Weather, luck, and wishes permitting, the plane should be taking taking to the skies around 10:00 a.m. PST/ 1:00 p.m. EST, so we've got another 20 or so minutes to head over to the webcast site, prepare to either cheer at a success or sigh at another letdown, and wish good luck to my second favorite daydreamer. I've got faith in this one, how 'bout you? [New Airplane]

You can find updates on the flight status, and the actual webcast right here and you can place your friendly wagers on whether this'll be a success or not in the comments. [New Airplane —Thanks, Dustin!]

While flying or flight helmets like these are great way to not only look like a cyborg, but to get some upgrades such as helmet-mounted display systems, I'd still prefer it if they had more appealing paint jobs. [Oobject]

This week, Gizmodo is exploring the enhanced human future in a segment we call This Cyborg Life. It's about what happens when we treat our body less as a sacred object and more as what it is: Nature's ultimate machine.

Instead of building airbags into plane seats or the bulkhead—that big flat wall at the front of the cabin—AmSafe, the biggest name in the I'm-guessing-not-terribly-crowded commercial jet passenger airbag industry, has hidden them in seat belts: the bag is mounted at shoulder height and connected to a trigger and helium inflation device underneath the seat.

AmSafe's Tom Barth, pictured here holding a comically oversized seat belt that's obviously hiding an airbag or something, told NPR:

The air bag seat belt looks pretty much like a standard seat belt. People don't really notice that it's there.

No need to deny the lumpiness, Tom—I think people will forgive a little bulk if it means they won't splatter their brains all over that darling floral bulkhead carpet next time a landing doesn't go quite as planned.

But alas, the rollout won't be universal. The FAA regulation doesn't require airbags per se, as long as aircraft manufacturers can somehow claim that a 16 G impact is survivable by way of padded seatbacks, open space, or better restraints. Only a handful of commercial jets have exploding seat belts airbags today—none of which have ever deployed, by the way—but the regulation, which only applies to new planes, should make these things a common sight. [NPR]

UPDATE: Now with added video edutainment:
—Thanks, Sergio!

The Boeing Company (NYSE: BA) today announced that the first flight of the 787 Dreamliner is expected by the end of 2009 and first delivery is expected to occur in the fourth quarter of 2010.
The new schedule reflects the previously announced need to reinforce an area within the side-of-body section of the aircraft, along with the addition of several weeks of schedule margin to reduce flight test and certification risk. The company projects achieving a production rate of 10 airplanes per month in late 2013.

There you have it. According to their press release, the fabled Boeing 787 Dreamliner will finally take off by year's end. With their credibility completely gone, I don't know if I should laugh or cry. I think I will do both. [Boeing]

Here are ten machines that are so enormous that they'll screw with your sense of what's large, what's small, and what is truly gigantic—each handily put into scale.

A fair bit longer than the Eiffel Tower laid flat, is how big. [DarkRoasted Blend]

The Komatsu 9xx Series mining trucks look a bit like Tonka toys. No, they look exactly like Tonka toys. [MiningTopNews]

24-foot-tall Tonka toys, mind you. [E-Transport.ro]

Howard Hughes' ill-conceived, ill-fated Spruce Goose has always been fascinating to me. HAY GUYS, LET'S MAKE A PLANE OUT OF WOOD! WHAT COULD GO WRONG? [Colorado U]

Along with being a hugely strange idea, it was hugely huge. That's the 1019-ft Queen Mary cruise ship, for reference. [DriveArchive]

The Bagger 288 strip-mining machine has gained plenty of notoriety on the internet, mainly on account of looking like it was designed to kill. It isn't, at all, but you can't fault us for jumping to conclusions. Look at it! [DRB]

The general public's unease about this horror machine won't be helped by the fact that it's large enough to saw large ships in half, and gobble up a bulldozer without so much as flinching. [Wikimedia]

Old Soviet military hardware is incredibly interesting—a vestige of a time when both of the world's superpowers applied their distinctively different philosophies to a race to design some of the most ridiculous machines ever created. But surely this photo of a Typhoon Class submarine is just the victim of some zoom lens distortion, right? [DGIBNET]

Ha ha, not at all. Those there are humans, see? [Webpark.ru]

The Space Shuttle Conveyor is a literally-named, track-driven machine that you've probably seen before, saddled with one of NASA's various, now-dormant spacecraft. But it's hard to even judge how big the shuttle is, much less its ride. [NASA]

As you probably guessed, it's inconceivably gigantic.

The B-2 Bomber is another familiar piece of hardware, but one that is usually pictured without comparison, flying through the air, looking secretive. It's a stealth plane, and it's shaped like a Styrofoam glider, so I always imagined it as fairly lithe. [Af.mil]

It's actually startlingly large, with a wingspan of over 172ft. [OklahomaCity on Flickr]

Anyone with knowledge of power generation can tell you that it's no wimpy windmill that can pump out six megawatts of power, and that this windmill must be fairly substantial.

Whether they'll be able to find the words to fully describe how substantial it is is another matter entirely. Those orange specks peeking out of the fan's face like insects? Those are maintenance workers. [Giz]

At first glance the Knock Nevis supertanker, with its weird name and goofy-large "No Smoking" sign below the officer's deck, looks like your average cargo ship: Pretty big, pretty flat and and pretty boring. [Wikimedia]

Far from it: The largest ship in the world, measuring in at over 1,500 feet long, ole' Nevis is a floating city. [DamnCoolPics]

The Mil Mi-26 is one of the classic sense-of-scale killers, since its proportions are almost exactly like a regular helicopter, just bigger. How much bigger? [Wikimedia]

That little black thing hanging from the Mi-26's hook there is a Chinook, which is nearly a hundred feet long. [Aerospaceweb]

Last week the Seattle Times reported that the damage observed during a ground test of the Dreamliner happened very late in the test, more specifically:

Just beyond "ultimate load." That is defined as 50 percent higher than the in-service limit load and is the Federal Aviation Administration's test target.

That would've been just fine and dandy, except that it turns out that they were just a little bit off and the damage actually occurred "well below the load the wings must bear to be federally certified to carry passengers." Whoops.

The structural flaws are described as

Stresses at the ends of the long rods that stiffen the upper wing skin panels caused the fibrous layers of the composite plastic material to delaminate.

Those long rods lead to the joints of the wings which connect to the body of the plane which lead to a fuselage box where excess load is transferred—-who cares how everything is connected? "Delaminate" as in "to split into thin layers"! Somehow I'm not reassured by being told that the delamination of the wing skin "isn't likely to lead to catastrophic failure of the airplane," though obviously they're not changing the design because it's not an issue. What's that? They are? Ah, well. What's another delay when the plane is already two years late? [Seattle Times]

Toda's record-breaking paper plane was made from one uncut sheet of paper, because he's a pro, and professional origami airplane modelers would never stoop so far as to use scissors. The Telegraph reports that the plane was 10cm long (about four inches), which seems tiny to us, but then, we're not paper aviation experts.

Oddly, Toda wants to launch his specially-designed paper planes from space. Seriously.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency announced that it would fund a three-year, 90 million yen (£617,000) study into the feasibility of launching paper darts from the International Space Station.

Next up: Testing to see if ants can be trained to sort tiny screws in space. [The Telegraph]

Seasoned in their coverage of the many laments of being rich, the NYTimes talked to many current and former jet owners about what's happening. It's pretty much a given now that if you're taking bailout cash (and these days, who isn't?), the jets have to go. Making now totally the time to buy!

“A year ago, there would be 30 people looking for one airplane,” said Jay Mesinger, a corporate jet broker, who said that prices had fallen 30 to 40 percent since late 2007. “Today there are 30 airplanes looking for one buyer.“

Aside from the U.S. becoming one giant used jet lot for the young emirs and oligarchs of the world, something tells me that the hip-hop community will raise up and do its part to keep the Gulfstreams of the world in solvency. They've never really had a problem with blatant displays of excess, have they? [NYTimes]

First off, Yeslam has lived in Switzerland since the 80's and has openly condemned the acts of his brother. His company sells perfume and other fashion accessories, but this particular line of tourbillion watches was apparently inspired by the death of his father in a plane crash. Should the electronic instruments break down in an aircraft, the pilot can determine true airspeed without calculations and estimate the duration of the flight before takeoff. A watch in the Aviator line is expected to cost between 9,472 and $24,430 depending on the value of the metals used. [Yeslam via Luxurylaunches via Luxury Watches]

Everything featured is great—from the Concorde and Supermarine Spitfire from the aviation world, to the miniskirt from fashion and the Penguin book jacket from, well, English bookishness. I love these. More at: [Dezeen via BBG]

These delays are getting close to those Airbus saw with their A380 super jumbo—delays which nearly ruined the European consortium. The 787's most recent troubles are due to a 58-day machinist's strike at Boeing's plants here in the U.S. in September and October. The first test flight is now scheduled for second quarter 2009, with deliveries (first to Japan's ANA) beginning in 2010.[BBC, Photo: markjhandel/Flickr]

The most pressing one is that changing to nuclear will help reduce the amount of emissions from planes and keep them flying in the air longer. A plane sipping on nuclear energy could take off in London, land in Australia, and then go to South Africa without needing to refuel, and it'll have zero impact on the atmosphere as well.

Plus, the safety risks we tend to knee-jerk envision with nuclear are tied more to its image in popular culture than any real scientific facts. Nuclear submarines have been around since the beginning of the Cold War—when was the last time you heard of an actual meltdown related to one of those? Now compare that to the tons of other fuels that have been leaked into waters over the years. Safe nuclear planes have been feasible since the 1950s, but lost favor when the military decided to start building intercontinental ballistic missiles instead.

While there are a few genuinely valid concerns we need to address before we actually let nuclear-powered planes take off—how to automatically jettison the reactor in case of a plane crash and what to do with spent fuel, for instance— there's no reason why we shouldn't at least hit the power button on research. [Times UK via Crunchgear]

Now all it needs is a Tumbler-like mechanism to instantly eject the moto. [MotoPod via Oh Gizmo]