It's totalled at that point and will never fly again. So in this case that's a $190k decision. Why not instead just fly an airplane (or helicopter) that is good at being an aircraft? If your budget is $190k you have some incredible options available.

I mean, people buy airplanes AND an airplane parachute already - there's a reason for it, even if it just means a bigger chance of personal survival.

Right, but (at least in normal aircraft) an engine-out situation doesn't (usually) immediately mean "pull the chute right now or we'll die". Instead the chute a last resort where the the alternative is unpleasant enough that you're willing to trade your aircraft to avoid it (e.g. you're staring down a situation where the aircraft will be destroyed anyway--think going down in trees, mountain cliffs, buildings, water, ...).

In other words, in a normal aircraft you still have options when you lose power.

Cirrus makes great planes on their own merits, before considering the parachute.

I thought the point of this thing is you don’t need a license to fly it.

I guess it makes a good gift for a rich parent if you want to get that inheritance a little quicker?

Not necessarily? Here's a Youtube video of the parachute system in action. Seems like the aircraft could survive depending on where it lands?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcsutISR6os

That looks like it was pretty easy on the machine, but they started in hover and used the engines to slow descent at the end. I'd be interested to see what happens when the chute opens at speed, and they don't fire up the engines to dull the final impact.

Autorotation depends on rotor inertia and rotor pitch control.

These companies don't do pitch control because if they could, they'd build a helicopter or an Osprey analog, and fixed pitch rotors must be low inertia to slew thrust quickly.

So no autorotation.

Yikes that's scary. In a Cessna or similar once you get into your reserve (figure ~45min running time) it becomes very urgent to get on the ground asap. And this thing looks like it glides about as well as a brick.

EDIT: worth quoting:

> it can fly at a cruise speed of 55 knots to a range of about 20 miles (32 kilometers) with 20 percent battery reserves left

That's four minutes of "reserve power" lmao. Absolutely not, no thanks.

EDIT: to put this into perspective, if you're flying at 7500ft and you hit your 4min reserve, you would need to fly straight down at over 20mph, and then aggressively slow your descent during the last few seconds in order to not die.

On the bright side, it seems like it can land anywhere and doesn't require a runway.

It sure can land anywhere, and once those batteries die you'll have a very high likelihood estimate of exactly when and where it'll do so ;)

Like a helicopter, but with way less range, payload, and capabilities.

well, and with no alternative to landing w/ power. at least a helicopter can take a glide path.

With no landing gear, it can only land on soft surfaces without damaging itself. The pilot's visibility is compromised during landing making it dangerous to set down near any infrastructure that will kill you.

Neither the Cessna nor many helicopters (autorotation) need power to land. I wouldn't want to get into one of these e-bricks!

Something tells me you're not supposed to fly this thing at 7500ft for a multitude of reasons. The energy needed to get you to that altitude would probably be prohibitive.

They have rather different performance characteristics, each can do things the other cannot. According to Wikipedia Cessna 175 production ceased in 1962; if that is true it's not really a fair comparison.

They might have meant the 172 skyhawk which is what the skylark is based on and is still available.

If you want applesto apples check out the Mosquito helicopter. One person experimental/ultralight helicopter that can basically match this thing for performance

There's an electric version of that under development too. https://evtol.news/composite-fx-xe-volt-mosquito-proof-of-co...

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