After miraculously getting a Little Tikes Cozy Coupe toy to take flight, the RC hobbyists at YouTube’s FliteTest challenged themselves to get one of Ikea’s cheap Jokkmokk wooden chairs airborne. Not only did they succeed, they also managed to complete all of the flightworthy upgrades in a mere six hours
President Trump announced yesterday that he was unilaterally pulling the U.S. out of the so-called Iran Deal, an international agreement that lifted sanctions on Iran in exchange for the cessation of Iran’s nuclear weapons program. But now that the sanctions are being reinstated, some American companies stand to lose…
Say what you will about The Phantom Menace, but the prequel’s pod racing scene is still one of the best sequences in the entire Star Wars franchise—even when you know Anakin was destined to win. But what if Sebulba had been victorious? Adam Woodworth built a couple of micro RC pod racers that let you rewrite the…
Planes are not designed for tall passengers. Even an hour-long flight can be uncomfortable when you’re twisted and contorted to fit in a seat. So watching an 11-hour flight from London to San Francisco take just four minutes in this spectacular cockpit timelapse makes me wish supersonic air travel was an everyday…
Airbus apparently didn’t get the memo that air travel is only supposed to get more cramped and uncomfortable year after year. Instead of designing even tinier seats, the company has revealed plans to create swappable modules that turn a plane’s cargo hold into spacious flying dorm rooms packed full of comfy-looking…
Top Gun undoubtedly had some of the best air-to-air combat scenes ever put on film, but watching crop duster pilot Butch Fisher skim this field and then barely pull up in time to miss a towering tree might be even more exhilarating. Plus, you don’t have to deal with that scene where Goose dies. (Take Maverick instead!)
Even with the hours of preamble as I shuffle through the airport to my gate, flying is still an amazing experience for me. But taking off in a commercial airliner isn’t anywhere near as magical as the way Jean-Baptiste Chandelier takes flight in this stylishly-edited new video, which makes paragliding look as close to…
If you’re looking for a relaxing way to run out the work clock on a Friday afternoon, I highly recommend Tucker Gott’s flying videos on YouTube. He takes to the air using a parachute and a propeller strapped to his back, which gives him the freedom to try fun stunts like launching and catching a paper airplane in…
It doesn’t matter what seat you choose on an airplane, your view will never be as breathtaking as what the pilots get to see during your flight. But sometimes the high-altitude scenery is so stunning that pilots feel obliged to share it with the world, like this descent into Queenstown Airport in New Zealand.
Flying is terrible these days. It flat-out sucks. From ballooning lines to get through security procedures that mostly don’t work to random fees and seats so small analysts believe they may be safety hazards, it’s really just not a pleasant way to spend your time.
While scouring large swaths of land for prey, predators like hawks and eagles will often take advantage of rising thermals to stay airborne and glide for extended periods with minimal effort. Humans have copied this approach which allows sailplanes to fly without a motor, but Microsoft is now teaching an AI how to…
Spreading my arms and taking to the skies like an eagle has always been my biggest fantasy. The closest I’ve ever come is piloting a two-seater Cessna, which was fun, but nowhere near as exhilarating as Jarno Cordia’s latest stunt involving a wingsuit and a pair of jet engines strapped to his ankles.
If you’re a nervous flyer, you’re probably going to want to skip this video, because after watching YouTube’s Linkerius fly so low to the ground that it looks like he’s perpetually going to crash, you’ll be terrified of ever stepping foot on a plane again.
Somewhere over the Hamptons, the pilot told me to take the controls. To my left, there was a joystick, roughly the same size and dimension as my favorite ‘90s arcade game, After Burner. I clutched it, pulled back, and felt the jet climb.
As a passenger on an airplane, it’s not easy to shoot footage from your plane’s tiny window. But when you’re the pilot, with a large window to watch the night sky, you it’s possible to capture some amazing aerial footage of the Milky Way.
Like flying cars, jetpacks are the kind of technology that seems perpetually on the cusp of going mainstream. Though they’re both still incredibly expensive and incredibly dangerous, it’s easy to ignore those glaring issues when footage like this makes jetpacks look like the best toy one could ever own.
Do you remember the first time you tried flying a drone? And almost immediately crashed it into a wall? Experiences like that make it hard to believe that professional drone racers are able to pilot their tiny crafts at such impossible speeds without having some kind of super-human, X-men like powers.
There’s a reason nature uses eggs to protect offspring who develop outside their mothers. Domes are inherently strong and durable, so it also makes sense to build a drone with a similarly bulbous shape to help it survive crashes, collisions, and other accidents when an amateur pilot is at the controls.
Even the most maneuverable aircraft we’ve designed is no match for the agility of a bird. Mother Nature has all but perfected flight, so why are we wasting our time re-inventing the wheel? As researchers at Switzerland’s École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne realized, we should just be copying our fine feathered…
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