A Zombie Escape Vehicle Large Enough for Your Entire Neighborhood

This article is cross-posted from Al Fin blog

The Aeros rigid body airship zombie escape vehicle uses a novel buoyancy management system to provide the ability to carry up to 66 tons of freight or passengers, with a range of 3,000 nautical miles, and the ability to land and take off vertically from any flat surface. Cruising speed is 110 knots, with better fuel economy than other aircraft with heavy lift capability.

The company has built a half-size prototype, and is working with the US FAA on legal-technical-regulatory aspects of the craft before building a full-sized version.

If the vehicle operates to specifications, it would be an ideal method of building an "instant community" in the middle of nowhere. Such a capacity would be invaluable to militaries, as well as to survivalists, colonists, "new nation activists," and others who wished to be able to quickly install a sophisticated infrastructure in a remote location using pre-fabricated and pre-packaged materials and equipment. Example: Intershelter Popup Dome Shelters are lightweight and assume compact form for shipping.

The airship should also allow for fairly quick and massive relief and re-supply in disaster situations.

Aeroscraft

The commercial models will have a cruising speed of 110 knots over a range of 3000 nautical miles.

“It is the speed that the market and customers need,’’ he [Aeros CEO Igor Pasternak] says.

One of the keys to the new platform is its buoyancy management system. This allows the weight of the vehicle to be adjusted to suit conditions and operational needs. It is completely different from a "blimp" or something like the Hindenburg which needed a hitching post. With the Aeroscraft, there is a gas envelope above a freight chamber which reduces the buoyancy until the craft is 50 feet above the ground. Then you land it as you would a helicopter.

“The concept of the operation is absolutely new. When it comes in for a landing, say 100 feet or 50 feet and it touches the ground, at this moment you become heavier than air,’’ he says.

“From the structure stand point, all of us are familiar with the Hindenburg and Zeppelin designs, continues Pasternak. “This is different. We built a space frame that sits inside of the vehicle and around the frame we built a rigid cell. The function of the rigid cell is to have it work with the aerodynamic laws. It’s a very simple approach. _Gizmag

The video below provides a graphic animation of the Aeros buoyancy management system, which allows the craft to land and take off vertically, and to pick up and deliver up to 66 tons of cargo or passengers from most locations -- regardless of how far it is to the nearest airport.

The military applications are apt to catch on, if the craft can operate at high enough altitudes out of range of most ground fire. Remote piloting capability would also be an ideal feature for military use.

This is an airship buoyancy concept that has been thrown around at the Al Fin Aerospace Institute for a number of years, but the Institute is not likely to submit any prior claims to the idea. ;-)

Besides, when it comes to community scale zombie escape and evasion, we need to stick together for the sake of group survival.

Escape the Zombie Horde in a Flying Home

Flying Home
When the zombie apocalypse hits, you may not have a lot of time to pack your things before making your escape. The idea of making a clean escape in a pre-packed home -- containing all your important belongings -- should appeal to every well informed zombie survivour.

Lighter than air craft allow you to put a much larger distance between yourselves and the emerging zombie horde. And you can travel that distance in unprecedented comfort and style, in the flying home designed by Swiss designer Timon Sager.

The elegantly styled home features multiple decks with several amenities any modern homeowner would want — from a sleek entertainment room to a lavish bedroom. The house also features immense windows that would make every beautiful angle visible. If you have a paralyzing fear of heights, this may not be the home for you, but then again, who could pass up the greatest benefit of traveling in the comfortable confines of one's home? Wolke 7 would also eliminate the arduous task of packing light and researching for a hotel at your destination. Instead of hectic worrying, flying-homeowners can relax and sail the skies to their favorite vacationing spot. _Source

Once you arrive at your zombie survival fortress and redoubt, you can continue to utilise your flying home as an advanced warning lookout platform.

Remember: zombies do not live with regret. If you plan far enough and well enough ahead, you will not have to live with regret or with zombies.

Adventures in Unconventional Propeller Flight

The Austrian D-Dalus design is meant to be the "hummingbird" of this class of unconventional rotor designs. Think of how maneuverable a hummingbird can fly, while still achieving a very high top speed.

The D-Dalus has the potential to be the "special ops" platform of choice for rapid insertions, extractions, and quick stealthy near ground-level attacks.

D-Dalus

A flying machine with no airfoil, rotor or jet propulsion can travel where most cannot: in very tight spaces and through terrible weather.

ROTOR ASSEMBLIES

The craft’s four rotors spin at 2,200 rpm, and six blades attached to carbon-fiber disks create directional thrust. The blades act as mini airfoils, their angle of attack constantly shifting in relation to rotation. For vertical lift, a blade’s leading edge rises away from the center of the disk at the top of its rotation and toward the center of the disk at the bottom [pictured], creating a pressure differential.

FRICTIONLESS BEARINGS

Existing bearings were unable to withstand 1,000 Gs of force between the carbon-fiber disks and their blades and still deliver some degree of maneuverability. Engineers at IAT21 developed their own bearings, shaped like metal barrels, that hold up to the force better than spheres (think: arches) but can still roll enough for the blades to move. _Popsci

The Fanwing, seen below, is more of a slow semi-hovering craft, meant to linger overhead for extended periods of observational time. Fanwing is more of a recon aircraft.

Fanwing Simulation

The cycloidal drive propeller below was taken from an earlier marine drive -- used for tugboats and other highly maneuverable water craft.

When applied to a flying craft, the cycloidal drive has the potential to function as either a helicopter replacement, or as a drive for a larger airship or "blimp."


Cycloidal Drive Simulation

The Voith Schneider propeller (VSP), also known as a cycloidal drive (CD) is a specialized marine propulsion system (MPS). It is highly maneuverable, being able to change the direction of its thrust almost instantaneously. It is widely used on tugs and ferries.

From a circular plate, rotating around a vertical axis, a circular array of vertical blades (in the shape of hydrofoils) protrude out of the bottom of the ship. Each blade can rotate itself around a vertical axis. The internal gear changes the angle of attack of the blades in sync with the rotation of the plate, so that each blade can provide thrust in any direction, very similar to the collective and cyclic of helicopter flight controls. _ngcraft

Silent Zombie Kill Seaplane: Fly Nano Stealth Electric

This nifty one-person seaplane has made its first test flight with a battery powered electric motor. It is so quiet that you can dive-bomb a zombie nest in broad daylight, and they'll never hear you coming. Base price is $34,000.

Wing guns and bomb mounts are extra.

Fly Nano News Blog_via_Gizmag

Flynano main website




The electric version has a relatively short range, so be sure not to let your batteries run down in the middle of a zombie attack.

Ultimate Zombie Escape Vehicle?

When the zombie apocalypse hits, you may not have much warning to get out of town. Freeways and surface roads will be jammed to a standstill, and walking out of the city with zombies on the loose could be extremely dangerous. In such an event, you will want a method of urban exfiltration. Helicopters are generally considered the best method of fast evacuation, but a flying car or flying motorcycle ranks high on the list. The Pal-V personal flying road vehicle is an auto-gyro and a three-wheel motorcycle all in one. Here's more:

On the ground this slim, aerodynamic, 3-wheeled vehicle has the comfort of a car with the agility of a motorcycle thanks to its patented, cutting-edge, ‘tilting’ system. It can be driven to the nearest airfield and take off just like any other airplane. The single rotor and propeller are unfolded to make the PAL-V ONE ready to fly. When airborne, the PAL-V usually flies below 4,000 feet (1,200 m), the airspace available for uncontrolled Visual Flight Rules (VFR) traffic; so there will be no interference from commercial air traffic. Furthermore, the PAL-V is powered by a very robust, flight certified aircraft engine. It runs on gasoline. It can reach speeds of up to 180 km/h (112 mph) both on land and in the air. The PAL-V ONE has a very short take off and landing capability, making it possible to land practically anywhere. When not using controlled airspace, you can take off without filing a flight plan. Flying a PAL-V is like a standard gyrocopter. It is quieter than helicopters due to the slower rotation of the main rotor. It takes off and lands with low speed, cannot stall, and is very easy to control. The gyroplane technology means that it can be steered and landed safely even if the engine fails, because the rotor keeps auto rotating. _PAL-V

Escaping a Zombie-Infested San Francisco

The PAL-V One can reach speeds up to 112 mph. On the road, the PAL-V One has a range of 750 miles from its gasoline engine and in the air it has a range of up to 315 miles. It runs on gasoline like a conventional car, but there will also be versions that use biodiesel or bio-ethanol. _Inhabitat

In a world of zombies, there are very few second chances. Best to plan ahead.

Stage Your Own Rapid Beach Invasion With the Iguana 29

...the Iguana 29 is suited more for the water. It’s a 29-foot speed boat with a 35-knot top speed over water and seating capacity for up to ten. But closer to land it can deploy retractable caterpillar tracks that can carry it across dry ground at up to five miles per hour. _PopSci

PopSci
Now there is no need to call in the marines when planning a limited beach invasion. The Iguana 29 is an amphibious vehicle that seats up to 10 weekend commandos for quick and easy in and out raids on your favourite beach locations. Retractable tracks are always at the ready for all terrain landings -- just like the marines.

It’s cool because, at least by all appearances (and you can see it make the water/land transition in the video below) its tank-style treads are actually decent at negotiating off-road terrain. In the kinds of environments where an amphibious vehicle actually makes sense--a beach during low tide, a sandbar in shallow water, etc.--the Iguana looks right at home. It lacks the complexity of something like a hovercraft (remember that brief period where we all thought we were going to own hovercraft?) and the bulky slowness of one of those duck boats you see driving around Boston or Key West or wherever tourists go on those amphibious tours.
In other words, it’s less an “amphibious vehicle” and more a decent watercraft that can effectively handle dry land conditions when necessary--ostensibly a pretty good thing to have around if you’re living in an area with wildly varying tidal conditions or doing a lot of island hopping or cross-bay traversing. And all you need is $290,000 to get on board. _PopSci

Burt Rutan Is Up to Something Again

Burt Rutan is one of the few winners of the coveted "Al Fin Portrait of Competence Award." When such a person retires from his day job, he is not likely to sit around twiddling his thumbs. There are rumours that Burt Rutan is working on a new design for a flying boat.

There’s been plenty of speculation within the aviation world about whether Rutan would stop designing airplanes now that he’s retired from Scaled Composites. Imaginative and prolific, Rutan has been at the leading edge of aerospace design since the 1970s, and few thought he would simply play golf all the time. True to form, Rutan is working on a new aircraft design.


Rutan is famously secretive about designs that have yet to fly, though now that he is “retired” he is letting out a few more details than usual. The engineer told the Experimental Aviation Association he is tinkering with a design influenced to some extent by the lakes and rivers of Idaho, where he now lives after spending more than 40 years in the Mojave Desert. He also mentioned being influenced by the unusual Russian air/watercraft, like the MD-160 Lun-class ekranoplan, he saw shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union.


...What Rutan did say is he hopes to design a very efficient winged boat that could be used on a major body of water like Lake Coeur d’Alene and converted into a seaplane to navigate the small lakes and rivers nearby. There are a few other designs out there that use ground effect to “fly” just above the surface of the water, but no one’s seen anything like the design — known simply as 372-3 — Rutan is hinting at. _Wired

Coeur d'Alene is certainly a beautiful lake, but Al Fin prefers Pend d'Oreille, and points north. Regardless, if one has a flying boat, his selection of lakes, rivers, bays, coves, inlets, estuaries, and lagoons becomes quite enlarged.

Rutan is not likely to be wasting his time. Whether he emerges from his present project with a salable product or not, he is likely to be learning a great deal. What a pity that it could not be easier to transfer lessons learned -- and the motivation to learn them -- from one person to another.

Cross-posted to Al Fin blog

Image Source

Faster than a $20 Hooker and Twice as Much Fun?

The X2 is an experimental helicopter being developed by Sikorsky, an American company, at a test-flight centre in Florida. It recently flew at more than 430kph (267mph), according to a report in Spectrum, published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. _Economist

ImageSource

Sikorsky's X2 experimental prototype is being developed in order to bring speed to the commercial helicopter industry. The X2 has already flown faster than the official speed record for helicopters, but not officially.

To make an official attempt on the record, Sikorsky will need to have the flight monitored by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, which compiles airspeed records. But that is unlikely to happen until the X2 is going even faster. Later this year, Sikorsky hopes it will be zipping along at more than 460kph. The company, however, is interested in more than just breaking speed records. It plans to use the technology developed for the X2 in commercial helicopters.

...it uses two counter-rotating rotors that spin around the same axis, one positioned above the other. So in forward flight each rotor can produce an equal amount of lift on each side, thus providing balance. The idea has been around for some time, but it proved difficult to make it work properly.

What has changed are technological advances in aircraft engineering and control systems. Now, vibrations can be reduced using “active control”, which involves placing sensors around the helicopter to detect the onset of vibration and then using force generators on various parts of the frame to vibrate in such a way that they cancel out the original tremors. Advanced computer modelling has also made it possible to design more efficient rotors. A pusher propeller has been fitted at the rear of the X2 to provide extra oomph. According to the engineers, this propeller can also be used to slow the helicopter snappily. And computerised “fly-by-wire” controls allow the X2 to be flown relatively easily.

Sikorsky reckons that future helicopters built using the X2 technology would be extremely versatile machines. They would dash to and from a medical emergency a lot faster. They would also be very agile in flight, which would increase their capabilities in combat. Sikorsky has already produced a simulator so that potential customers can experience what these fast helicopters will be like to fly. Plenty of whirlybird pilots will be keen to get their hands on the real thing. _Economist

The Sikorsky X2 is competing against the Eurocopter for bragging rights:

The X3 has so far only flown once, in a 35-minute flight that tested its hovering behaviour and Billig says it performed as designed. It won't be going for any high speed attempts until late 2011, but they are initially aiming to bust 400 km/h.

Sikorsky is already well on the way to achieving its speed aim of over 500 km/h. In a test flight in September, the X2 unofficially broke the previous record of 400 km/h, which was set by the Westland Lynx in 1986. The X2 achieved 463 km/h, but due to its propellers, it is unclear if the craft will be recognised in the same category by the FAI, the world's air sports federation based in Lausanne, Switzerland, that oversees aviation records. _BrianWang

EurocopterX3

Vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft provide crucial functionality for both military and civilian applications. The race for more speed and maneuverability is likely to continue for some time.

And then there is the race to build a flying car for military use.

DangerRoom

DARPA aims to power its flying humvee with a diesel engine, giving it extra range.

According to a company statement, Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne are going to model the Transformer engine on their EnduroCORE, a diesel engine that generates a “high power-to-weight ratio comparable to gas turbines.” It’ll need to. Darpa’s specifications for the flying Humvee require the Transformer to stay in the air carrying up to 1000 pounds for up to 250 miles without refueling. Diesel’s energy efficiency apparently satisfied Darpa’s suggestion that the Transformer be at least somewhat green. _DangerRoom

Combining land travel with VTOL capability in the same vehicle makes sense for military and expedition-type enterprises. Land travel uses much less fuel, and allows you to take advantage of land-based fuel caches which may not be accessible directly by air. Being able to hop over rivers, canyons, and other obstacles expedites progress toward an objective.

The advantage of a craft that combines the ability to fly, to travel over the surface of water, and to travel over all terrain land surfaces should also be obvious to any would-be Galtist or survivalist.

H/T Bruce Hall

Cheap Thrills: Journey to 95,000 feet by Airship

If you had to fly to an elevation of 95,000 feet, how would you go? One of the least expensive methods would have to be via two-balloon airship, as demonstrated by this team from California:

Remotely controlled from the ground, the all-volunteer group's Tandem twin-balloon airship reportedly ascended to an altitude of 95,085 feet (28,982 meters). That's almost four miles (6.4 km) higher than any airship has gone before. _Gizmag

The aircraft used in last month's flight weighed 80 pounds (36.3 kg), including its balloons. As is the plan for all Tandems, it gained altitude using the lift of its balloons only. After making its way through turbulence from 40,000 to 60,000 feet (12,192 to 18,288 meters), the airship eventually reached its cruising altitude, at which point its motors were remotely turned on. A pilot on the ground then guided it through a series of maneuvers until eventually one balloon burst, at which point the other balloon was intentionally released, and the airship drifted back to the ground with the help of five parachutes.

"The big aerospace firms have been trying to do this for decades, spending hundreds of millions of dollars," said John Powell, President of JP Aerospace. "We've spent about $30,000 and the past five years developing Tandem." _Gizmag

The Tandem is intended to function as a workhorse aircraft. It could serve as a launch platform for small research rockets, and perform various duties for JP's proposed Airship to Orbit program, in which large V-shaped airships would travel from Earth's upper atmosphere into space. _Gizmag

All images via gizmag

Highly Maneuverable Watertoy for Relaxed Fun

Gizmag

The WaterBuggy is the creation of Turkey-based Bodrum Marine Group, a watersports specialist. It’s part tender, part PWC, capable of carrying three people and operated via a simple joystick. E&E’s WaterBuggy is powered by a 10-hp Honda outboard, concealed within the body of the toy. Bodrum Marine Group also offers 9.8- and 9.9-hp outboards from Tohatsu and Mercury.

Regardless of outboard choice, the WaterBuggy maneuvers smoothly and quickly, and you can even spin it in place. It can run in pretty skinny water, too: as shallow as about three feet (one meter). Novice watertoy enthusiasts and families with small children need not be worried, as the WaterBuggy tops out at just 6 mph (10 kph).

Pricing for the Honda-powered WaterBuggy is 8,000 euros ($10,550 approximately as of this writing); with the Tohatsu engine, 7,500 euros ($9,900 approximately). Both prices are exclusive of tax and transportation.

This video gives you a better sense of what the WaterBuggy is all about. _Megayacht_via_Gizmag

Think of it as a combination of a PWC and a paddle boat, or a kind of floating bumper car. Operated by a couple of buttons to start/stop the boat and a simple joystick enabling right-left-forward commands, the Waterbuggy can float on shallow waters of up to one meter (3.28 ft) in depth. Its turbine system allows a torsion of 360 degrees. _Gizmag

The Waterbuggy will likely be fitted with an electric motor soon, and will serve a similar purpose on the water as the "golf cart" all-purpose electric utility vehicle serves on land. Solar powered Waterbuggies should hit the beach quite soon.

Penetrating the Chinese Mountain

Full story in Daily Mail

German Designed MTO Sport Gyrocopter Comes to Tomball PD

Wired
Tomball, Texas, is a small community near Houston. Its police budget is too small to afford its own helicopter, so the town is looking for ways to monitor itself from the air without busting its budget. Tomball has turned to the autogyro, lowly cousin to the costly helicopter, and is likely to come out ahead for having done so.

The MTOsport needs roughly the length of a football field to take off, climbs at 13 feet per second and can hit 115 mph. It’ll hover at a relatively low speed, allowing it to mimic a helicopter circling an area under observation.

...the unpowered rotor makes the aircraft safer than a helicopter because you’re already in auto-rotation. In a helicopter, the pilot has to nose the craft down and hope autorotation starts before the chopper hits the ground. If we lost power now we’d simply glide down.

...The big advantage is, of course, cost. A modern police helicopter ready for service can run anywhere from $1.5 million to $4 million. They’re also expensive to operate, averaging around $1,000 per hour with a two-pilot crew.

The Auto-Gyro MTOsport loaded up with radios and painted costs about $75,000 and about $50 an hour to operate, due in part to the fact that it burns regular pump gas. That’s roughly the cost of buying and operating two top-of-the-line squad cars.

...Tomball can’t justify the cost of a helicopter program, so it has to rely upon Houston or Harris County when it needs one. Coordinating the flight and lining everything up can take an hour or more, if a chopper is available at all. But an officer on standby can have the MTOsport airborne in about 10 minutes, including the pre-flight check. That can make a big difference in a metropolitan county with about 4.1 million people.

“By putting a trained pilot and a trained tactical flight officer in this aircraft up over the city of Tomball and the surrounding area, we’re able to essentially deploy the equivalent of 20 police officers,” Haulk says. _Wired

The autogyro will be grounded at night and during inclement weather. But on the whole, the cost savings from this unconventional aircraft should allow Tomball to foil and solve a wide range of criminal activities, as well as aiding in search and rescue tasks.

Throw Another Virgin in the Volcano, Would You Mate?

Seasteading's Missing Link?

Images from Gizmag
Humans are accustomed to living on land. Getting large numbers of people to consent to living offshore on seasteads may require some skilled salesmanship. For example, making at least part of the seastead resemble a landscape, rather than a ship.

The main deck is a beach "cove" of cabanas surrounding a massive ocean view swimming pool, with a waterfall falling nearby from the volcano. _Gizmag

You can throw as many virgins into the volcano as you like, by the way. They will only slide down the waterslide and gentle waterfalls, to land unharmed in the pool below. What mad adventurers as you may find at Al Fin Potpourri are as protective of their virgins as anyone alive.

Terrafugia -- Not Exactly a Flying Car -- Gets US NHTSA Approval

...the Terrefugia Transition has gotten regulatory approval to fly and drive in the US. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration really calls this a "roadable aircraft" meaning it's more a plane that taxis really really well than a great car that can fly above traffic jams. But "flying car" sounds so much more James Bond, doesn't it? _itworld

Terrafugia Gets US Approval to Drive On RoadsCarl Dietrich's Terrafugia team has worked hard for several years to develop, build, and test a vehicle that is both road-worthy and air-worthy. The Terrafugia appears to be both -- in skillful hands -- and generally inexpensive to fly and drive. The $200,000 purchase price is more than your typical compact economy car requires, but if you are going to spend that much money for a vehicle, you are more likely to give it the type of care that it will demand.

Meanwhile, the EU is taking a different approach toward uplifting the daily commute:

The intent of myCopter is to set up a framework in which even the most idiotic drivers will be able to take advantage of personal air vehicles (PAVs). The key, of course, is making sure that the aforementioned idiots have as minimal a role in the operation of their vehicles as possible, which is why the EU wants PAVs to be mostly (or fully) autonomous. Initially, they'll stay out of controlled airspace (i.e. areas around airports where they risk tangling with a 747), but eventually the idea is to have them completely integrated into our existing infrastructure. _Dvice

The US DARPA wants to develop something similar to the EU's concept of an "idiot-proof" flier, and has the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Dept. to help develop their version.

...the U.S. government is also pursuing the idea of a flying car. The Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency awarded a 17-month, $988,000 contract to Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute to develop an autonomous flight system for the Transformer (TX) Program.

The TX program aims to develop a robust ground vehicle that can transform into an air vehicle with vertical take-off and landing capability, while offering significant operational flexibility with the ability to travel 250 nautical miles on land and in the air, or a combination, while carrying up to 1,000 pounds.

The Pentagon's DARPA has selected six vendors. AAI Corporation and Lockheed Martin Company are the prime system integrators. Carnegie Mellon University and Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne are developers of critical enabling technology. Aurora Flight Sciences partnered with ThinGap, and Metis Design Corp, two Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) recipients to participate in this 12-month effort. _IBT

The DARPA version is far more robust and multi-purpose than the EU version, but then the US Defense Department personnel often see much rougher duty than the fat-bottomed bureaucrats of the EU. ;-)

Fuel-Electric Hybrid Flying Car from Trek Aerospace

This ducted fan beauty aims to utilise a fuel-electric hybrid power system, the first flying car to do so.

Gizmag

Michael Moshier and Robert Bulaga of Trek Aerospace are forming a new company to develop the hybrid Air Car, which will combine recent technological advances in materials and electronics with the kind of duct-fan technology that was used in the now-retired Springtail single person vertical take-off-and-landing (VTOL) vehicle.

Moshier and Bulaga are currently on the lookout for funding partners to help the multi-person transport project take off (sorry!) and a number of real world scenarios for its use have been suggested - from being useful for emergency services such as search and rescue, police patrol and medical support, to providing vital lifelines for those areas of the world where established transportation systems are lacking.

Given the probable cost of the first vehicles to roll off the production line, it's more likely that thrill-seekers with bottomless bank accounts will be amongst the very first to power up the four fans and take to the skies. _Gizmag

But who are they kidding? The only ones with bottomless bank accounts are governments who can print their own money. Military organisations are likely to see such vehicles first after production.

Contrast the Trek hybrid above with the Euro- "MyCopter" pictured below:

Gizmag
EU bureaucrats have mulled over ways to keep their cities free of automobile traffic, and may have settled on one possible solution: the flying car taxi and commuter.

A European Union project known as myCopter has set aside funds of €4.2 million (US$6.2m) to investigate the possibility of introducing Personal Aerial Vehicles (PAVs) into the skyways of many congested European cities. This coming age of the "flying car" where vehicles leave the roads and launch into the skies promises to solve problems like dramatically rising urban traffic congestion...

..."We aim to develop technologies that could be used to form a new transportation system for personal travel that uses the third dimension, and which takes into account questions surrounding the expectations of potential users and how the public would react to and interact with such a system," Prof Heinrich Bülthoff of the Max Plank Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, Germany, told Gizmag.

The myCopter project envisions that the PAVs and PATS (personal air transport systems) would initially be used to fly at low altitudes for domestic travel between homes and working places. By flying below 2000 feet, the new traffic system hopes to operate outside of controlled airspace, without ground-based traffic control and without impacting on existing air traffic. _Gizmag

Another approach, from Australia, is tailored to the flying motorcyclist.

Peaceful? Yes, But Death is Always Just Moments Away

Experience Human Flight from Betty Wants In on Vimeo.

High adventure awaits you, in many places and forms. Whether high in the atmosphere, deep beneath the sea, at extreme mountain elevations or in far polar regions -- excitement always walks hand in hand with death. Even more so as humans step out into space environments such as orbital stations and colonies, or lunar outposts.

One augenblick of inattention, and you are gone.

Yes, I know it looks peaceful, and even easy. But focus, intelligence, and competence are only starting points to survival. If a person or society is unwilling to put in the work, it will die in Idiocracy.

Video credit: Gizmodo

70 kg Seaplane Designed in Finland

PO
This one-seater carbon fibre plane lands and takes off on water, and weighs but 70 kg. It was designed by a Finnish aerospace engineer, has a topspeed of around 140 kph, and a wingspan of 5m. It will come in multiple models, with prices starting at US$ 39k. The company plans to start taking orders in 3 months.

The first version, one electric only, and two fuel based versions. The electric-only version has a 20kW engine. The two petrol-based engined run on 24 bhp and 35 bhp, respectively. The top speed on these planes is roughly 140 km/h, with a minimum speed of 70 km/h . The FlyNano has a wingspan of five meters. The plan can support a take off weight of 200 kg, as well as a take off speed of about 70km/h. In theory, the plane can travel about up to 70 kilometers in a single fueling, or charging, depending on the model that you have chosen to fly. _PO

The plane would be mainly for sport and recreation. For lake hopping, island hopping, or seastead hopping, the plane might be practical as a light mail carrier or courier craft. Future STOL (short takeoff or landing) versions of such planes might be convenient for getting out of a populated area quickly. Just be sure to have plenty of fuel caches pre-placed.

How to Fly a Helicopter

Flying a helicopter is slightly more instinctive and intuitive than flying a fixed-wing aircraft. Since your "wings" are rotating, you are in constant control of all aspects of flying. This short video presents a quickie look at the art of helicopter flying. But don't try it at home in a real helicopter until you get more training.

Some of the electronic simulators for piloting a helicopter are pretty impressive. Start with the basics. If it works out, you can have access to more personal freedom of movement than you ever thought possible.

A Potpourri of Ways to Escape a Doomed City

If you watched the "After Armageddon" videos in the previous post, you should have some awareness of how difficult it might be to get out of town at the exact same time as several million other would-be escapees. The HovPod featured in the video below was the recipient of the Al Fin 2009 Small Vehicle Survival Award.

The HovPod is a great all-terrain escape vehicle, but you can see from the topmost video that adding flight -- even low level ground effect flight -- to your escape vehicle's capabilities may make the difference between reaching the high ground and being stuck in a bad place.

The Terrafugia Transition is featured in the video below. It is a roadable aircraft capable of flying above the gridlocked freeways below. Finding a good landing spot may be problematic under some conditions, but a wise escape artist plans ahead.

The ICON A5 amphibious trailerable plane may be your best bet if you live near a lake, river, bay, or protected harbour. With the A5 you can take off from water and land on solid surface, or vice versa. Check it out below:

A personal helicopter may be your best bet if you live in the middle of a large city, and do not have access to a waterway or runway for your private airplane. The Helicycle demonstrated in the video below, is one example of a personal helicopter. Consider adding flotation for more versatility.

Reinventing the Wheel Again, Once More

Tires and wheels that can change configuration to suit the purpose at hand, might come in handy. Modern tires that can assume only one shape are of limited use in an all-purpose, amphibious vehicle.The wheels / tires shown above are capable of changing from conventional round tires, to a stepped snow tire shape, to a water-wheel configuration. That should prove useful, should you wish to cross the river without a bridge.The system above is known as the intelligent wheel system. Its 3 configurations can serve well on the highway, on snow - mud - or sand, and in the water.