He's wearing 6-foot-wide carbon-fiber wings, weighing 600 pounds, designed for paratroopers so they can jump out of planes at 33,000 feet and glide as far as 120 miles behind enemy lines before popping their chutes and floating to earth.Called the Gryphon, the wing-and-chute system was designed for Germany's special operations forces. The designers next hope to add compact turbo jets.
Don't you just know, that even as you are reading this, the extreme-sports crowd is drooling. You just know it will be an Olympic sport by 2012!
6 comments:
LOL, siren... I was thinking the same thing. Who knew that Hanna-Barbera would spawn such technology?
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it's bungee jumping gone wild!
who would jump out of a plane at 33,000 feet?
can you imagine a whole line of guys wearing those things lined up to jump!!!!!
I agree with Siren and Bruce that it must have come from someone who watched way too many old cartoons. Not that there is anything wrong with that except that real science should not take inspiration from Wile E. Coyote, Supergenius. They are just asking for trouble.
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an idea too stupid for the U.S. military to spend money on!
I used to do stupid stuff like jump off a flight of stairs with an umbrella...when I was 6 years old.
Like I said, scientists are really just wanting to find cool ways to blow stuff up (or kill themselves).
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it's like they're still trying to figure out ways to win WWII, when was the last time an army tried to get "behind enemy lines" --
-- the jumping off stairs does explain a lot, not all, but a lot
Cool!! I want a pair. Even though I have never jumped out of a plane before.
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you could go cliff sailing, and freak out the locals on the way back
It looks like Darth Vader on crack.-------------------------
Yelling "squawk, squawk" is mandatory when doing such things!
Thats pretty awesome, except for the fact that it is 600 pounds. I'm not sure how that guy is standing with that on his back
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Brandon -- poor wording on my part -- the 600 lbs would be the glider, the glidee, plus 200 lbs of equipment and gear -- what would keep all that from dropping like a stone is unclear (a large regular glider weighs less than 100 lbs, so with the glidee the total weight would be around 250).
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