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-Short Attention Span Theater- |
Austrian "Man Glider" soars across Channel |
2003-07-31 |
Edited for brevity. Looks like fun, so I had to post! A 34-year-old Austrian mechanic became the first person ever to fly across the English Channel without the benefit of an aircraft, gliding from England to France wearing only a specially-designed suit. Skydiver Felix Baumgartner started his unusual journey from a point some 9,000 metres (30,000 feet) over the English port of Dover at 6:09 am (0409 GMT), and ended it 1,000 metres above Cape Blanc-Nez, near the French port of Calais, where he opened a parachute and landed at 6:23 am. To launch him on his high-speed glide, he was taken up from Calais in a Skyvan aircraft, from which he jumped from high above Dover. Baumgartner, who reached a speed of some 200 kilometres (120 miles) an hour during his glide was wearing an aerodynamic suit fitted with a 1.80 metre (six-foot) long carbon-fibre wing for the 35 kilometre (20 mile) glide. He also had special breathing apparatus for the high-altitude start of the flight, and was protected from the extreme cold at such heights by his special suit. |
Posted by:Dar |
#11 Jesus that looks like fun. I wonder when they'll be commercially available? Looks like it would beat all hell out of skydiving. Hey, I'm against the war. Is that OK on here? It's my first post on this blog, thank you all very much. |
Posted by: Mister Write 2004-08-24 3:55:00 AM |
#10 I say we do up some guy like Allah or Mo or whatever the hell his name is, rig him up with this thing and fly him into Mecca to land on the Kabba in the middle of one of those big hajs. See how that freaks the bastards out. |
Posted by: tu3031 2003-7-31 11:01:22 PM |
#9 Put some more facet angles on the fuselage and empennages of this chap and you have a STEALTH glider. We could put the whole thing in the bomb bay of an F-117 and we could have a mission with a story that would require a couple bottles of Paddy to tell, heh heh. Stealth^2 |
Posted by: Alaska Paul 2003-7-31 7:44:03 PM |
#8 Yeah? Well how about giving these things to a trained US military group(SEALs or Rangers or such) and do a HALO drop...Soldiers can be dropped from extreme high altitude and distance on covert ops. |
Posted by: Anonymous 2003-7-31 5:19:54 PM |
#7 What's really scary (in a "I'm laughing so hard I could barf" sort of way) is that this thing he's wearing looks almost EXACTLY like an old COBRA weapons system from the "G.I. Joe!" cartoon series, the Cobra CLAW (Covert Light Aerial Weapon). Take a look for yourselves: Cobra CLAW Y'know.. what with the helmet and all.. Cobra Commander, maybe? Heheheheh. Ed Becerra |
Posted by: Ed Becerra 2003-7-31 5:09:08 PM |
#6 He could use a cluster balloon to get the required altitude: http://www.clusterballoon.org/cluster1.htm |
Posted by: Robert Crawford 2003-7-31 3:32:38 PM |
#5 Now what would happen if we stuck a small turbofan on it, say about 50lbs of thrust and the fuel for around 30 minutes of operation? We already have those. It's called an ultralight. |
Posted by: Rafael 2003-7-31 1:58:35 PM |
#4 Someone....----I can think of cheaper ways to kill myself, heh, heh. |
Posted by: Alaska Paul 2003-7-31 1:28:06 PM |
#3 Now what would happen if we stuck a small turbofan on it, say about 50lbs of thrust and the fuel for around 30 minutes of operation? |
Posted by: Someone who did NOT vote for William Proxmire 2003-7-31 12:39:25 PM |
#2 I was thinking the suits could be applicable to HALO jumps as well, as you still need a conventional means to get to altitude. Judging from the photo, apparently to get the full 20-mile range you must ingest copious amounts of chili the night before. |
Posted by: Dar 2003-7-31 12:03:33 PM |
#1 20 mile standoff range, huh? Wonder how long before some turbanhead gets the idea this could be used as a human guided bomb? Or at least tells their interegator in Gitmo they are. |
Posted by: Steve 2003-7-31 11:55:28 AM |