Star Wars hover bike? I'll take it!!!

Check it out!!!

http://news.yahoo.com/hover-vehicle-recalls-star-wars-bike-171401941.html

Much want with this one...

Clever, an actual mechanical engineering solution to the problem. Love the way the press release plays up the military and humanitarian benefits. Yeah, it's a toy.

Keith wrote: Clever, an actual mechanical engineering solution to the problem. Love the way the press release plays up the military and humanitarian benefits. Yeah, it's a toy.

A super AWESOME TOY!! God I want one... Too bad it'll be like $275,000 or more if it's even available to the public.

I would commute on it

mad_machine wrote: I would commute on it

Can you imagine the spray on wet roads?

HMMMMM, that's what they need for drying out race tracks. They could have hovercraft races during the Red Flags.

is this thing any better than the hovercraft you could build out of a vacuum cleaner motor with instructions ordered from the back of comic books when i was a kid?

Everything old is new again ...

The US Army Transportation Museum at Fort Eustis, Virginia, has a collection of such things.

Did you read the article? The older stuff is acknowledged, but they had stability problems. That was overcome by putting some controls at the driver's knees, so the natural movements of a rider to keep their balance is translated into the appropriate compensating movements of the machine. Pretty clever actually. Like a Segway without all the electronics.

yes, it would seem to me the early stuff did not take into account how the pilot could use his own natural behaviours to keep it upright and moving.

I wonder what kinda power that thing requires? Aircooled V-twin? A liter sized motorcycle powerplant? Small turbine? I would think either a very fast reving motor, or something with a near constant engine speed, a la jet engine, would would be required.

whatever it is. it is between his legs and needs to be lightweight and torquey.. I am thinking some sort of airplane engine

Keith wrote: Did you read the article? The older stuff is acknowledged, but they had stability problems. That was overcome by putting some controls at the driver's knees, so the natural movements of a rider to keep their balance is translated into the appropriate compensating movements of the machine. Pretty clever actually. Like a Segway without all the electronics.

Apparently the Hiller flying platform (the single one with the gunner on it above) was TOO stable, in that it took too much physical effort to move it, due to wanting to remain upright and stationary all the time. You were supposed to lean into the direction you wanted to go, but it always self corrected. Watching the video of it in action, it was pretty slick.

Of course, it was also a damn good target when in use, so it really fell out of favor quickly. I always wanted to build one and see if it could be adapted to be slightly more unstable and easy to change direction on, to be a fun beach toy (sort of sky surfer)

I just wanna know when the hell Im going to get mah friggin hoverboard?!?!

I want the Mr Fusion