Swiss Man Flies With Jet Powered Wing

NotBornYesterday writes "After spending $190,000 and 'countless hours' building a set of jet-powered wings, a Swiss man has successfully demoed this ultimate mother-of-all-toys. After jumping from a plane like a skydiver, he then lit the four jet engines and proceeded to fly around a valley in the Alps at up to 186 miles per hour. His site is here, if you want to see shots of him in action. 'I still haven't used the full potential,' he said."

Re:It is pretty old

[bev_tech_rob]

Who cares about transportation? It would be FUN!!

Re:Darwin awards

[Anonymous Coward]

Bah. These are the people who _should_ be reproducing -- the ones who have the balls to explore and take risks to further the ability of humans.

Re:I hate to give the wrong people any ideas, but.

[Gabrill]

Not really enough mass to do good damage. Bug splat kamikaze pilots don't really make the same statement as fighter jets, and even 747's plowing through the target.

Re:OFN?

[nbert]

Who the fuck keeps modding up these moronic "This is old news!!!" posts from AC's.

Yes, they are boring, but someone has to state the obvious and there's nothing wrong about imforming everyone about prior coverage in the media.

It might have been the first official flight, but I can recall at least 3 TV "infotainment" shows (non-US) covering this in recent years. Afterall it's just the economy of the mass media industry: Some major media agency publishes this and every news source copies it ad nauseam, because the journalists in charge haven't heard of it before or they simply are in need of content. Or they feel that not covering it will make their clientele think that they are not aware of an issue important to their particular target group*.

Two anecdotes: I know someone in the healthcare industry who hired a pr agency to promote his product. They scheduled a press conference in spring. Maybe 5 journalists of unimportant newspapers showed up. However, the press-kit they send to every major news source really paid off: In the silly season (over here that's around July) many newspapers wrote a feature about said product. Some even copied the euphemistic phrases of the press kit: "Breakthrough in hip surgery", "Uncle John can finally walk again" and so on.
On another occasion I wrote to a major energy supplier requesting material about their view on nuclear power. They send me many articles and 2 months later I read one of them again in my favorite newspaper word-by-word (it was about a new generation of nuclear plants somewhere in scandinavia). Both examples show that we have to pay attention to how we read news and who has interest in making it public. It also shows that journalists do not only cover interesting stories, but also copy material because of laziness or cost pressure.

For those reasons I like it when someone shouts "old news" in such discussions. It's a kind reminder that the news isn't newsworthy. And if I haven't heard about it before I can still read on, but I'll take it with a grain of salt.


*Not a problem as long as they mention that it has been covered before.

Re:I hate to give the wrong people any ideas, but.

[Strange Ranger]

> Not really enough mass to do good damage.
\\ > Supposedly the wings can hold like 200 lbs worth of gear in addition to the "pilot."

Tin foil hat or no, 200 pounds is a lot to work with.
http://www.google.com/search?q=smallest+nuclear+weapons&btnG=Search [google.com]

Re:Famous last words...

[Tablizer]

'I still haven't used the full potential,' he said.

Full Potential == Darwin Award
         

Re:OFN?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't give a fuck how old this story is, for those of us who are not continuously glued to /. , this is the coolest fucking story in about forever.

Re:I hate to give the wrong people any ideas, but.

[supernova_hq]

Mass?!? Who need mass when you can carry a 200lb BOMB with you?!?

At last, small jet engines

[Animats]

Small jet engines have been an elusive goal for decades. They can be built, but the cost doesn't go down much below bizjet size. That's why general aviation is still piston-powered.

This guy is using four model aircraft jet engines. Probably ones like this. [jetcatusa.com] They're somewhat marginal devices, needing an overhaul every 25 hours. (For aviation jet engines, that number is usually at least 1000 hours.) Good thing he carries a parachute.

Re:It is pretty old

[fractoid]

Um... yeah, and base jumping is widely acknowledged to be about the most dangerous thing you can do for fun, bar jumping off office buildings WITHOUT a parachute. Parachutes, rectilinear or otherwise, aren't "quite safe", they're "safer than not having one". There

Certainly, you're a dozen times more likely to die in a car accident than you are from a chute malfunction. That's because you travel in a car every single day whereas a couple of dozen jumps makes you a seasoned skydiver. If you parachuted your way to and from work every morning, I think you just might possibly find that parachuting is higher risk than driving.

Re:Can the editors do math? $190,000 != $285,000

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess that during those 'countless hours' the US $ has dropped in value against the Euro

Re:Making Sense

[justleavealonemmmkay]

There is no such thing as a "kph". You don't get the metric system. A k is 1000. A "kph" would mean "1000 per hour", which doesn't look like a velocity to me.

Accept it, what you meant is "km/h". That's the way it has been written for as long as velocities of that order of magnitude have been practical.

Re:Wait... what?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, that is why he also needs a WING

Re:OFN?

[TapeCutter]

You would definitely need a plane since it's infinitely improbable a whale should just spontaneously appear several miles above the suface of the planet.

Re:OFN?

[DeeQ]

This news was about the successful use of the product. IIRC Wile E. Coyote was not very successful with many products.