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A Working, Winged Jetpack from Switzerland
Posted by
timothy
on Mon Dec 25, 2006 08:16 AM
from the rephrasing-the-flying-cars-question dept.
from the rephrasing-the-flying-cars-question dept.
serutan writes "A Swiss airline pilot and self-described adrenaline junkie named Yves Rossy has developed a working jet-pack and flown it more than 30 times. Actually, it's a pair of rigid carbon fiber wings strapped to his back, with two small kerosene-powered jet engines on each wing — essentially a small jet airplane using the pilot's body as the fuselage. His flights have lasted up to 6-1/2 minutes at speeds over 100mph. Rossy's website and YouTube have some pretty cool videos of him flying around over the mountains like Buzz Lightyear. He is working toward ground takeoffs and landings, but currently he jumps out of an airplane, unfolds the wings and flies until he runs out of fuel, then parachutes to the ground."
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A Working, Winged Jetpack from Switzerland
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hmmp (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Nausicaa (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://code.google.com/p/nmod/)
Holy crap...
Re:Nausicaa (Score:4, Interesting)
Obviously, a quick learner.
I'd be interested in knowing what his "Plan B" was in the event the wings folded up in flight, or one engine exploded.
It isn't the flying that's the hard part (Score:5, Funny)
Watch the videos (Score:2, Interesting)
Christmas (Score:1)
Swiss Ingenuity (Score:4, Funny)
He could have built the engines himself (Score:5, Interesting)
After him, several other people published books on building small jet engines, like this one [amazon.com], for instance.
Flying is easy ... (Score:3, Funny)
Lovely accent (Score:1)
(http://gilouweb.com/ | Last Journal: Monday October 30 2006, @08:31PM)
--
"I can't search. I uninstalled Google." - P. Ducler
Branson should sponsor him (Score:2, Interesting)
(http://www.bnp.org.uk/)
Summary of his comments (Score:4, Informative)
(http://slashdot.org/)
Basically, at the beginning he explains a bit about how it was designed. One point he made was that his reason for the foldable design of the wings was so that it would fit in the plane. The other interesting thing he said was that the design was effectively that of an airplane - with his body serving as the fuselage.
After the flight he just explains that after he jumped out of the plane he did a little half-turn to catch the wind. He also mentions that the wing unfolded nicely - and that when he kicked in the gas that he moved forward and he could tell that at that point he was flying. He said it was really cool, too. (Which I think we'll all agree is the case!)
Also - I'm not a native French speaker. I'm American but lived in Paris a couple of years - any native French speaker care to comment on the guy's accent? Is that a Swiss accent? (I'm presuming so, but I was curious to know from a native.)
All I want for Christmas... (Score:1)
(http://www.kurtwerks.com/)
Dear Santa (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.sjbaker.org/)
If it's not too late, I would like to add a jetpack to my Xmas list. You can cross off the PS3 if that helps.
Thanks!
I am surprised this works ... (Score:5, Funny)
Hate to be a spoil-sport but--- (Score:2, Informative)
Just in time... (Score:1)
To be Featured in the Next Bond Movie? (Score:2)
Further developments (Score:1)
Oh wait, that's called an airplane.
What the guy needs... (Score:2)
(http://web.mac.com/crackedbutter | Last Journal: Monday January 01 2007, @07:57PM)
Batman (Score:2)
(http://www.seizurerobots.com/)
Wow (Score:1)
(Last Journal: Wednesday November 29 2006, @06:04PM)
Its not an airplane-it cant take off (Score:1, Interesting)
For example, Wrights brother contraption was not an airplane because although it could fly,it cannot take off on its on (this is the reason why many nations believe that the Wright brothers did not invent the airplane). The same with this contraption, it can fly but it cannot take off on its own, thus is not an airplane.
The art of flying (Score:2, Redundant)
WOW where's the.. (Score:1)
(http://www.aperture.ca/)
sure flyin is fun and all until one of those (Score:3, Funny)
(http://www.shopcheap.com/)
I must have one of these. (Score:1)
Is that really a "JetPack" ?? (Score:2)
Swiss Army Jetpack? (Score:1)
The 35th jump went well until he accidentally unfolded the cork screw and magnifying glass instead of the wings and plummeted to his death.
Segway.. (Score:2)
(http://www.ericbarker.com/ | Last Journal: Wednesday October 10, @08:43PM)
It's like God taking you for a ride (Score:1)
(http://www.vsxl.com/)
"Is that a jet plane strapped to your back... (Score:1)
Old News (Score:1)
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=213172&cid=173 37636 [slashdot.org]
Darwing Awards (Score:1)
(http://www.geocities.com/tablizer | Last Journal: Saturday March 15 2003, @01:22PM)
Done before (Score:1)
Re:Cliffs in California (Score:4, Funny)
Painfully.
Re:Did it really do anything? (Score:2, Informative)
(http://www.sjbaker.org/)
The problem with takeoff from the ground is that if his engines crap out on him at a couple of hundred feet, he has no time left to open his parachute and he'll be dead for sure. It makes much more sense to iron out any technical glitches with a drop from a plane so he always has time to open his chute in the event of problems. He's doing this very carefully - one baby step at a time.
The other problem with takeoff is that unless he has wheels or ski's or something, there is no way to build up enough speed for the wings to generate any lift. So he's going to have to have enough thrust to take off vertically - and according to TFA, that's something that'll have to wait for the next generation of machine.
Re:Cliffs in California (Score:1)
(Last Journal: Wednesday May 05 2004, @06:50AM)
M. Rossy's contraption looks much more impressive though.
Re:Please, no YouTube links (Score:2)
Re:Blah... (Score:2)
(http://web.mac.com/eurobar)
Inspired by my one and only skydiving adventure, which included a forty-five second solo freefall, I once wrote a short story (in a notebook I can't seem to find anywhere) about a guy who re-enters the atmosphere from an orbital flight and becomes a human meteorite. Obviously the person is breathing through canned oxygen, and once a certain speed has been attained through deacceleration, the heat shield is jettisoned so that the final minutes become an ultra-high-altitude skydiving experience.
I got the idea from reading about how the first cosmonauts had to eject from their capsules several thousand meters before hitting the ground. There's even a story that was broadcast on PBS's Nova in the early nineties about how two months before Yuri Gagarin, Vladimir Ilushyn, the soviet man who broke the sound barrier, passed out in outer space and was in mortal peril. Since Ilushyn was not anonymous and could not be erased from the books (http://www.lostcosmonauts.com/ [lostcosmonauts.com]), he was wanted alive by the soviet authorities and was crash-landed one orbit before he could land within the USSR, thereby landing inside China, pretty banged up as he was passed out and still inside the capsule. For a time, Ilushyn was a patient in a chinese hospital, after which he became a "guest" of the People's Republic, before being swapped back to the motherland for a couple of spies.
Anyways, my points are that 1) Gagarin was not the first, and 2) what you describe in your post is very similar to what the soviets did during the first days of the space program, with nasty, embarassing and covered-up results.