If that "most pertinent problem" is tech savvy investor/journalist bait... it's genius. I read that and thought "well that's probably solveable."

OTOH... In the context of a moonshot, maybe the non-existence of an affordable & appropriate engine is ok. Tesla started with an unaffordable battery, and built a really expensive car with it. The car was good though, compared to other cars in the sheiks & princes price range. It was an important step on the way and proved that the real pertinent problem was affordable batteries. Not an easy problem, but still.

There's probably some demand for flying motorcycles, even if they cost >€1m and are only good for 10 minutes of hovering over a lake.

From there... who knows. I'm not sure flying cars a mass market idea even if they cost the same as rolling ones.

The military market for tiny turbine engines has been serious for decades; cruise missiles use them. I really do not believe that a plucky SV attitude towards engineering and VC funding is going to waltz into this domain and shock the world. But I definitely believe that SV self-confident arrogance would lead some to convince themselves otherwise.

Ah this point piqued my interest. Before I thought this was a waste of time for YC to be throw $150,000 at this company, but with the military aspect it makes it a lot more of a feasible business model. The military doesn't need something with many hours of flight time for all scenarios. They might just need to get medical supplies delivered to the field really quick and this could more then accomplish that potentially.

Yes, very small turbines have a variety of military applications beyond just cruise missiles. Small turbine driven reusable drones are one possible application.

I'm not sure if you're trying to imply it, but YC funding defense tech under the guise of funding toys for the ultra-wealthy would be interesting, but I don't honestly think that's what's going on here. I don't think they're likely to develop novel turbine technology, and the concept of a one-person turbine flying device left the US military unimpressed decades ago. There doesn't really seem to be a tactical niche for it on the battlefield.

We’re actively working with army, navy and marines in US. Why put a Blackhawk and crew at risk where one it a swarm of autonomous cargo Speeders can do same work. 400-600lbs cargo of equip, blood supplies etc. Not to be used for insertion of operators in covert mission but in overt ops our noise signature isn’t a factor.

For unmanned for cargo delivery it makes a lot of sense and could be revolutionary. But putting a man on it doesn't make so much sense; whoever was standing on top would be a very noisy obvious target and even if that weren't the case the case, the system would probably create a ton of casualties anyway just from people getting too excited and crashing it.

The premise of a longshot is that it doesn't seem (and isn't) likely that any given plucky startup is likely to succeed, but the rewards are worth the risk.

Anyway... the military isn't always the ideal market force for driving down costs.

The military isn't necessarily interested in driving costs down, but they and their numerous well funded, technically competent and experienced contractors are highly motivated when it comes to improving size, reliability, fuel efficiency, etc.

Every minute saved in reaching a stroke or heart attack victim reduces mortality by approx 10%. Worth fighting for?

If we can fly quickly AND safely and land within feet of an injured person and that makes a difference of them living or dying, isn’t that worth a shot?

Yes, you are completely correct! It is much more than software to solve this issue. It is so much different than self-leveling robots on a surface because we are floating in the air with no hard attachment point. We are currently going through multiple iterations on our 1:3 scale prototype so that we can dial in the stabilization systems so that we have the correct flight characteristics.

We 100% agree and base level stablization is what we spend most of our engineering time on - both software and mech. We are learning a heck of a lot from our 1/3rd scale model

> ... effortless and safe

also the most pertinent problem with a thousand similarly idiotic ideas, from edible knives to jetpacks

Whenever a hip startup dismisses the problem as “just software”, I worry that it will randomly crash (in both senses) because someone took down an npm library.