I LIke 'small' ... for small jobs. Only handicap is in those unscheduled sheet-metal -vs- plastic kinetic arguments, but that's true for all bikes anyway.
Less mass, less gas goes the basic arithmetic to haul around a hundred-kilo wetware package from A to B.
How many jillion times a year do millions fire-up the behemoth in the driveway for a 7/11 run, the post office, etc.?
(With concomitant wear on the parts as barely near operating temp. for the whole run.) More $$$ wasted.
Rest case.
(I once thought almost-seriously about the Benson Gyro-copter: nothing more nor less than an aerial motorcycle.)
Alas its all-too-evident easy-lethality trumped it all: then and with that techno.
(IIRC too: it could emulate the helicopter parabolic Dead-man's curve: [simplified]
a parabola rotated 90°, showing the dangerous altitude from 0 to V forward velocity: wherein the down-moving air below kills the lift.)

I'd think that with todays's techno and materials, such a minimalist craft could be generated, with little more risk-taking than riding on any two-wheeler: IF one eschews use in any weather oddities of any sort. The sucker could even incorporate a version of that parachute for small planes--as is, in fact now in use by the affluent--along with the self-powereed auto-horizon indicator, completely isolated from all in-crafte e- failures!)
(Of course, I couldn't afford the gussied-up already-built '14 version I see to be quite possible to make, now.)
But piloting the original across SF Bay ... to land at The Lab™ (also a merely.. verboten action) in inclement weather? would have been a palpable death-wish. {{sigh}}
Less mass, less gas goes the basic arithmetic to haul around a hundred-kilo wetware package from A to B.
How many jillion times a year do millions fire-up the behemoth in the driveway for a 7/11 run, the post office, etc.?
(With concomitant wear on the parts as barely near operating temp. for the whole run.) More $$$ wasted.
Rest case.
(I once thought almost-seriously about the Benson Gyro-copter: nothing more nor less than an aerial motorcycle.)
Alas its all-too-evident easy-lethality trumped it all: then and with that techno.
(IIRC too: it could emulate the helicopter parabolic Dead-man's curve: [simplified]
a parabola rotated 90°, showing the dangerous altitude from 0 to V forward velocity: wherein the down-moving air below kills the lift.)

I'd think that with todays's techno and materials, such a minimalist craft could be generated, with little more risk-taking than riding on any two-wheeler: IF one eschews use in any weather oddities of any sort. The sucker could even incorporate a version of that parachute for small planes--as is, in fact now in use by the affluent--along with the self-powereed auto-horizon indicator, completely isolated from all in-crafte e- failures!)
(Of course, I couldn't afford the gussied-up already-built '14 version I see to be quite possible to make, now.)
But piloting the original across SF Bay ... to land at The Lab™ (also a merely.. verboten action) in inclement weather? would have been a palpable death-wish. {{sigh}}