personal flight reimagined

long term vision

the current state of personal flight is broken. helicopters are loud, dangerous, and expensive. private jets are for the 1%. eVTOLs are overhyped toys that solve the wrong problems.

what if individual flight was as normal as driving a car?

the problem

personal flight today requires:

  • • massive infrastructure (airports, helipads)
  • • specialized training and licenses
  • • expensive maintenance and fuel
  • • complex air traffic control systems
  • • weather dependency

most importantly: it doesn't integrate with how people actually live and work.

the solution

personal flight devices that are:

  • • small enough to fit in a garage
  • • simple enough for anyone to operate
  • • affordable enough for middle class ownership
  • • autonomous enough to avoid human error
  • • quiet enough to not disturb neighborhoods

technical challenges

energy density. current batteries can't support sustained flight for meaningful distances. but solid state batteries and hydrogen fuel cells are getting close.

autonomous navigation. full 3d flight requires solving problems that ground vehicles don't have. collision avoidance in three dimensions. weather adaptation. emergency landing procedures.

noise reduction. traditional rotors are loud. ducted fans help but not enough. need breakthrough in propulsion design.

regulatory framework. current aviation law assumes professional pilots and controlled airspace. need new category of vehicle that's somewhere between car and aircraft.

what i'm working on

distributed electric propulsion systems. instead of large rotors, many small ones. better efficiency, redundancy, and noise characteristics.

simplified control interfaces. flight should feel like setting a destination in gps, not piloting a helicopter.

mesh networking for traffic management. devices communicate directly with each other to coordinate routes and avoid collisions.

this is a 20 year problem. but the pieces are coming together.

why it matters

personal flight changes everything about how cities work. commute from anywhere to anywhere. no more traffic jams. no more being tied to transit lines.

but more importantly, it's about freedom. the ability to move in three dimensions. to go directly from point a to point b. to not be constrained by roads and rails.

that's worth building.