Wednesday, November 09, 2011

Overheard in the Office:

RX: "Have you seen this?"

Me: "Wow! That looks gloriously dangerous!"

RX: "Actually, it's apparently very stable."

Me: "Yeah, but can you imagine? You clip the trees, tumble forward out of the seat and into that maelstrom of whirling blades of death! Splatter!"

RX: "Tam, those are electric motors and little composite fan blades, they can't..."

Me: "What? Why aren't they chainsaw motors with steel blades? Or titanium!"

RX: [walking toward the kitchen] "In fact... I'd put a seat-belt interlock on it so the motors couldn't run unless you were safely harnessed in..."

Me: [yelling after her] "You're treading on my dreams!"

(H/T to Lyle.)

20 comments:

Anonymous said...

Raise your hand if your first thought was "Pallas".

Shootin' Buddy

TJIC said...

You're thinking of this:

http://thekneeslider.com/archives/2011/06/09/hoverbike-the-twin-rotor-bmw-boxer-powered-flying-motorcycle/

Bubblehead Les. said...

Up, Down, Hover, yet you have to keep the Blades away from the Structure, and No Lateral Movement?

There's another device similar to this one out there.

It's called a Balloon.

Tasso said...

Blender motor powered machetes at belly button level. I call it "Will It Blend 2: Electric Belly Goo"

Dave said...

Composite blades? How wimpy. The older versions of this idea are much more gloriously dangerous.

Like this bit of Cold War madness: http://www.innovationnewsdaily.com/images/stories/test-plane-aerocycle-110617-02.jpg

Fuzzy Curmudgeon said...

And here I was thinking, "Will it go round in circles?" :)

og said...

I like that it's design incorporates an exercise ball.

TomcatTCH said...

is that really one of those exercise balls being used as it's, errr, landing gear?

Sport Pilot said...

Check me out on it and I’ll fly it, it looks a lot safer than some of the fixed wing UL aircraft I’ve flown.

fast richard said...

The website says it could be used for feild inspection of large wind turbines. That's the video I want to see, with the wind turbines turning, of course.

Stretch said...

Tam, you haven't taken off the mask from Halloween have you?

Ken said...

You have a great future in market research. :-)

Brad K. said...

And yet, I have to wonder how much it would take to hitch a lawnmower powered generator up for longer flights.

I mean, with only lithium batteries to power the thing, how much fireball can you generate in a solid head-on impact with a mack truck under an overpass?

I bet that painted all black, it would be awesome for bagging feral pigs. . if it had a longer battery life.

SoupOrMan said...

I'd still prefer my autogyro gunship, thanks.

global village idiot said...

Tam, here's EXACTLY what you're looking for:

http://boingboing.net/2011/09/21/china-gentleman-builds-homemade-flying-contraption-powered-by-eight-motorcycle-engines.html

You're welcome.

gvi

Larry said...

Seat belt interlocks? Seriously???
Engineers, they take the fun out of everything...

Anonymous said...

Ah, the glories of individuality!
Now, I have no idea in what particular discipline the Madwoman's degree might be: mine is in electronics engineering. I suspect we share training in some of the same classes.
No offense to Bobbi--hell, I read her blog, too--but that's a little too Joan Claybrook for me. I want the damned thing as dangerous as it can be, including for the user. If you're too stupid to use it correctly, it ought to kill you.

Gnarly Sheen said...

Was that a Yeats reference?

Tam said...

Why, yes. Yes it was.

(Albeit indirectly, in my mind, because I hadn't read much Yeats before his work was referenced in Equilibrium. I come by stuff via the strangest trajectories.)

Justthisguy said...

Somebody should ask Bill Tuttle about the autonomous robot with .50 caliber machine guns he had to deal with, one time.