Flying Bicycle Is Real, Takes First Flight

colinneagle writes "Bringing us one step closer to the hover-boards and flying cars that mid-20th century pop culture had predicted we would have by the year 2000, three Czech companies have come together to develop a functional flying bicycle. Designed by Technodat, Evektor, and Duratec, the flying bicycle weighs a little more than 187 lbs and limits its takeoff weight to about 350 lbs, according to a report from Polish bicycle news site Biketrendy. The report claims the bicycle, which is still just a prototype, is capable of staying in the air for about six minutes, although the companies working on the project hope to extend that to 50 minutes and top speeds of about 30 miles per hour. Currently, the fans propelling the bicycle are powered by a 50Ah battery."

Comments

Noisy isn't it.

[davesag]

Seriously I think the greatest invention of the 21st C could be silent fans. That bike looks like great fun but the noise is a killer.

Re:Noisy isn't it.

[Spy Handler]

Maybe they could attach Dyson bladeless fans on it.

No Buffeting!

Re:Noisy isn't it.

[xevioso]

Speaking as an anorexic child-size styrofoam dummy, I can say that that actually doesn't look like much fun. We prefer to remain completely immobile, staring off into space. But I would image you humans would get a kick out of riding such a thing.

Re:Noisy isn't it.

[Alsee]

350 pound flight capacity minus 187 pound vehicle weight seems to indicate a 163 pound (74 kilo) passenger limit. Not great, but that's certainly not "anorexic child-size styrofoam dummy" either. I'm an adult male, I could get there if I cut out the peanutbuttercups and switched to diet soda.

Oh well, I guess that means I'm never going to be able to ride it. Diet soda is vile.
How about they work on inventing that? Soda that tastes like sugar-water without being sugar-water? Chuckle.

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Re:Noisy isn't it.

[Artifakt]

I'd be skin and bones at 170. I can stay at 200 and still be under 16% bodyfat. OTOH, maybe it will scale. Get it to a base payload of about 250 lbs, and I'd give it a try.

If you want diet that tastes like sugar, there are some options:

For the big producers:
Pepsi's Aquafina FlavorSplash waters - grape, raspberry and wild berry, use just Sucralose, (a 0 calorie substitute) last I checked. No other Pepsi products use just Sucralose to my knowledge, but rather mix it with something else such as Apartamine and/or Ace-K. Ace-K is a big issue for diet soda safety, in that it's not commonly mentioned and less seems to be known about it than other non-sugar alternatives. Sucralose occasionally tends to upset digestion, but mostly in people who are consuming quite a few cans a day, and switching over to it gradually helps - 80% or more of people who do a lot of sodas a day, do OK by gradually switching and giving the digestive system a couple of weeks to adapt. There are no Coca-Cola products with just Sucralose, as far as I can tell. Diet-Rite cola is usually made with just Splenda (sucralose), as is Diet RC cola. It doesn't hurt to check the labels on any of these, as there may be some canned or bottled in other countries than the US that isn't exactly to the US formula.

Honest Fizz is a bit pricy, running about 1.20$ US a can. It's sweetened with a mixture of Stevia Leaf Extract and Erythritol. Erythritol is a complex alchohol and means one can has about 5 grams of carbs. (that's not a lot, but it's a few calories - about 30-40). Just like Sucralose, some people get increased gas or even cramping from Erythritol, some don't, at least if they aren't drinking eight cans a day. Just because one of these substances causes discomfort in some users doesn't mean the other one will affect the same people.

For pure Stevia sweetener, you could try Zevia, which now has 15 flavors, including Mountain Zevia, Doctor Zevia, and Caffine Free Cola.

I don't get paid to plug any of these. I don't own stock in them and nobody with them has asked me to say anything about them.

not a bicycle

[optikos]

electric scooter or motorcycle maybe, but no flight via manual pedal-power-only means not a flying bicycle

Re:not a bicycle

[ShanghaiBill]

Now - something purely human-powered that could fly would be impressive, but this is not.

It might be impressive, but it would not be new. Flying bicycles have been around for a while. The Gossamer Albatross was pedaled over the English Channel in 1979, a distance of over 22 miles.

The hard part is not getting a bicycle to fly, but to get it to hover with human power.

Re:not a bicycle

[Coeurderoy]

Yep: this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gossamer_Albatross
or this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Daedalus
would have better claim to be flying bicycles...

Although I do suspect that a flying Electrical Assisteb Bicycle could be a very interesting compromise enabling people "aircycle" withouth being bicycle champions...
A 400W electrical motor added to a 200W of human energy (from somebody in ok shape but very far from being a champion) might be enough to overcome
a) the not so lightweight human weight
b) the weight of the electical motor and battery
c) the additional weight needed to make it reasonable solid and usable in non perfect situations...
(the VAE + Pilot combo should give about twice the power ot the pilot only energy in the two existing long distance human powered flights
Of course I doubt that twice the power really translate into twice the possible weight....
But if it would yield 50% more, then it should be worth while investigating ...)

Re:not a bicycle

[Anonymous Coward]

Now - something purely human-powered that could fly would be impressive, but this is not.

It might be impressive, but it would not be new. Flying bicycles have been around for a while. The Gossamer Albatross was pedaled over the English Channel in 1979, a distance of over 22 miles.

The hard part is not getting a bicycle to fly, but to get it to hover with human power.

This may have been achieved today. See here:

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2013/06/human-powered-helicopter-won/

Not bicycle powered?

[TsuruchiBrian]

If it's not powered by pedaling, then what's the point of the bicycle part? You just bolt a bicycle to the inside of the cockpit of a 747 and then say it's a flying bicycle. Not only that you probably don't even have to do much testing to be sure it will work.

Re:Not bicycle powered?

[Rixel]

Maybe it's meant just to help you get over ditches, crevasses and busy highways that you come across in your travels

Re:Not bicycle powered?

[b4upoo]

You are spot on. It is a quad copter and it could be a bicycle or a rowboat in the center. It is interesting that a 50ah battery can power it for five minutes.
                  It will be a lot more interesting when one of these things sets down of pedestrians and becomes a multi station guillotine.

Re:Not bicycle powered?

[Camel Pilot]

Why not a Lazy-Boy in the center? Now there is headline

Gossamer Albatross

[Danzigism]

The Gossamer Albatross is a human-powered aircraft built by American aeronautical engineer Dr. Paul B. MacCready's company AeroVironment. On June 12, 1979 it completed a successful crossing of the English Channel to win the second Kremer prize. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gossamer_Albatross I'd like to see more of these. This was over 30 years ago. C'mon people.

Re:Gossamer Albatross

[Anonymous Coward]

There have been around 100 successful human-powered aircraft built over the years. The problem is they're not useful because we're not that powerful. A helicopter-type aircraft needs ~600W to lift a human, and only a few humans can put out that kind of power for any non-trivial period. A fixed-wing aircraft can get by with less power -- on the order of 300W in clean air w/ground effect -- but even that is a lot of power for the average person (~150W is a more typical number for an hour, and over the course of several hours ~75W).

not a bicycle

[optikos]

flying electric scooter or flying electric motorcycle maybe, but no flight via pedal-only power means not a flying bicycle

odd definition

[tverbeek]

So by "flying bicycle" they mean "personal hovercraft built around a bicycle".

Besides, wasn't something like the Gossamer Condor (built way back when I was a lad, in the 1970s) closer to the concept of a "flying bicycle"? Pedal powered, and able to fly, and it even had two wheels.

ETless

[Rixel]

Look Ma, no alien!

That's what Area 51 does

[Animats]

Seriously I think the greatest invention of the 21st C could be silent fans.

The USAF has been working on "stealth helicopters" for years. They haven't been able to make them silent, but they can make them sound like wind noise, eliminating the distinctive "whap-whap-whap" blade sounds.

Re:That's what Area 51 does

[wonkey_monkey]

eliminating the distinctive "whap-whap-whap" blade sounds.

No mom, it was a helicopter!

Re:That's what Area 51 does

[Alsee]

Tommy! I told you to stop doing that at 500 RPM! You'll grind it off!

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Re:That's what Area 51 does

[TubeSteak]

The USAF has been working on "stealth helicopters" for years. They haven't been able to make them silent, but they can make them sound like wind noise, eliminating the distinctive "whap-whap-whap" blade sounds.

The first trick is spreading the noise out over a larger range of frequencies.
You can accomplish this by changing the rotor blade spacing to reduce harmonics.
So instead of equally spaced rotors, the distance between them is unequal, which mitigates that whap-whap-whap sound.

The second big method involves actively "flapping" the rotors.
This lets you change the plane of the rotor just enough to miss the vortex from the previous rotation.
By always traveling through smooth air, you can minimize uneven pressure waves which create noise.

The rest of the tweaks are aerodynamic adjustments to the blade tips/materials/shape.
And last but not least, throttle back and reduce the rotor speed.

Tleskac

[lahvak]

by zbledl zavisti!

Maybe somebody can invent something that will make slashdot finally support unicode?