Despite what you might be expecting, the students in this video won’t be sporting bowler hats or knickers and the video is in color, and while going airborne on a bike is still just a dream for frustrated cycling commuters everywhere, this University of Maryland team has taken one small rotation for mankind.
Almost since the invention of the automobile, people have dreamed of building a single vehicle that could drive on the road and take to the sky. Over the years there have been numerous attempts to build a viable “roadable aircraft” – a self-contained airplane/car hybrid – but few of these concepts ever made it off the drawing board. And even fewer made it off the ground. But with advances in technology and engineering, modern designs for the flying car are making that dream closer to reality.
Airbus is in talks with US airlines to make planes with aisle seats that are extra wide, “almost as wide as a first class seat.” That sounds comfortable but it comes with some tradeoffs, the middle and window seat would have to shrink and the aisle seat is going to get more expensive.
These wider seats will likely be implemented in the Airbus A320 (the single aisle plane) and will turn the aisle seats to 20-inches wide. Currently, all three seats are 18-inches wide. If this change is put into place, we’ll have the 20-inch room on the aisle and 17-inch seats for the middle and window. Airbus estimates that airlines will charge a $10 fee for the extra room in the aisle seats. Which isn’t exactly offensive but just another instance of airline nickel and diming.
One hundred homes in Killeen, near Fort Hood, Texas, were evacuated last Tuesday’s night after a missile accidentally fell from an AH-64 Apache helicopter. The residents were able to return one hour later, after the US Army found the projectile on the ground.
The helicopter was doing a routine flight. People on the ground reported the object falling from the helicopter around 8pm, which immediately prompted the evacuation. The missile was later recovered by US Army personal, who found it partially sunk into the ground.
Fortunately, it had neither explosives nor a propulsion system. A Fort Hood official assured the population that their aircraft never fly over populated areas with live munitions.
The missile was most probably an AGM-115 Hellfire, a 100-pound destructive beast that usually carries a highly explosive 20-pound warhead.
UK engineers have begun critical tests on a new engine technology designed to lift a spaceplane into orbit.
The proposed Skylon vehicle would operate like an airliner, taking off and landing at a conventional runway.
Its major innovation is the Sabre engine, which can breathe air like a jet at lower speeds but switch to a rocket mode in the high atmosphere.
If you’ve ever dreamt of flying a jet into war—I see you, joystick jockeys—this incredible GoPro footage is your best new alternative. Watch it in fullscreen if you actually want to feel nauseous.
All that’s missing is the g-force factor pulling at your face, and, of course, the risk of crashing or being blown out of the sky. But that’s OK! These F-15 videographers were just training, anyway, as part of ACM (Air Combat Maneuvering) dogfight practice between the “Fighting Cocks” (hush) and “Vampire Bats” squadrons, based out of Japan. But man, it looks like the real thing: flares released, midair refueling, and best of all, the absolutely crazy maneuvering. All the Top Gun radio chatter helps with the mood, too.
You know what’s cooler than 20 fighters ready to battle? Seventy fighters ready to battle—all lined up in perfect rows, and deadly as hell.
Like the last choreographed work of plane porn (orgy?) we showed you, this is another “elephant walk.” But here, Seymour Johnson Air Force Base assembled more F-15E Strike Eagles than most countries have aircraft to their name. So what’s the point of all of this, other than a good photo op and a “Don’t try anything” to North Korea? Not much. But, hey, there’s never much point to porn. Let’s hope we never have to actually use this many fighters at once.
The people from the Pima Air & Space Museum thought it would be a great idea to make a 45-foot long paper airplane, lift it with an helicopter, and then drop it to let it glide across the Arizona desert.
The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the supposed backbone of the Pentagon’s future air arsenal, could need additional years of work and billions of dollars in unplanned fixes, the Air Force and the Government Accountability Office revealed on Tuesday. Congressional testimony by Air Force and Navy leaders, plus a new report by the GAO, heaped bad news on a program that was already almost a decade late, hundreds of billions of dollars over its original budget and vexed by mismanagement, safety woes and rigged test results.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The Obama administration is preparing for a space tourism industry that is expected to be worth $1 billion in 10 years, the head of the Federal Aviation Administration’s commercial space office said Tuesday.
