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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."
I don't see why they have to agree not to fly it. Why not just sign an agreement that if you kill yourself or others, the seller is not responsible? Makes more sense to me. What idiot would by a personal flying machine for > a million and agree not to use it?
Uhhhh, yeah, thath dithgustin. [The lady's man]
Would you buy something for a million dollars off of ebay when the seller's rating is zero?
Man and they just missed christmas..
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
So how would you know it worked?
I guess you could look at it like being married.
Never trust an atom. They make up everything.
This is either a new low, or a new high.
Where have you been? Your response should have been more like:
Huzzah! A slashdot story posted with *no* spelling errors, with comprehensible sentence structure!
Go CowboyNeal!
Never trust an atom. They make up everything.
How about someone buys this thing and then sells it to me and then I fly it?
FRA: STFU GTFO
Well, on a Russian ship it would be "Welcome to my ship. Isn't he splendid?" as the Russian navy refers to ships in the masculine, as opposed to the feminine in the US navy.
The revolution will be televised. Blackout restrictions apply.
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
Yeah, I think it has something to do with the fact that in Russia it is common for men to hug and kiss when they meet, opposed to women in the US.
I think all people should do so, but not when they meet in open air flying XFV's.
giel.y contains 2 shift/reduce conflicts
You're missing the point... she will use the strap-on to fly him around so that everyone will know the feeling.
OK... mod away, it is a bad joke, but I can't resist!
Welley Corporation - SLM Scammers
If you read their story at the solotrek site, you'll find that there were TWO prototypes, one of which is fine.
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!!
I have a fully functioning time machine for sale, bidding starts at £2 million. The only catch you have to promise not to use it. I also have a babe magnet but that's not for sale, but I may consider renting, usual conditions apply.
The Glider and the Flight suit are missing!
Yes. You could be sued in Canada for violating your contract, which I assume is illegal up there too. Or you could be sued in the USA and our people would talk to your people and make them ship you down here.
IANAL, but the agreement would hold just as true as it would in the United States - because it is an arse covering agreement between 2 private parties, not a legal restriction to prevent you from flying it. They would need an injunction for that - which in that case would probably only be effective in the United States.
Because it is just an arse covering agreement it would probably be seen as binding(ish) by any court in any country that you ended up suing them in.
Of course you could probably only sue them in the United States, so in that case; yes the agreement will hold just as true for you as a Canadian as it would for any United States citizen.
... the first thing I'd do is slap some Type-R stickers on this baby.
I mean, according to the specs page, it's only got 120 horsepower. I'd definitely have to keep adding and try to get that over 300.
After the stickers, I'd probably buy some shiny alloy propeller covers for the engine. Nothing says speed like a bling blingin' shine.
Then I'd alter the exhaust. To get better performance and an altogether faster ride, I'd replace the existing muffler with a stainless steel, hole-bored version. This would allow for a louder, more powerful sounding flight. Nearly everyone recognizes that fart can noises are sure signs of a ton of horses in the engine.
Last but not least, I'd get some neon lighting for above the head of the passenger, a few blacklight stickers for the interior portion, bright blue Xenon lights for nighttime flying, and a few custom Eminem and Jay-Z mixes for some kick ass in-flight tunage!
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
They claim to be the first one with this, I guess they have done very little research... Look, it's even here ...
Considering the facts that
- the name SoloTrek looks alot like StarTrek
- the font of their logo is remarkably similar to the font used for TNG
- they obviously are into science fiction
How long until they get sued by a certain company protecting their trademark?I started writing this post trying to make a joke, but now I have thought some more about it; dunno...
Wenn ist das Nunstueck git und Slotermeyer? Ja! Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput.
Man Gets 70mpg in Homemade Car-Made from a Mainframe Computer
It would be an even better genetic-elimination-device than those powered parachutes so many "flyers" use to whang themselves (and often passengers) into power lines and antenna towers now.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
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.
'He' is the singular indefinite pronoun in English...
and later
'She' is the singular pronoun of personification in English...
Bah! You are attempting to apply rules of latin grammar to english. This didn't work in the 18th and 19th centuries when it was all the rage among the hoity-toity upper class. Why do you think it has any relevance to today's slashdot readers?
I suppose you also object to splitting infinitives! You would not allow us "To boldly go where no one has gone before"?!
Fie! Get thee hence and never return! Should slashdot ever need a grammar policeman, let them at least be policing the native structure of English and not foisting foreign rules upon us!
There are some interesting usage notes from the The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language at Dictionary.com/he (and see also the links from there to "she" and "they" and the usage notes at those locations). These show that there is major disagreement in usage of "he" and "she" in ambiguous contexts, and the use of "he" as a representative sampling of a mixed group is now considered appropriate by only a minority of the publisher's Usage Panel.
Even helicopers can land if their engines fail. It looks to me that if those engines fail, the passenger is outta luck.
Yes, but on a Russian ship it is also traditional to speak Russian. Yes, literal translation of the words spoken does assign the masculine pronoun--but it is still not classical English usage.
To be fair, English is a rapidly growing and evolving language. Usage changes. 'Access' used to be a noun. Then, it became a verb as well. Now, it's an annoying piece of software. Still, I'm not going to advocate changes to the language because people are too lazy to learn the correct use of a pronoun and too caught up in a wave of warm-fuzzy political correctness to care.
~Idarubicin
You can see a picture of the Moller skycar here The story says that they are flying off the tether now but for insurance reasons they test over a 6 acre lake. They must be getting close as they are talking about the 'production engines'.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
Sorry link to
Moller skycar is here.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
Now they're selling failed aeronautical projects to the public! When can I get my Lockheed F-23?
The question to really ask is what would you wanna do with one of those anyway? I think I'd use one to get to college in, depends how many miles to the gallon I could get tho ;)
Someone said its selling at > 1mil, so why not go for the pragmatic solution of making one yourself (and whos gonna tell you not to fly one you've just made?!) - yes, thats right, 200 grands worth of battery powered hair dryers, a few office fans...also powered by battery....and you could make your own!
Alternativly, collect bird feathers, glue them together with wax hence making yourself fake wings. I mean, come on, no one will have thought of that before!
Load'er up with pot, jump over the border, unload, repeat.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
How do you think international business could function if contracts couldn't be held across borders?!
"Old man yells at systemd"
>>Now, it's an annoying piece of software
Actually, she's an annoying, buggy, piece of software. You could say that she doesn't get out of the house too much.
I dumped her a long time ago for her hip, worldly, and open neighbor MySQL. She might not be perfect, but she's got style and class.
Sure this can me modded down as off-topic. But I'm trying to have fun with the 'she's'. Lighten up. It's Saturday.
Huh?
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
Sounds good, how many cup-holders does it have?
I heard an interview on Canada's CBC Radio 1 (Friday evening), and they were talking with the owner of the company. He said that in their test flights they had only gone 4 or 5 feet off the ground until further improvements could be made. He also said that the one they're selling on Ebay has had some vital components removed to help "keep the buyer honest".
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.
Dear Seller
I am very interesting with your item, and do you accep credit cards and please you calculate shipping cost to Indonesia?
Thank You
When I hear about these things, I think about the following:
A scene in Simpsons where the "Merry Bobbins" flies away only to be sucked into an airliner engine...
In the Jetsons, people on jetpacks "banging heads while flying"... except in real life, there would be more "banging and splattering"...
From "The Wizard of Oz"... an army of people with these things in flying monkey costumes heading out to terrorize trick-or-treaters on Halloween.
... Actually, that last idea doesn't sound half bad....
Winged Power Photography
The focus of the sale is in the hopes of it being used for an educational purpose, ie: placed in a technology center or a science museum...or a very rich school board. He didn't get into why they were selling it, at least I didn't hear him get into it.
It take more faith to believe in evolution than it takes to believe in God
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
>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.
TechnoGirl is willing to bet heavily that "Captainclever" is single.
----- In Your Cubicle No One Can Hear You Scream...
This is a one of a kind prototype of what the manufacturers hope will become a popular mass production phenomenon. If you read the blurb on E-Bay you realise that the biding is realy for "The smithsonian" and anyone else with the cash to bid against them.
I.e. Major museums and insanely welthy individuals.
Treck knows this will eventualy end up in amuseum. They want it there as permanent advertising.
The only thing that could prevent that is some ID10T crashing into propane tank and smashing the flier to smitherines.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
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.
The idea is, find a stretch of unobserved border, and jump over the fence. Obviously, if you did this right next to the Tijuana border crossing, you might get shot down.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
I don't understand the picture of the guy who is airborne with the streamers flying straight up above his head.
Now, those rotors would have to be pushing air straight down at a ridiculous rate to lift the whole thing off the ground, so wouldn't those streamers get sucked into the rotors?
It doesn't make sense to me.
This guy's been getting articles in Popular Science for decades about personal VTOL aircraft, that somehow are always five years away. I remember reading about this back when I was in grade school in the 1970's. Burt Rutan, he ain't.
Is there a Collier trophy for vaporware?
A million bucks is pretty steep for a failed prototype.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage