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Jetman Attempts Intercontinental Flight
Last year we ran the story of Yves Rossy and his DIY jetwings. Yves spent $190,000 and countless hours building a set of jet-powered wings which he used to cross the English Channel. Rossy's next goal is to cross the Strait of Gibraltar, from Tangier in Morocco and Tarifa on the southwestern tip of Spain. From the article: "Using a four-cylinder jet pack and carbon fibre wings spanning over 8ft, he will jump out of a plane at 6,500 ft and cruise at 130 mph until he reaches the Spanish coast, when he will parachute to earth." Update 18:57 GMT: mytrip writes: "Yves Rossy took off from Tangiers but five minutes into an expected 15-minute flight he was obliged to ditch into the wind-swept waters."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article6931566.ece
Better luck next time.
Tow me to 6500ft in a high-performance glider and I will traverse the straits of Gibraltar easily ... without carrying rockets or motors of any kind.
Call me when he starts doing these stunts taking off from the ground under his own (carried) power.
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Due to "difficult winds" he dropped into the Ocean after completing half the trip. The entire trip was, for reference supposed to last 15 minutes and span 38 Km, He was picked up by a rescue chopter and is reportedly unharmed.
Calling 23 miles "intercontinental" seems disingenuous. I mean, I could drive down to Mexico and make an "intercontinental" jump of 1 foot... But labeling it as such is just stupid.
I know as American's we're supposed to hate Mexico, but they are still on the same continent as the US.
There are a few good examples of short intercontinental flight that would make it even more trivial which you could have used. The Suez Canal and Bosporous would be suitable candidates.
If you have something that you dont want anyone to know, maybe you shouldnt be doing it in the first place -Eric Schmidt
He's evolving down from "skydiving" to a workable personal jetsuit, rather than up from "rocket skating." An early iteration had no engines at all, just a delta-wing personal glider (and it could probably be considered as an incremental improvement over the "wing suit" which came after the "balloon suit"...)
It's just safer this way. If he fails, he's ditches the wing and activates "plain old skydiving" mode with a parachute. If he'd started from the ground on the first try, there are dozens of places where a failure means death without any fall-back options at all.
In previous interviews he has stated than an eventual goal is to do a complete flight including takeoff.
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The Spirit of St. Louis was a TRANS-ATLANTIC flight.
North, Central and South America are the same continent; America.
Sorry, no, the convention is that they are two continents: North America and South America. It's mostly just those in Latin America that consider the Americas as one continent. (Obviously they love Canada so much they want to be on the same continent.)
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When I read your post, I thought you were nuts. I always learned there were seven continents, two of which were North America and South America. I went to get a Wikipedia link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continent) and read it's taught differently in different parts of the world.
The seven-continent model is usually taught in China and most English-speaking countries. The six-continent combined-Eurasia model is preferred by the geographic community, Russia, the former states of the USSR, and Japan. The six-continent combined-America model is taught in Latin America, and some parts of Europe including Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy. This model may be taught to include only the five inhabited continents (excluding Antarctica)[20][21] -- as depicted in the Olympic logo.
It sounds like you may be from an area that has a 6-continent model.