So much in love with shiny new toys, it's unnatural.
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Tron Guy, whose wife calls him Jay Maynard, has just purchased a $140,000 aircraft. Why would the internet phenomenon spend so much money on a plane when it could be so much better used on some home exercise equipment? "I wanted a design that would leave no doubt in anyone's mind that it was Tron Guy's airplane." Well, alright then. [Wired]
You find yourself held under "house arrest" in a remote jungle region of Indonesia, sometime in the late 1950s. You may have your suit, fedora and at least one halfway decent tie, but the chances of getting back to the US of A seem slim. The CIA thinks you're not so dispensable, so spytechs—with the help of the always patriotic Goodyear Company—build an inflatable airplane that they can drop into a jungle clearing. Here's what it looks like when fully inflated and ready for takeoff:
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furniture
led plane
According to Flight Global, DARPA is close to awarding a contract to build an unmanned aircraft that can stay in the air for up to 5 years at a time. DARPA describes the "Vulture" project as a "persistent pseudo-satellite capability in an aircraft package." In other words, the aircraft can hover over a single area, narcing, communicating, or surveying for years at a time.
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mav on a wire
The British Ministry of Defence has eliminated missiles and other projectile weapons in favor of a more open, glass covered cockpit offensive. Why? Their new tactic is to fly as close to enemy aircraft as possible while wearing this prototype helmet to make the opposition shit themselves to death. Victims won't be reincarnated as anything good either, but that's just a side effect. [BBC via TheDayTheyTriedToKillMe]
toys
It looks like that Boeing jet we showed you yesterday isn't going to be the only airplane using hydrogen if the European Union has its way. The European Space Agency just got $14.5 million in a second round of funding from the EU to study the idea of developing A2, a hydrogen-fueled hypersonic aircraft that might travel at an incredible speed of Mach 5.5. They're studying what it would take to build an aircraft so fast that you could fly from Brussels to Sydney in 4.6 hours. Sheesh, that's 10,407 miles. There's even talk of an engine that could propel the craft to Mach 8. This rocket plane makes the Mach 2 of the Concorde seem glacially slow.
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5:49 AM on Fri Sep 14 2007
By AddyDugdale
53,716 views,
22 comments
UK defense firm Qinetiq has smashed the world record for the longest unmanned flight. Their solar-powered Zephyr flew continuously for an incredible 54 hours, easily beating the previous 30-hour record held by a US jet aircraft. Unfortunately though, it won't be officially recognized as a record, because of a slight oversight.
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heavy lifter
NASA handed out $250,000 in prize money this weekend to aircraft designers who competed in a competition to create personal air-vehicles. But don't be fooled by the picture and think that the event was full of flying cars, experimental planes and UFO-shaped discs—all the entrants were standard-looking planes, as you will see in the videos after the jump.
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wireless
Is this green flying saucer plane the eco-friendly plane of the future? It's a design from the CleanEra project, aimed at making air travel more economical (in the environmental sense) by using lighter materials and weird ass shapes. Their goal is to get the carbon usage down to less than 50% of current planes. Whether this is light on the Earth is yet to be seen, it looks like something the Green Lantern would fly in. [LiveScience]
6:30 PM on Tue Jul 24 2007
By Jason Chen
9,784 views,
50 comments
Latest by lightshow: @2MuchBS: This thing got a crash test rating of 4.5 Frisbees more »
The Palm Z Micro Plane is a lightweight flier controlled by infrared remote control. What's really awesome is the plane's bi-wing design and flaming paint job. Then there's the remote's tri-band functionality, allowing for three of the planes to fly in the same space, so you and your friends can trail one another under the dinner table and try to knock the planes out of the sky.
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