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Swiss Man Flies With Jet Powered Wing

Posted by timothy on from the no-passenger-airbags-no-hybrid-engine dept.

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."

4 of 247 comments (clear)

  1. I hate to give the wrong people any ideas, but... by StefanJ · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  2. Re:OFN? by zippthorne · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

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  3. Re:OFN? by Scrameustache · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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).
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  4. Re:OFN? by Hal_Porter · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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

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