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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."
electric scooter or motorcycle maybe, but no flight via manual pedal-power-only means not a flying bicycle
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.
Maybe they could attach Dyson bladeless fans on it.
No Buffeting!
eliminating the distinctive "whap-whap-whap" blade sounds.
No mom, it was a helicopter!
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
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).