Posted on 10/21/2021 9:48:19 AM PDT by Red Badger
The Jetson One flies along at highway speeds, with LiDAR-enabled obstacle avoidanceJetson Aero VIEW 4 IMAGES
If anyone can think of a more perfect name for a personal eVTOL, we're listening! Sweden's Jetson Aero has already sold out the 2022 production run of this cute little single-seat kit build, which is capable of zooming along at 63 mph (102 km/h).
The Jetson One is a simple design purely dedicated to muckin' about and having fun. Its single seat is suspended in an aluminum/carbon fiber spaceframe. It's a straight-up drone-style multicopter, with eight props mounted coaxially on four arms, putting out a total peak of 88 kW (118 horsepower). Jetson says it'll fly safely if one motor dies, but frankly I'd be more interested in landing safely at that point.
The pilot flies it with a throttle lever on the left, a joystick on the right, and a pair of pedals, presumably controlling yaw. There's some very basic system information displayed on a little dash that frankly looks like a smartphone in a cradle.
Jetson's put together some of the first really fun-looking video we've seen for the Jetson OneJetson Aero The triple-redundant flight computers will simply hover in place or perform an emergency landing if you let go of the sticks, and the system endeavors to keep pilots out of trouble using LiDAR-enabled terrain tracking and obstacle avoidance. The last line of defense is a rapidly deployable ballistic parachute, but boy oh boy, we wouldn't want to find ourselves needing that.
It's reasonably compact at 2845 mm x 2400 mm x 1030 mm (112 x 95 x 41 inches), and the prop arms are designed to fold in as well, leaving it not much bigger than a touring motorcycle in your garage. It's lightweight for its size, but at 90 kg (198 lb) it's the sort of thing you'll probably need help moving around.
Jetson is selling these things as home-built kits, 50 percent assembled, and presumably owners will be able to fly them about on a private pilot's license in the USA as experimental/home built aircraft. It appears there'll be an option to add some bumper bars that might help keep kids, dogs and unsuspecting pedestrians away from the spinning props, but there's going to be a lot of rapidly spinning carbon fiber in the air near the pilot's head and shoulders in a crash either way.
There appears to be some sort of prop guard kit under development, but it'll still be a pretty effective blenderJetson Aero Jetson has filmed some terrific video of a guy flying one of these things around. Wisely, they've stayed close to the ground, so there's a real sense of dynamic motion to the footage and it just looks like brilliant fun. That might end up being a relatively safe and entertaining way to fly these things too, like zero-gravity dune buggies.
Mind you, the pilot deliberately gets pretty damn close to some trees, so either he really trusts that obstacle avoidance system, or he's got it switched off, or else it doesn't stop you from flying into trees, which I'd personally consider a problem. I've never flown a personal eVTOL, but I think I'd like it best when it wasn't flying into trees.
The flight endurance is pretty disappointing: an 85 kg (187 lb) pilot can expect just 15 minutes of airborne giggles before the battery needs to go back on the charger, presumably for a decent chunk of time. Fifteen minutes is a long time if you're holding your breath, but it's not a long time if you're trying to master and enjoy your new US$92,000 toy. Yes, $92,000, with $22,000 down as a deposit to reserve a build slot. So it ain't cheap for something you can't take your kids in.
And finally, as we mentioned at the top, Jetson's already sold out its entire 2022 production run of 12 units. At this stage there appear to be only three slots left for 2023.
Still, it's a working personal buy 'n' fly eVTOL with a price tag and a production schedule, that you can have in your own shed within two years. That puts it on a very short list. And Jetson has done a great job of capturing what these things might feel like to fly, so enjoy that aerial video below!
VIDEO AT LINK...................
Jetson One - Official Launch Source: Jetson Aero
Now here’s a drone:
https://www.regimage.org/f-4-target-drone/
$92 grand and you crack it up the first time you fly it.
Priceless.
That’s VERY nice. Always loved F-4s.
Definitely a fair weather flyer.
Needs cup holders
So, does it only fly in ground effect or can it climb?
Did not see mention of that.
Yeah, cup holders to put your beer in while you’re going 60 MPH down an icy slope in what is basically a gravity powered snowmobile with a roll cage......
It uses LIDAR so is probably limited in it’s altitude.................
“just 15 minutes of airborne giggles before the battery needs to go back on the charger”
A bit worse than those oversized golf kart things on the road.
I can see rednecks already souping it up!.................
Gatling Gun is optional......................
you got me, you’re toast
Lose a rotor and your toast. More rotors is more chances for failure. I have played with quadcopters and just a little rotor damage or one failed motor makes the device uncontrollable.
Every pound of fat you lose allows another pound of batteries to add to eVTOL...
Out of Star Wars.
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throttle lever on the left, a joystick on the right
Backwards. Made for copilots, and they probably can't afford one of these!
At 92K it would take a captain with 2 or fewer ex's.
VERTOL is a costly proposition and all rotary-winged aircraft are far less efficient than their fixed-wing counterparts. So it wold take a quantum leap in battery technology to give this thing range anywhere near what a small private airplane has.
The four pairs of contra-rotaing rotors is smart because each rotor in each individual pair cancels the torque from its partner. There still will be some twisting about the engine mount but that is canceled by the twisting from the pair diagonally opposite. Net torque about the airframe is nil, so there’s no need for anti-torque controls.
And it saves weight and simplifies the flight controls because all that ever changes is the amount of electric current going to an individual motor. Conventional helicopter rotors spin at a constant rpm and change how much lift they’re producing by changing the rotors’ angles of attack, sometimes all around all at once (collectively) and sometimes just in one area (cyclically) to make the helicopter bank left or right, or to pitch nose up or pitch nose down. This requires a swash plate and pitch change tubes and all the associated bellcranks, gears and pulleys and whatnot.
This does the same thing by simply changing the voltage being sent to each individual motor. Increase the electricity to the four engines on the right (or decrease same to the four on the left) and it banks left. Pitch remains the same and the rotors just spin faster or slower.
Using electric motors makes the contra-rotating pairs much more compact than they could be with an ICE engine because you don’t have to accommodate a drive shaft or all the components in a conventional rotor head. Eight electric motors is the heart and soul of its redundancy, which is indispensable in a design like this because if you don’t have pitch control you can’t autorotate.
Overall this is a brilliant design that accounts for most any failure you can think of, including a ballistic parachute for sudden loss of power or catastrophic mechanical failure. And parachutes aren’t much good in a conventional helicopter because the fan up top would shred your parachute first, then you.
And if Loz Blain thinks building your own aircraft gets you out of having to get a license, he’s an idiot. If it can meet the FAA’s definition of an “ultralight” it might not require licensing, but not because it’s home-made.
Pete Butthole plans to name his “Boy Elroy”.
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