TO INFINITY...AND BEYOND!
Posted on 12/30/2006 6:06:00 AM PST by aculeus
For those who are bored with hang-gliding or find skydiving just too dull, a Swiss airline captain has devised the ultimate aerial thrill: flying like a bird.
Thanks to high technology and nerve, Yves Rossy has come closer than anyone to realising the ancient dream of soaring free, flitting through the sky, guided only by the body. As well as a crash helmet he wears a small pair of wings and four tiny jet engines.
As he skims the Alps at up to 187mph (300km/h), the only thing that the former fighter pilot has come up against so far is the Swiss law.
“They were totally confused,” said the birdman, whose flying suit gives him a passing resemblance to Buzz Lightyear in Toy Story. “The authorities said that I was an unregistered aircraft and to fly, you need a licence. I told them, ‘No. To fly, you need wings’.”
The 47-year-old pioneer does not live up to the image of the stolid Swiss captain. Boyish and brimming with enthusiasm, he is a hero in the world of those extreme sportsmen — or borderline nutters — who are devoted to the quest of human flight.
After millennia of fatal experiments, the skills of Icarus and Superman remained a fantasy until the recent advent of powered flight, hang-gliding and skydiving. In the past two decades, free-fall enthusiasts have developed webbed “wing-suits” that allow them to glide and even perform aerial ballet. But the direction is always downwards, followed by a parachute landing.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
Be a piece of cake for a sky diver to rig that up, then dump it and pull.
Look! Up in he sky!
Where?
He was there a moment ago...
What's that smoke coming from that hill?
TO INFINITY...AND BEYOND!
:)
Projectile weapons have a sort of "immediacy" to them, I agree. How about an auto-repeating railgun?
The reason I'm skeptical, besides the obvious, is that he has maybe twenty square feet of wing area there. With a wing loading of more than ten pounds per square foot, he would need at least 100+ MPH to take off. Then there is the problem of drag with his body hanging out in the breeze. Not likely!
Reuters had video of this guy doing this a couple of days ago.
I wondered how he was going to take care of landing. All in all, interesting, scary, and better he than me.
I got him penciled in for a meeting with a rock wall...
Unbelievable. I bet this guy will be in the next James Bond movie.
My post 3 has a video.
This is real ,,, here is the manufacturer of his jet engines ... http://www.bvmjets.com/turbine/turbine_power.htm
This is not totally unbelievable. It looks like a modified hang glider
In my younger days I would have tried almost anything...even this if available.
I think the practical limitations of that type of flight will always be the amount of fuel that can be carried and weather. I don't think you'd see that fella flying around those big granite blocks in the background in 0/0 conditions.
hmmm... a rail gun... yeah, that'd work just fine.
Gotta have the .50's though. I like tracers.
Watch the video. He's got a chase plane filming him. Airborne launch from sky-diver plane. Wing tips fold up/fold out. Parachute landing. 5 minute flight time. Up to 300kph speed.
Freaking unbelievable.
Me too. I miss those days.
--indeed--
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