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GamesPosts Tagged: ‘Crazy Aircraft’
This fascinating video of a seagull ornithopter appeared on the web this week: If you watch closely, even the head moves to control flight. What is the goal? It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! It’s … a New Seagull-Like Robot Spy Drone! The photo in the article shows you the size of the bird robot. [...]
As this article points out: NASA shows off the aircraft of 2025 Late last year, NASA awarded contracts to three teams — Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Boeing — to develop advanced designs for the year 2025. While all final designs have to meet rigid criteria for noise, exhaust and fuel consumption, the three concepts [...]
Which would you rather be driving at your local lake or beach – a Jetski, or one of these: This is the Bavar-2 flying boat, which Iran has equipped with cameras and machine guns to patrol its coastal areas. The best thing about it is its minimalist design. If you look at the photo on [...]
Stuff that makes you go Hmmm #22 – The airplane modeled after a Mayan Figurine
by Marshall Brain | September 30, 2010
Archeologists have found these strange little figurines in Mayan sites that look a lot like miniature airplanes. So what would happen if you tried to build and fly a plane, using one of the figurines as a model? This video shows the result of such experimentation…
Crazy Aircraft #69 – A human powered ornithopter takes to the air
by Marshall Brain | September 23, 2010
The idea of an ornithopter – a machine that flies by flapping its wings like a bird – has been around for a loooong time. And people have had a lot of success building small, bird-sized versions. Like this…
Let’s say that you have always wanted to fly. But the cost of getting a pilot’s license ($10K) and buying a plane ($100K) is hard to swallow. Is there a cheaper way to get in the air?
The answer may be a paramotor (also known as a powered paraglider), costing less than $10,000 and needing no license…
737s are incredibly common in the airline industry, and if you fly a lot you probably fly on 737s all the time. But have you ever thought about how they put one together? It turns out that 737s are so common that they have an assembly line. Even the custom painting process is interesting: In [...]
Have you ever opened an article about something, and the design of it just blows you away? It doesn’t necessarily matter whether it might or might not work. Just the fact that someone has conceived of it, and has taken the time to really give it some thought, is inspirational. This (for me anyway) is [...]
The Cirrus SF50 Vision is a beautiful jet holding up to seven passengers. There is a test vehicle that has been flying since 2008 and over 400 people have put down deposits on the plane. It falls into the “crazy” category because, due to economic factors, it might never get built. These two videos lay [...]
Crazy Aircraft #66 – Amazing floating helium shapes provide inspiration
by Marshall Brain | February 1, 2010
The idea of flying is cool all by itself. But human aerial contraptions often tend to be noisy and harsh. Here are a different type of aircraft – not necessarily practical, but surprising to watch: The following video offers little in the way of photographic elegance, but the aircraft demonstrates some nice precision flying: [[[Jump [...]
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