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Video Purports To Show Successful Hover Bike Test Flights
Zothecula writes "Videos released by California-based tech research company Aerofex appear to show successful test flights of a prototype hover bike that gains lift from two large ducted rotors. Aeroflex claims its hover bike allows the pilot intuitive control over pitch, roll and yaw without need of artificial intelligence, flight software or electronics of any kind."
A small hovercraft without a skirt!
Yawn. Ground effect only. That's not flying.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Also, please buy a camera. Or a phone... On second thought how did they even TAKE a video this bad.
Is it allowed through the drive-thru?
When I saw the term "hover bike", I thought they were talking about something human powered.
Still, I wouldn't mind getting to ride on it...
#DeleteChrome
My impression is that the driver is under high stress and may have trouble to control this thing. May not be nearly as stable as the video tries to imply.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
And somehow, for some reason of time rather garbled and strange, this seems so boring in comparison to this wonderful antique: Williams WASP X-Jet
I'm not saying I don't want one, but if given the choice....
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
Until I can have the board from Back to the Future ::YAWN::
"Don't Panic!"
why don't we just line our streets and cars with (electro) magnets?
(What? Afraid of the poles reversing?)
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
Slashdot falls for another obvious fake article.
If it's a fake, it's pretty conservative.
I'd think a faker would want to demonstrate flying 20+ feet above the ground and zooming around a bit more, not hovering ~1.5 feet above the ground and slowly maneuvering.
Why would they bother faking something not much different from an average hovercraft?
The terrain looks suspiciously like the surface of Mars. Don't be a sucker. This could not work in Earth gravity.
So nobody's invented a ballast tank that works by creating a vacuum yet? No lightweight material that can maintain shape at 14 psi?
To me a helicopter/hot air ballon/motorcycle hybrid seems feasible.
All the articles I've seen they boast of this mechanical system for balancing the craft. The guy looks terrified to move even slightly. This type of VTOL craft is inherently unstable. There's a good reason he never guns it, the craft would flip. I'm sure it's perfectly capable of reaching a 100 to 200 feet or more but not safely. The LEM for the Moon landing was very similar but there was more finger crossing than technology involved in the first Moon landing. It's a cool idea but any moderately safe system would have to involve computers for balance correction rather then a mechanical linked system. They can become unstable in less than a second. Hearing it was mechanical in nature made me call bullshit before I even saw the video. After seeing it I'm still convinced that there's no passive way to make them safe. Even the Moeller Skycar with all it's computer assistance never got more than 15 feet off the ground. The Harrier jet was one of the few successful VTOL crafts that ever was ever widely accepted.
They sure went to a lot of trouble for a fake product.
Registering their website in 1997, going to conferences in 2012.
That's the kind of trolling that takes planning and dedication
Future Vertical Lift Aircraft Design Conference 2012 (PDF)
3:30 PM - 4:00 PM Thrust Augmentation & Control of Ducted-Fan VTOL Air-Vehicles -- Mark De Roche, Aerofex Corporation
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
This looks suspiciously like the Black Rock desert in Nevada. About a hundred miles North and a little East of Reno, near the town of Gerlach.
The place is the largest section of "flat" in the US. It's the remains of a prehistoric lake (Lahontan) that has dried up, leaving behind a perfectly flat dried mud surface.
It's where the land-speed records are set. It's where amateur rockets are launched. It's where Burning Man is held.
Steering? I know from one-man hovercraft that the rudder is mostly useless, and you steer by leaning. You need a Cog to be high enough to do this.
A quadrocopter can fly without a man on top, be telecommand. In this case it will be light and safe to fly in a city.
The problem is the battery. What is needed is the miniature silent gas turbine, so that it can fly not 10 minutes, but 2 hours.
Probably for obvious reasons. Flying machines, especially the hovering kind aren't known for being very quiet. And little to keep you from falling into the props. Mmmm, minced meat. Fire up the Weber.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The problem with all these powered lift gizmos (like the Williams X-jet and the Hiller VZ-1) is that you tend to fall out ouf the sky when your engine fails... The Hiller VZ-1 which is also a ducted fan used *two* 30 kW engines, but barely flew out of the ground effect and was limited in speed. More powerful versions had other control problems.
Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.
Something like that is actually used in hybrid vehicles to regenerate the battery. it's called Regenerative Braking. Using it like you suggest would be like driving with the handbrake on. Also remember that recapturing energy like this is very inefficient, therefore you are better off generating electricity directly from the engine.
You seem to have forgotten about helicopters. What the hell do you think they are??
Let's see yours, then.
I wish I could throw money at a project like this so I could show you mine. :P
If I could, though, I suppose it'd be a scaled-up quadrotor (possibly turbine-powered) with a pilot under it. It seems just more sensible than this two-rotor thing that seems to want to kill its pilot at the slightest provocation.
Also, the fact that it flies without electronics is not a good thing. Multirotor setups, especially those with a high center of gravity, benefit immensely from computer-controlled stability.
*sigh*
I get tired of pointing these guys out ... but if you do your homework you will realize they are the real deal ... and they are not rushing anything just to get some cheap PR. Eventually, I am confident they will succeed:
http://www.urbanaero.com
See you space cowboy
Also, the fact that it flies without electronics is not a good thing. Multirotor setups, especially those with a high center of gravity, benefit immensely from computer-controlled stability.
No true, remember the KISS principal. Given that their intended use is in outback and 3rd world places where replacement electronics are likely to be unavailable but a welder is, the more simplistic and basic mechanical they can make it the more durable, usable, and practical it is for their intended use.
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
The only multi rotor setup I followed was the Gen H4 helicopter
http://www.youtube.com/user/genh4?feature=results_main
It seems to do pretty well, seems easy to control, can fly with the loss of 1 engine and do emergency landing after loosing 2. It's available now in a kit for like $40k. Not too bad. I think it qualifies as an ultralight.
Not sure where I read it, following links in the article, that now they have proved the concept and shown basic useable stability w/o electronics, that the next step is to develop a computerized stability assistance of some sort. There are many improvements that would improve the stability to the machine even without electronics; one of the problems with relying too much on electronics for stability is how screwed you'd be when they fail.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Now all they have to do is turn the fans sideways and they'll have a Manta from Unreal Tournament 2004 :)
They claim they can fly as high as they want. You'd think they'd support that claim with the video.