Saturday, May 17, 2008

FUSIONMAN

Just to spice up this blog with something interesting. I happened to chance upon this whilst browsing my usual feed of tech websites.

Okay, for a long time I've always been dreaming of slapping one or two Jet-Engines onto my bicycle, them Froooooooomppppppp, blast off to 80km/h without even peddling. I may or may not have told a few friends or even posted this idea on my blog.

So then (this idea originated at least 3 years ago), I found out that you CAN buy hobbyist Jet Engines in Singapore. They use these engines in hobbyist RC aeroplanes. I found the most powerful one available was from JetCat, it consumes Jp-7 jet fuel or Kerosene produces about 20kg of thrust and weighs about 3kgs, and will cost a whooping $6,000. The cheapest I found was also from JetCat, producing about 12kgs of thrust for $2,500.

Of course I was damn interested, I even got quotations on the pretext of a University school student. Imagine slapping two of these babies onto a bike together with a container of kerosene and you got 44kgs of forward thrust at full-throttle!!!

Okay so since I don't have $12,000 to spare, the idea fizzled out.

NOW I SEE THIS!!!

This guy actually used the very same engines I've been talking about, he used FOUR JetCat engines of 22kg of thrust each, producing a total of 88kg of thrust. Assuming the entire outfit plus his body weight is about 110kgs, you can get about 0.8 Thrust-To-Weight ratio with this setup, and that's pretty impressive.

This is probably the closest thing you can get to being IRONMAN or Superman.

How I wish I was rich and was like Tony Stark. I wouldn't be spending my money on cars and girls. I'll do crazy things like this.

Yeah, people have called me crazy before.

From the dawn of intellectual thought, man has been contemplating the idea of independent flight, soaring through the clouds, nothing between us and the earth’s surface. What if us humans had wings?

No doubt, airplanes were a huge step towards the independent flight of man, but in order to fly a plane, you have to be a licensed pilot, and who has the time and patience for all of that mess? A Swiss man named Yves Rossy has unveiled his personal flyer, a jet-powered set of wings which allows humans to act as airplanes, even performing plane stunts such as the figure eight.

48-year-old Rossy sprang into the air at 7,500-feet, jumping from the inside of a Pilatus Porter aircraft, with nothing but a pair of eight-feed wide wings standing between himself and the unforgiving Earth below. As Rossy’s free fall slowly evolved into a steady glide, four jet-turbines were ignited, accelerating the man to speeds of 186 miles per hour, or “about 65 miles per hour faster than the typical falling skydiver.”

“I still haven’t used the full potential,” Rossy told reporters, exclaiming his hope to one day use the wings for a fly through the Grand Canyon. He explains how there is almost no stress caused to the body while using the wings, how it’s almost like “riding a motorbike.” Though he still must wear a heat-resistant suit to protect him from the heat of the jet-engines, with the air temperature also assisting in cooling him down.

Rossy and his sponsors have poured about $285,000 and countless hours of labor into producing the personal flyer, and he won’t comment on how much the device might be if it were marketed to the public. Though one thing is for sure, thrill-seekers everywhere just got a glimpse of the future. Something to really look forward to.

Some Videos

Jet Man