Source: A commuter’s dream: Entrepreneurs race to develop flying car

This article has a fairly good roundup of the flying car projects out there, even if they did leave out the Dutch Aeromobil Roadable project.

At a Colorado aircraft hangar, the two firms unveiled the triple-engined XB-1 prototype, a one-third sized prototype of the airliner they hope will be able to blast from London to New York in three hours and 15 minutes – air traffic control allowing.

“60 years after the dawn of the jet age, we’re still flying at 1960s speeds,” said Blake Scholl, chief executive officer and founder of Boom.

“Concorde’s designers didn’t have the technology for affordable supersonic travel, but now we do. Today, we’re proud to unveil our first aircraft as we look forward to first flight late next year.”

Boom, a product of the Y Combinator startup factory, claims that with advanced materials, more efficient engines that don’t require an afterburner that chews fuel, and a more efficient wing design, it can make supersonic travel a commercial reality for the cost of today’s business class – around $5,000 for a return transatlantic trip.

The firm envisages 170-foot long airliners with 60-foot wingspans that will seat 55 passengers, one on each side of the aisle. The finished craft will have a range of 4,500 nautical miles (long enough for New York or Washington to London), but Boom says it’ll be designed for refueling for trips with twice that range.

Source: Virgin Galactic and Boom unveil Concorde 2.0 tester to restart supersonic travel

When it gave the Tesla Model S an unprecedented 103 out of 100 score last August, Consumer Reports looked like it might try to marry Elon Musk’s company and have its little electric car babies. But after a year of disappointments, trust violations and janky-ass door handles, it seems the magazine can no longer advocate true love.

Source: Consumer Reports Now Ranks Tesla Among the Least Reliable Carmakers

This weekend, after much doubt as to whether his latest creation was real or not, jet ski champion Franky Zapata set a new Guinness World Record for the farthest hoverboard flight. I was there when it happened, and I’m here to tell you that this thing is real, and it’s spooky how it just hangs there, mid-air, until Franky bends his knees and zooms off toward the horizon. Here’s how he did it.

Source: This Is The Hoverboard We’ve All Been Dreaming Of

4 jet engines!

Because a thermite-blasting cannon isn’t crazy enough, Colin Furze used a pair of motors and propellers designed for parasailing to build himself a fully functional flying hoverbike. It’s easily one of the mad scientist’s most dangerous builds to date, but seeing how maneuverable it is almost makes us want to build one too.

Source: Mad Scientist Builds Fully Functional Hoverbike

Unless you went dumpster-diving outside SEMA or your uncle is Stacey David, you probably don’t have unlimited resources to throw at car modification. Thankfully, you friendly neighborhood Tavarish is here to help you frugal modders make your cars into something truly deserving of a voided warranty.

Source: Here Are Ten Cheap Mods That Will Transform The Way Your Car Drives

Luciad puts you in the seat of the Air Traffic Analyst.Review 24 hours of the entire world’s air traffic.Change between 2D and 3D. Zoom, pan, and tilt the 3D view.Pause, play and change the speed of the air traffic.Filter and focus on the flights, airports or airlines of your choice.

Source: LuciadRIA 3D Demo

Better than a flying car!

The Hoverbike is the result of years worth of R&D. We combined the simplicity of a motorbike and the freedom of a helicopter to create the world’s first flying motorcycle.When compared with a helicopter, the Hoverbike is cheaper, more rugged and easier to use – and represents a whole new way to fly. The Hoverbike flies like a quadcopter, and can be flown unmanned or manned, while being a safe – low level aerial workhorse with low on-going maintenance.

FlexFoil is a shape-changing assembly that replaces the flaps on a wing and can alter shape in flight to produce seamless bendable and twistable aerofoil surfaces. This allows the FlexFoil to act like a flap in its various positions while still providing an unbroken air surface. This makes for a more streamlined wing and reduces noise during takeoffs and landings. Importantly, it’s designed not only for new aircraft designs, but for retrofitting to existing ones.

via NASA tests aircraft with shape shifting wings.

The little robot in the picture above is a PIBOT, a small, very low-cost humanoid (actually a Bioloid Premium from Robotis). It’s been slightly modified to be able to work the controls of a scaled-down, simulated aircraft cockpit, as in the pic above. PIBOT is able to identify and use all of the buttons and switches and stuff that you’d find in the cockpit of a normal light aircraft designed for humans

via Tiny Humanoid Robot Learning to Fly Real Airplanes – IEEE Spectrum.

the DeepFlight Dragon will become the most compact, lightweight personal submarine on the market, and has been designed to be so intuitive to use that users will be able self-pilot the craft with minimal instruction. This new level of user-friendliness is expected to take DeepFlight’s underwater craft beyond the domain of the superyacht owner and into the resort and tourism industry for the first time.

via DeepFlight Dragon set to usher in the era of the personal submarine.

British scientist Roger Shawyer has been trying to interest people in his EmDrive for some years through his company SPR Ltd. Shawyer claims the EmDrive converts electric power into thrust, without the need for any propellant by bouncing microwaves around in a closed container. He has built a number of demonstration systems[…]a US scientist, Guido Fetta, has built his own propellant-less microwave thruster, and managed to persuade Nasa to test it out. The test results were presented on July 30 at the 50th Joint Propulsion Conference in Cleveland, Ohio. Astonishingly enough, they are positive[…]he Nasa team has avoided trying to explain its results in favour of simply reporting what it found: “This paper will not address the physics of the quantum vacuum plasma thruster, but instead will describe the test integration, test operations, and the results obtained from the test campaign.”[…]A working microwave thruster would radically cut the cost of satellites and space stations and extend their working life, drive deep-space missions, and take astronauts to Mars in weeks rather than months. In hindsight, it may turn out to be another great British invention that someone else turned into a success.

via Nasa validates 'impossible' space drive (Wired UK).

The Malaysian government is giving away a pdf with the satellite data to all takers, hoping maybe the public can find something no-one else to date has been able to…

MH370 Data Communication Logs.pdf.

5 Ways to Remove Stripped Screws. – YouTube.

The Woking-based firm’s chief designer Frank Stephenson told The Sunday Times that the system was already being used by the military.

‘It took a lot of effort to get this out of a source in the military. I asked why you don’t see wipers on some aircraft on when they are coming in at very low levels for landing.

‘I was told that it’s not a coating on the surface but a high frequency electronic system that never fails and is constantly active. Nothing will attach to the windscreen.’

The system is expected to be introduced to McLaren’s range of sportscars which cost between £170,000 and £870,000, but once perfected could be produced for the mass market for as little as £10.

Paul Wilcox, professor of ultrasonics at Bristol University’s faculty of engineering, told The Sunday Times: ‘The obvious way of doing it is to have an ultrasonic transducer in the corner of the windscreen that would excite waves at around 30kHz to bounce across the windscreen.’

McLaren confirms it's developing new wiper-free windscreens | Mail Online.

Stefan Klein, a designer from the Slovak Republic, has announced the first flight of his Aeromobil Version 2.5, a flying car prototype he has been developing over the last 20 years.

via Aeromobil flying car prototype gets off the ground for the first time.

Flying cars have been around for some time in some form or other. This one – designed in the Netherlands – only requires a recreational pilot’s license.

PAL-V | Ultimate Freedom.

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Yes, wearing a helmet will protect you some if you fall at certain speeds, but those accidents are very rare. If you feel that strongly about it, you should wear one when climbing a ladder and whilst taking a bath.

But because people wear helmets on bikes, it makes it look like biking is a high risk activity, which discourages them from biking.

To Encourage Biking, Lose the Helmets – Slashdot.

It has 175 litres of compressed air that is recharged by plugging in the car and letting an electric motor suck up the air around it. They want to price it at $10,000. Look out, Prius drivers!

This Tiny Pod Car Runs On Air | GizmoCrazed.

This mech has space for a pilot in the chest and goes up to 10 kph.

iPhone controlled 13ft Japanese Robot for sale at $1.3 Million.

Which means you can wirelessly power your car like on a toy racetrack, except without the grooves in the road!

Electricity Transmitted to Auto Tire Through 10cm-thick Concrete — Tech-On!.

The Flynano is a one man electric amphibious aircraft that costs only EUR 32.000,- and a trailer costs EUR 5.300,-. It files from moderate water and wind states and goes 140 kph. Very basic but looks like fun.

Flynano.