The Hoverboard Flies Closer To Reality 81
Dave Knott writes: Fans of 1980s cinema were disappointed when the year 2015 arrived without a practical version Marty McFly's hoverboard. Now, a Montréal-based man has brought it closer to reality by setting a new record for longest "flight" by hoverboard. In a filmed test recognized by the Guiness Book of World Records, Catalin Alexandru Duru pilots his somewhat cumbersome looking rig for 250 meters — five times the previous record — at a height of five meters above Quebec's Lake Ouareau. Duru and his business partner "hope to have a new prototype finished by the end of the year and then have hoverboards available for purchase across the country. He wouldn't say how much the prototype cost to build, but said that the first generation of the machine will likely be 'quite expensive.'" "This thing is still quite dangerous," he added, explaining that the pilot uses only his or her feet to fly the contraption. The commercial version's software will limit it to flying below a height of about one-and-a-half meters above the ground.
I believe you mean (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Great (Score:5, Insightful)
If everywhere you go is on water.
Serious question : why can't it work over land ?
'
I'm sure it'll work just fine over land... but when something goes wrong it's gonna hurt a lot more when you hit the ground. Over water is probably a better bet for testing your prototype without a lot of doctor's bills.
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If the power goes out you don't Fallon a hard surface.
This takes a lot of power and I don't see a big tank for fuel. So I expect that was its range.
There is a lot of energy to lift itself and say 150lbs of person.
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If the power goes out you don't Fallon a hard surface.
This takes a lot of power and I don't see a big tank for fuel. So I expect that was its range.
There is a lot of energy to lift itself and say 150lbs of person.
Jimmy Fallon?
above Quebec's Lake Ouareau = flawed approach =;-o (Score:5, Funny)
Don't they know? (Score:2)
Those boards don't work on water, unless you got POWAH!
LiPoSucTion (Score:2)
LiPo is more than just a way to suck out someone's fat cells. It's POWAH.
Ducted fans? (Score:5, Insightful)
Looks like a drone with a guy standing on top. It must chew through LiPo batteries.
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You don't need "antigravity" (which in all likelihood is impossible). Diamagnetic hoverboards would be possible... if we could make ridiculously powerful, compact halbach arrays in the board. Also you'd need a clever mechanism to detect and deal with flying over ferromagnetic material, or otherwise it's going to smack into your board really hard.
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Umm..... (Score:1)
Put a Seat on the thing and you've got yourself a Star Wars jungle speeder bike.
Re:Umm..... (Score:4, Interesting)
There are at least two hoverbike projects in progress, they seem quite a bit more mature and practical than this thing but to each their own I suppose.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
http://www.hover-bike.com/MA/ [hover-bike.com]
http://aerofex.com/ [aerofex.com]
Williams WASP X-Jet (Score:5, Informative)
The Williams X-Jet [youtube.com] did it better and did it 40 years ago.
45 min duration, speeds of up to 60 mph, and no flying in a straight line over water, but flying in and around trees over land!
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Re:Williams WASP X-Jet (Score:4, Funny)
The Williams X-Jet [youtube.com] did it better and did it 40 years ago.
45 min duration, speeds of up to 60 mph, and no flying in a straight line over water, but flying in and around trees over land!
Might be a problem filling up with jet fuel at the local Shell.
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Not really, Jet fuel is more or less kerosene/diesel with a few additives to stop gelling at low temps. Well, jet B fuel is anyways. Jet A is a little more tricked out but you could get a close approximation with either kerosene or diesel fuel and a few additives mixed in something like the oil additives for 2 cycle engines. You possibly might need to few engine modifications. The Ceiling of this type of craft just isn't high enough to worry about the air temps that much as long as the ground temp is high e
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Sure.. I don't see why it wouldn't. They have been using gasoline and diesel to cut steel for ages. Usually it's the larger operations and big steel but petrogen makes a consumer torch that burns gas or diesel and can cut something like 14 inches thick.
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It was a reference to the 9/11 conspiracy theory. The conspiracy believers claim that burning jet fuel cannot get hot enough to melt steel beams, and so it's impossible for the beams to have melted and collapsed the tower. They are simply wrong, though: As you point out, burning fuel can reach the required temperature easily, and it wouldn't even need to melt steel - just weaken it enough to collapse under tension.
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... and it was treated with the contempt deserved by such conspiracies.
"Compression". Unless you're talking about the Alien Abduction variant of 911, which posits that the whole event was a lifting test and the towers are currently residing in an underground hanger in Area 51.
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No, tension. While the building as a whole was under compression, parts of the structure were still under tension. The failure points were in the horizontal struts - this can be seen in images of the burning towers in the form of a significant bulging around the impact site. As the struts failed, the structural outer walls bent outwards until eventually reaching the point of failure and collapsing.
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I was sitting on an oil rig watching the events (while having a "well control event," so not watching very closely. We had out own more important events going on.) on the newly-installed satellite TV. We probably know more about hydrocarbon-liquid fuelled fires than most people, because we have to be our own fire brigade. No one in the oil industry (TTBOMK) gives that "the fire couldn't reach the necessary temperatures" bullshit the slightest bit of attention. Because all to often we see that hydroc
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The service ceiling of the X-Jet is 10,000 feet.
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Temp drop is about 3.5 degrees f every 1000 feet. So that's around 35 degrees f drop at the ceiling. Untreated diesel will start separating wax at around 24 degrees F and likely be completely gelled at 18 or so degrees F. So as long as the ground temp is lets say above 35+30, or 65 degrees, there should be little to worry about. Frankly, in an open cockpit, that might be a little low of a range anyways for that height.
That is without added weight of a fuel heater. You could run a return line near the exhaus
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And you would need to be totally insane or have a parachute.
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Wow. We had our flying car - graceful, compact, long range, in 1974, and we collectively said 'meh'?!
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Jet engine technology isn't secret or mysterious. Plenty of civilian aircraft have jet engines of similar specs. It's just that jet engines are really, really expensive to buy and even more insanely expensive to maintain. And in an aircraft, if your engine fails you can coast to a stop; in this contraption if your engine fails (and it _will_ fail at some point) you die.
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A helicopter comes close. Fast, long range, VTOL capable. But they are horrifically fuel-inefficient, expensive, and the consequences of an accident are a lot worse than for a car with a correspondingly greater requirement for operator training.
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According to this [wikipedia.org] here are two numbers that would cause the X-Jet to be useless.
Empty weight: 401 pounds (182 kg) (182 kg)
Loaded weight: 550 lb (250 kg)
That would mean that the aircraft could lift 149 lbs in people and fuel. Most people who would be allowed to fly it would be over that weight. If one is 110 lbs one could carry 39 pounds a fuel and maybe get the advertised range. Sorry but that is not a very big market.
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Sorry but that is not a very big market.
Ya think that in 40 years there might have been some improvements in propulsion technology????
Re: Williams WASP X-Jet (Score:4, Funny)
In 40 years people have also got a lot heavier.
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Not true. I weigh about the same as I did 40 years ago. Ok, maybe 5 pounds more.
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Just saying why the original did not catch on.
The current issues have to do with the propulsion method. It still requires moving large amounts of air which causes significant turbulence. I would not want to be anywhere near one of those when they took off or landed.
Then there is the noise of the jet engine. Jet turbines designed to produce thrust are quite noisy.
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Apparently there has been a reboot effort going on with significant improvements in the noise department.
They had a (miserably failed) indiegogo-campaign 2+ years ago: https://www.indiegogo.com/proj... [indiegogo.com]
The turbulence doesn't look half bad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Looking at how close people are standing during the landing procedure, it is much, much better than the same situation for helicopters.
In the noise department the info given by these guys is this:
"Due to advances in technology the fuel cons
Little correction. (Score:2)
It's a multirotor (Score:2)
Electrically powered, computer stabilized just like a twenty dollar Cheerson CX-10 but a lot more powerful.
A couple of years ago Hobbyking ran a contest called the Beer Lift Challenge and the last year they ran it, 2013, the unlimited winner lifted a 58.7 kilogram (130 pound) payload along with, obviously, its own weight. So here we are two years later, better batteries, motors, speed controllers and flight computers, and someone's bumped up that record to enough to lift a man.
I wonder how long it'll be til
Hoverboard? Please! (Score:1)
The damn thing is a flying food processor. Fly over the water and it will turn you into chum.
So here you are when it throws you off [ngfiles.com], and now it's out of control
Guiness just examined the footage? (Score:5, Interesting)
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That's kind of the point -- most people with Soviet roots have a somewhat negative outlook on Russia if they aren't Russian. And many Russians have a somewhat negative outlook on the soviet bloc. Soviet culture has shaped the societies of current ex-Soviet countries significantly -- promoting the strong work ethic and "must make things better for my kids" attitude that isn't so widely spread in North America anymore.
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Wait, seriously? The Guinness endorsement was the only thing giving this a shred of credibility in my mind. If they really only saw the video then shame on them. They've been suckered.
Wish I knew for sure. This bit from the CBC site is the only thing I've seen which suggests that all the Guinness Book people saw was a video:
"Duru had been working on a prototype for about five years and last August filmed hims
Cool! (Score:1)
Sure, it's noisy and blows debris (in this case water) everywhere, unlike the movie version which was completely silent and did not use forced air.
But the good thing about the hoverboard in the video is that is does not require magic to work.
Best comment on the other website (Score:4, Funny)
"This will revolutionize the way people get hurt in traffic accidents."
not even jesus (Score:1)
Whatever, it's been done (Score:2)
I recall seeing film on TV of a US Army project that had a device very similar to this. It had a man standing on top of a hovering platform with lift provided by fans. I don't recall exactly when this demonstration was performed but judging by the quality of the film, uniform of the "pilot", and other clues it was likely 1950s or 1960s. Perhaps there is a "first" here that I missed.
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1970s I think. Look up the comments as someone posted a link about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Or were you thinking of the much earlier jet powered one?
If the driver capsizes... (Score:2)
Am I the only one... (Score:2)
Great ! Yet another noisy machine that ass-hates can use to destroy the serenity of a lake.
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