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Swiss-built Personal Wings Jet-Powers Man Into Air

Posted May 15, 2008 9:08 AM

From Coolest Gadgets:

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.

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The Engineer
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#1

Re: Swiss-built Personal Wings Jet-Powers Man Into Air

05/15/2008 2:06 PM

I don't know how that guy lands that thing. It really looked like he was coming in fast and it's not like you can bend your knees and roll with that thing strapped to your back. It's pretty amazing that it works as well as it does.

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#5
In reply to #1

Re: Swiss-built Personal Wings Jet-Powers Man Into Air

05/16/2008 10:20 AM

I saw a brief report on this on CNN yesterday. The guy jumped from an airplane and flew for about five minutes according to the report. He landed via parachute once he ran out of fuel. But the video of him is astounding! Here is the link without audio on CNN.com:

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/offbeat/2008/05/14/vo.swiss.rocket.man.ap?iref=videosearch

There is another, shorter report on CNN with audio by Anderson Cooper but less of the video.

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#2

Re: Swiss-built Personal Wings Jet-Powers Man Into Air

05/16/2008 12:35 AM

Looks great.

The magazine "New Scientist" had an article about such machines, apparently they're not hard to design or build, the problem always comes back to making them safe enough to use. Imagine not being able to glide in to land if you ran out of fuel when a few hundred metres up.

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#3

Re: Swiss-built Personal Wings Jet-Powers Man Into Air

05/16/2008 2:03 AM

The question I just have to ask: Where is the ejection seat?

kind Regards....

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#4

Re: Swiss-built Personal Wings Jet-Powers Man Into Air

05/16/2008 6:06 AM

Landing is done with a parachute !!!

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#6

Re: Swiss-built Personal Wings Jet-Powers Man Into Air

05/16/2008 11:52 AM

I saw a longer video of this last year sometime.

Pretty crazy!

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