Swiss Man Flies With Jet Powered Wing

NotBornYesterday writes "After spending $190,000 and 'countless hours' building a set of jet-powered wings, a Swiss man has successfully demoed this ultimate mother-of-all-toys. After jumping from a plane like a skydiver, he then lit the four jet engines and proceeded to fly around a valley in the Alps at up to 186 miles per hour. His site is here, if you want to see shots of him in action. 'I still haven't used the full potential,' he said."

Comments

It is pretty old

[ady1]

Regardless, I've seen and read about it a number of times and while it is entertaining, the guy almost died doing it.

Also it serves little in terms of providing a method for transportation.

Re:It is pretty old

[jd]

Oh, there are parachutes that can be used at those speeds - they have some method of allowing air to travel through them, albeit impeded, which is why the Thrust-SSC car was able to use parachutes at speeds exceeding mach 1, and why there is some value in having ejector seats capable of supporting supersonic airspeeds. You will have noticed, of course, that commentators on the Challenger disaster stuck to discussing subsonic parachutes only and essentially classed all supersonic flight as beyond the limits of what you could escape from. All mention of escape methods specifically stated that the speed the shuttle was traveling at were far too fast to use any of the methods available. This is not because supersonic ejection technology did not exist at the time (they did), or that supersonic parachutes were new (they'd been around a few decades by then), but because even the most cynical of commentators accepted that that was just too damn hairy to be remotely viable.

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

But where's my flying car?

I hate to give the wrong people any ideas, but...

[StefanJ]

I wonder if these things show up on radar. And how easy they'd be to shoot down. Because they'd make dandy kamikaze weapons.

Re:OFN?

[zippthorne]

This guy's been jumping out of planes with jet-powered wings for *years*.. to the point that the big story over a year ago was that the army was considering developing one to give air-dropped troops more flexibility. Supposedly the wings can hold like 200 lbs worth of gear in addition to the "pilot."

It'll be news again when he finally achieves his goal of taking off with just the wing. Not jumping out of a plane.

Re:OFN?

[Scrameustache]

This guy's been jumping out of planes with jet-powered wings for *years*.. to the point that the big story over a year ago was that the army was considering developing one to give air-dropped troops more flexibility. Supposedly the wings can hold like 200 lbs worth of gear in addition to the "pilot."

It'll be news again when he finally achieves his goal of taking off with just the wing. Not jumping out of a plane. I'm thinking "SEAL-dropping UAVs", dropped from a bigger plane, flies a ways into enemy territory, drops the daring soldier, and flies back undetected (ideally).

Re:Landing?

[Red Flayer]

The more concerning issue is the major bane of jet powered flight - bird hits. At the speed they are talking about, a bird hitting this guy in the head, even with a helmet, stands a good chance of knocking him out. Then you're going to have a dead bird as well as a dead wing-rider.

Meh... hook up some monitoring systems and have the parachute autodeploy. So he has to get some reconcstructive surgery... big whoop.

The bigger concern, I would think, would be avoiding the amorous attentions of Rodan. No amount of plastic surgery is going to help you cope with THAT.

Re:OFN?

[Hal_Porter]

You know, if you replaced the pilot with remote control system, it could carry GBU-39s. Or even something smaller, like the size of RPG warheads. The idea is that you launch loads of these things from B52s and they would swarm over a combat zone killing tanks and sending video feeds back.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GBU-39_Small_Diameter_Bomb