Slashdot Mirror
Human Powered Helicopter
marcopo writes "In response to a 24 year old prize challenge from the American Helicopter Society, a number of engineering students at the University of British Columbia have designed a human powered helicopter. The prize requirements are 3 minutes flight at 3 meters, with only human power, and the team, led by UBC's Mike Georgallis, plans a test flight next Tuesday.
The Vancouver Sun also has the
story."
Yaba-Daba-Dooooo!!!!! ~~~~~*Sppppppplat*
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Instruction manual:
1. Place helmet on head. Take a swig from your hip flask. Decide you don't need the helmet.
2. Spread arms parallel to ground.
3. Hum 'whirrrr' as you spin yourself to speed.
4. Upon striking your head on the floor on the way down, remark how free you feel in the open air.
Click here for a free picture of an iPod!
First the machines use us to power helecopers! Soon they will have us power all their functions after we scortch the sun! Who is with me? We must stop this to save Zion!
-------
Support Indy Music. Buy
That's the only real question. They should be more careful wording the requirement.
Zero comments on this story and the link is already /.'d; the kid running the server must be tired. Somebody get him a coffee and some smokes.
You already have the world's best human helicopter in Inspector Gadget.
Oh man, their project is named Thunderbird. Quick, Mozilla Foundation! Send our your legions of lawyers! We must stop this blatant misuse of your trademarks!!
[insert witty comment here]
I sure as hell wouldn't want to pilot it.
That's why you're posting on Slashdot and not doing anything useful. Same with me.
"Jane, get me off this crazy thing! JAAAAANE!!!" ~~~~~~~~ *Spppppplat*
Wouldn't it be more efficient to just burn humans for fuel?
Everyone knows Alex Kidd invented the pedicopter in 1983.
Just put the human(s), bald and naked, into liquid-filled pods and wire 'em up for electrical power! Then build some hovering tentacled robots to do maintenance. Then... ...Or you could do it the boring way -- you know, pedals and the like...
Yeah, the competition seems to require alot of the pilots. From the FAQ: ... We have had people vomit after these one-minute tests. In similar tests in the United States they have had one person have a mild heart attack.
We have built our own test rig that measures power output of a pilot over a minute duration. We have plotted the results of numerous potential pilots against their weight. A successful candidate is one that falls above a power requirement curve (power vs. weight).
Vomit AND rotating blades, nice.
Guru Meditation #6d416769.21610a21
maybe they need to have a contest where college kids build a webserver that can stand up to a slashdot link for more than 5 minutes...
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
You've got to remember it's a college. Heck, give a guy enough beer and he/she will definitely pedal their butt off for a while a 3 meters. Heck, I was subjected to much worse than a 3-meter, gyro-slowed decent in college. I survived. Although many brian cells unfortunately did not.
"Well I just flew in from Atlanta, and boy my arms^H^H^H^Hlegs are tired" /insert drum fill here/
I'm not sure what the average weight of vaccums are, but looking at my hand-me-down, just one would add an easy 50 pounds.
$29,000 Canadian, so yeah, that's about what, $1000 US?
...the end result would like a cross between a beer bong and Volkswagen Bug with rotors.
While a human powered helicopter is impressive, I have a feeling the UBC engineers won't feel accomplished until they hang the thing underneath some bridge.