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Buy Your Very Own Exoskeleton Flying Vehicle
dks writes "Yahoo! News is running a story about a personal flying machine originally developed for the military that straps on an individual's back and allows her to fly around for over two hours at a time. The prototype is now up for auction on eBay. The only catch--you have to agree not to operate the vehicle if you purchase it. Uh...yeah...I'm just buying it for display. Yeah, that's it."
Basically, it's a (pardon the pun) safety net for the company that made it. If you buy it (and therefore agree not to fly it), and then go ahead and fly it anyway and injure yourself, you'll have that much more of a problem successfully suing them over it.
While you cannot completely sign away your "right" to sue someone, a contract like this makes it much more difficult to collect a judgement.
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
that straps on an individual's back and allows her to fly around
'He' is the singular indefinite pronoun in English ("if a person drinks too much, he will likely experience a hangover"); 'He' also happens to be the masculine personal pronoun.
'She' is the singular pronoun of personification in English ("if England fails to advance America's foreign-policy ambitions, she will suffer terrible consequences"); 'She' also happens to be the feminine personal pronoun.
Confusing the two exhibits not a warm-and-fuzzy concern for the inclusion of women so much as a writer's or speaker's ignorance. Using the feminine personal pronoun as an indefinite article is as moronic as using the masculine personal pronoun for personification. Thus the captain greets us: "Welcome to my ship. Isn't he splendid?"
RJ
Last.fm - join the social music revolution
The reason they are selling the proto-type is that it got tangled up in the tether during a test hop and crashed. Its damaged and they don't have the funds to fix it. The DOD/DARPA folks that were supporting the development declined to extend the deadline(s) for demonstration of the technology after the crash.
The whole story as told from the SoloTrek perspective is on their web site. http://www.solotrek.com/
The eBay article features a link to the company designing this stuff and they have a very cool concept for a two seater: duotrek. I WANT one of these. No more fucking parking problems, that is if the roof of my appartment is strong enough...
giel.y contains 2 shift/reduce conflicts
isnt ship feminine? as in 'she sank to the bottom'
or
'The Bonnie Belle is a sailing ship. She is very seaworthy.'
and an interesting point after a quick google search:
All this can be seen for the English-language folk-etymology DRECK that it
really is by listening to sailors (i.e., people who have actual
experience on ships rather than n-tuple-removed theoretical knowledge),
who say that a ship is only animate-feminine when 'manned'; when the ship
is decomissioned and without human activity (in mothballs), the ship is
referred to as 'it' -- pointing to the actual ANIMACY conferred by he/she
rather than just sexual genitalia, as we normally do in English.
bleh grammar on...
Mruphy's Golden Rule: He who has the gold makes the rules...
with this guy's comment
The Auction does not say you can't fly it...
"As a condition of sale, the successful bidder will have to execute an agreement warranting that they will use the aircraft for static exhibition and educational purposes only."
There is no
As a condition of sale, the successful bidder will have to execute an agreement warranting that they will use the aircraft for static exhibition and educational purposes only.
Educational Purposes. What about LEARNING to fly it? It doesn't say you can't fly. You can exhibit it statically (i.e. not fly it), and use it for educational purposes. Just choose the latter!!
They claim to be the first one with this, I guess they have done very little research... Look, it's even here ...
I heard an interview last night on NPR with the CEO and he mentioned that they were going to take a few "key" parts out before they sold it so that it would be impossible to fly.
Shucks.
Ground effect does not apply to this type of aircraft.
For an airplane, "ground effect" is the term applied to the tendency of a wing to exhibit increased aerodynamic efficiency (basically more lift and less drag) when it's within roughly a half-wingspan of the ground. It's caused, at least in layman's terms, by a cushion of air forming beneath the wing and the ground, and by the reduction of a drag-inducing wingtip vortex.
This vehicle has no horizontal wing flying thru the air. So we can eliminate the obvious cushion of air.
Now, a helicopter demonstrates ground effect for the same basic reason as an airplane, within half a rotor-disc-diameter or so of the ground, and also because for a hovering vehicle, the downwash tends to bounce back up again to provide a additional cushion. Here's a primer on helo ground effect. As you can see, the ground effect is largely produced by the ground limiting development of a tip vortex.
Just for completeness, we can also address ground effect for a hovering jet, like the Harrier Jump Jet. In that case, the downwash bouncing up certainly provides a cushion, and the Harrier has strakes under the fuselage designed exclusively to capture that cushion of air and enhance it - kind of like a hovercraft. But for a hovering jet, you have an additional problem - the exhaust gases also tend to get reingested by the engine, lowering the engine efficiency. One of the most vexing problems for the Harrier, and also for the newer Joint Strike Fighter designs, is "hot gas reingestion". In fact, if you hover these aircraft pointing downwind, you can snuff out the engine due to lack of oxygen. (This issue is probably not a big problem for the high-bypass arrangement of the SoloTrek, where very little exhaust gas is produced.)
Now to address this vehicle. The lift is provided by ducted fans. Therefore there is no tip vortex, because the duct prevents one from forming. In fact, the duct itself provides the same effect as ground effect, by eliminating the efficiency loss due to the vortex. The only relevant part of the "ground effect" here is therefore the bouncing cushion of air. But the fans on this vehicle are mounted so high above the ground (about 7 feet), and the total thrust is so low, that a fairly minimal ground effect cushion can be developed. In fact, in the pictures on Ebay, at least one of the photos shows the thing high enough up (the fans are at least 12 feet off the ground) that any ground effect that might exist would be almost totally eliminated.
So it's extremely unlikely that this vehicle's performance would change significantly with climbing away from the ground.
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
This is the 29th year of Moller vaporware. I have a 1974 brochure for Moller's "Discojet", which was supposed to be for sale Real Soon Now. This was a saucer-shaped flyer with eight Wankel engines. The brochure mentions prototypes going back to 1967. So he's been at this for 36 years now. Unsuccessfully.
Not for lack of money, either; substantial funds have gone into this project.
Small thrust-only flyers have been built. Several from the 1950s are at the Hiller Museum in Redwood City, CA, and they actually flew. They have the famous Hiller Flying Platform. Such vehicles are inherently unstable and hard to fly, but not impossible to build. The stability problem ought to be solveable today - many modern military aircraft are stable only because a control system is constantly struggling to keep them stable. But an unstable VTOL is the worst case - aerodynamic control surfaces are ineffective at low speeds, adjusting engine thrust has too much lag, engine gimbals add weight, and thrust deflector plates waste power. The Harrier fighter, after 30 years, remains the only succesful pure-thrust VTOL.
You obviously never read the site.
1.) Notice there is only ONE Solotrek for sale, and there were two orginal Solotrek XFV prototypes, one that crashed, causing them to miss the fatal milestone, and another unscathed on.
2.) As said by Goldenhawk, the ground effect does not apply. Though you are right, it's never flown untethered.
3.) Originally, Trek Aerospace planned on just closing its doors, but since the last article has updated their status and website greatly. The eBay auction states that the proceeds of the auction will go towards funding for the NEXT generation Solotrek vehicle, which has a much more conservative timeline.
4.) According to Trek Aerospace's original statement about closing their doors, they were quick to mention that the first prototype only crashed because of a change in the management at DARPA, who would not allow them to extend the deadline of the milestone they would eventually miss. As such, they were forced to fly in inclement conditions, which were blamed for the crash.
5.) The eBay auction, also states "As a condition of sale, the successful bidder will have to execute an agreement warranting that they will use the aircraft for static exhibition and educational purposes only."
As a personal note, after not metioning that the vehicle was not in one piece, and showing pictures of a fully functional Solotrek, I'm sure it would have to be some form of misrepresentation to just hand the winner a broken Solotrek in a box of parts.
--- What
Well - having bought a plane from Mike Moshier, the CEO of Trek and creator of the SoloTrek XFV, I can tell you he's a no BS, straight shooting guy.
:-)
(You can see his last plane, now my toy, at http://www.ez.org/member.htm#M and search for N160MM)
I would not hesitate to purchase something from Mike.
Now, would I buy this one? I prefer something with wings and a cockpit....
The thought of a bird strike on my anatomy at 80 MPH (can you imagine a pelican in the groin?) is more than I can bear.
Those aren't the fans, but the movable control surfaces (giving specific direction to the downward thrust from the fans). The actual fans are just above them, and are not visible.
A much cheaper ($30,000) personal flying machine that you can buy right now in kit form can be found here and here. These things do actually fly.
what about these ads in the back of popular science for "Homebuilt Helicopters" which claim "No license needed"? after investigating one of their websites (www.prismz.com/helio i found an faq which cites: Does the A/W 95 require a license and/or registration to operate? It does IF its finished empty weight exceeds 254 lbs (the ultralight limit). In that case the aircraft itself is classified under Federal Aviation Regualtion (FAR) 20-27D, which pertains to the registration of Experimental Aircraft. The pilot would obtain a Recreational Pilot Certificate--the basic license for the flight of an Experimental Aircraft. Such a license is relatively easy to acquire and the student can begin flying the A/W 95 with a Student Pilot License. For further details, obtain a copy of FAR Part 61. If the finished weight of the A/W 95 is trimmed to 254 lbs or less, it will qualify as an ultralight aircraft, which requires no license or registration to fly. The aircraft must then be flown during daylight hours in areas away from large concentrations of population or large airports. Further details are provided in FAR 103. You can obtain copies of the various FARs from the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration), which is typically listed in The Blue Pages of the phonebook under U.S. Government, Transportation Department; or simply go to http://www.faa.gov/ (http://www.vortechonline.com/aw95/faqs.htm) so i guess the question is the weight of the machine. just to let people know the rules . . .
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