如何正确参与众筹：一款“消防无人机”教给我的事

原文：
“Firefighting drone serves as a reminder to be careful with crowdfunding campaigns”

I found what could very well be the most amazing crowdfunding campaign ever: an Indiegogo campaign for the world’s first firefighting drone from MicroMultiCopters Aero Technology (MMC). As a lover of both drones and crowdfunding campaigns, I nearly wet myself with excitement — only to dig a little deeper and find myself recoiling in horror. The campaign, it turned out, is a great exercise in how a little bit of basic due diligence should advise you to step away from the “support” button and run for the hills.

不久前，我发现了一个可能是有史以来最激动人心的众筹项目：全球第一款“消防无人机”！这场众筹由科比特航空发起，在众筹网站Indiegogo上进行。作为无人机和众筹的双重粉丝，我几乎激动地难以自持——然而当我稍作研究之后，却被吓得立刻跑开了。这个“消防无人机”的众筹，证明一些基础调查可以帮助你在点击“赞助”按钮之前清醒过来，然后躲得越远越好。

Especially if the people who put the campaign together failed to pay attention to some rather basic details. Such as the laws of physics.

“蓝鲸无人机”具备18轴动力系统，众筹页面描述，它可以负重100公斤、飞行到450米的高空中。

特别是，有些众筹发起方自己都没有意识到：他的产品违反了一些基本常识，一些基本的物理法则。
(众筹的产品其实很常见有意无意的突破基本物理法则….)

Laws of physics be damned

I first discovered MMC when I received a press release for its HyDrone product; a $70,000 hydrogen-powered drone aimed at military applications. What’s not to love?

From there, I discovered MMC had a crowdfunding campaign running to fund something even more ambitious: a firefighting drone called the MMC Blue Whale. The aerial firefighting hero supposedly has a “payload of up to 100 kg,” according to a chap called Stan Kostic, listed as Product Coordinator in the Indiegogo video. Which, in itself, is a little confusing; he told me he’s been at MMC for more than six months, his email signature lists him as the Overseas Marketing Director, whereas his LinkedIn fails to list MMC at all. Curious.

At this point, alarm bells were going off left, right and center, but I decided to dig deeper. The project is marketed, among other things, with this video. I watched it several times, and got stuck on the part of the video when the company explains what it is trying to do:

请尊重物理法则

我在一份有关氢动力无人机的新闻通稿中首次了解到“科比特公司”。一款价值7万美元、目标市场是军队的氢燃料电池无人机——简直人见人爱。

随后，我发现科比特正在对一个更激动人心的产品进行众筹：一款名为“科比特蓝鲸”的消防无人机。根据一位名为Stan Kostic的工作人员介绍，这位空中消防勇士拥有“最高100公斤有效载荷”。Stan Kostic的身份令我有点疑惑。他在视频中的头衔是“项目协调人”。他告诉我，他在科比特公司工作了六个多月，他的Email签名显示的职务是“海外市场总监”，但是他的LinkedIn页面上又完全没有科比特的信息。奇怪，为什么会这样？

基于这点，我感觉要留个心眼。于是，我决定再深入地挖掘一下这款产品和这家公司。科比特公司通过视频演示了消防无人机和其他配件。我反复观看了很多遍，被视频中无人机工作的场景震惊了：

I did a little bit of math at this point, because I figured something didn’t quite make sense. For a 3-cm diameter hose, the water in the hose alone would weigh 175 kg — more than even the adjusted payload of 150 kg quoted in the company’s video. But, of course, it’s not just water we’re talking about here: The drone also has to lift a power cord and the hose itself. It’s obvious we’re running into a problem with this project.

On top of that, none of this takes into consideration the considerable water pressure and the turbulent, hot air from the fire would make the drone incredibly difficult to control. As an aside: This is why most tall buildings have standpipes and sprinkler systems…

I’m guessing I’m not the only person who found this campaign curious: The Indiegogo campaign has been live for a few weeks, like an April Fools’ joke that just kept on giving, but it has yet to attract a single backer.

It is also worth noting that the campaign only includes 3D renderings of the firefighting drone and a load of videos that are only tangentially related to the project. The issue with 3D renders is something that should especially worry you: The practice was banned from Kickstarter a while back, for an excellent reason: Without a working prototype, it’s hard to know what you’re backing, or how realistic it is for a campaign to deliver on its promises.

这张图中，“蓝鲸消防无人机”最大负载忽然变成了100-150千克。奇怪

我发现有些地方不太对劲，于是做了一点简单的算术。一根直径3厘米、500米长的水管，可以容纳175公斤水——这已经超出了视频中所述的150公斤的最大负载。当然，除了水，无人机还要挂载电源线、还要承受自身的重量。显然，我们发现了这项计划的一个大问题。

更重要的是，计划还没有考虑水压和乱流带来的影响。燃烧产生的热流会让无人机非常难以控制。顺便说一句：这就是大部分高层建筑都需要安装水箱和自动喷淋灭火系统的原因……

我猜我不是唯一一位发现这个众筹项目不靠谱的人。这个项目已经在Indiegogo网站上开展几个星期了，就像是一场漫长的喜剧，却没有吸引任何一位观众。

值得注意的还有，这个项目只提供了消防无人机的3D示意图和意义不明的视频。你应该担心一下只有3D示意图这件事：这种演示方式已经被著名的众筹网站Kickstarter禁止了。没有产品原型，你很难了解自己在投资什么，以及厂商的承诺是否可信。

众筹过去了一个月，并且仅剩两周时间了……看起来科比特即将实现众筹目标，成功近在眼前。

The company’s crowdfunding campaign suggests a retail price of a whopping $88,000 for one of these 18-rotored firefighting drones, and a delivery timeframe of 3-6 months. I love an ambitious deadline as much as the next guy, but unless the company has made a huge amount of progress since the Indiegogo campaign was put together, the odds of meeting that production schedule seem slim.

I contacted MMC to query my calculations. I didn’t get a real answer, but Kostic did get back in touch, and told me that even though the concept of the firefighting drone is real, “the crowdfunding was more of a concept that I used to train the staff a little about how those work.” Which doesn’t seem to make much sense, given that they are still posting updates trying to get people to back the campaign, and promoted the campaign as recently as a couple of days ago on Twitter:

Yeah. Pretty curious.

With the Indiegogo campaign pretty much a write-off, I decided to dig a bit deeper into the company’s other product, which, bizarrely, it is also promoting as part of the crowdfunding campaign:

所以，氢动力无人机又是怎么一回事？

这场众筹项目几乎可以宣布“报废”了，我决定再去挖掘一下科比特公司的另一款产品：一款外形奇特的无人机——在“科比特蓝鲸”的Indiegogo众筹中还曾经登场。

Looking into the hydrogen drone, it looks like an absolute beast. Sporting a $70,000 price-tag, the company claims it can stay airborne for four hours and has a range of 60 miles.

But, of course, given how whiffy its crowdfunding campaign was looking, I was taking that statement with a pinch of salt, as well. I asked to see some video of the drone — which is supposedly “ready to order” — in action.

Why the curiosity? Well, like with so many other things in life, the stamina of the battery is one of the big limiting factors to how long you can keep the fun going, and for UAVs, 20-30 minutes seems to be the going rate. And, damn it, I really want hydrogen-powered drones to be a thing. Besides… flying devices with hydrogen? I can see you thinking: what could possibly go wrong?.

4月18日，科比特发布的更新版告示

HyDrone氢动力无人机看起来像一头野兽。挥舞着7万美元的售价标签，科比特公司宣称，它可以在空中悬停4小时，工作半径达到60英里。

但是，考虑到上面那款众筹的“奇特之处”，我对这些宣传半信半疑。我再次看了一些氢燃料无人机的视频——目前这款无人机已经接受预定了。

究竟是什么令我如此好奇呢？电池的容量始终限制着我们，让很多娱乐无法尽兴。对无人机来说，20-30分钟是眼下常见的飞行时间。我是真心希望氢动力无人机能够在这方面有所突破。但是，氢气动力飞行器？我可以想象你会问：是不是有些地方不太对头？

设想一下：你是一个无人机公司，天才地发明出了可以一次性停留在空中4个小时的无人机。那么，你不需要成为营销天才，也不需要策划或者宣传，人们自然会传颂你的产品。但让我惊讶的是，科比特公司的官网上竟然没有氢动力无人机运行的视频。

我试着问该公司，为什么没有视频呢？然后，我得到了一个出乎意料的答案。

Kostic 说：“关于氢动力无人机的实际飞行，我们遭遇到了当地警方的阻拦。”他说，这款无人机在发售当天被警方“没收”了。这个解释，显然无助于显示产品的合法性。

Kostic 说，警方在产品发布当日不由分说没收了氢动力无人机，他淡淡地说：“官方原因是产品的尺寸，警方认为这么大的飞机是个隐患。”他说，无人机最终还是被归还了，但是“因为不希望我们飞行这款无人机，警方弄坏了它。”他还推测，近期科比特公司接到了来自中国军方的订单，这可是警方收缴该款无人机的原因。

既然他这么说，好吧，好吧。

A cautionary tale

Suffice to say that my mission to actually verify whether these two drones actually existed and worked or not came up inconclusive. I was shown one camera-phone video where the HyDrone was allowed to take flight, but it wasn’t obvious from the video whether it was actually powered by hydrogen or just a battery prototype.

All of this is not to say that MMC isn’t aboveboard, but I think it’s safe to say that this campaign stands as a helpful reminder regarding crowdfunding campaigns: If it seems to good to be true… keep doing due diligence until you think it’s worth the risk

一个警示

简单的说，我的目的是弄清楚这两款无人机究竟是真实存在、可以工作的，还是仅仅在画饼。我看了一段手机拍摄的视频，其中HyDrone氢动力无人机正在飞行，但从视频中无法分辨它用的究竟是氢动力还是电池。

以上这些，并非想说科比特航空隐瞒了什么。但是我认为，至少我可以放心地说，“蓝鲸消防无人机”是众筹活动的一个警示：如果一款产品看起来好到不真实，你最好仔细地审视它，直到认为值得为它投注。