While I’m sure 9 out of 10 rioters prefer being shot with a rubber bullet over a regular one, there’s nothing pleasant about being hit by a small object going a couple hundred miles per hour. And at close range, “non-lethal” ammo can easily be just as lethal as something made to kill. Lund Technologies, in a Defense-funded project, has proposed a new weapon system that uses hydrogen gas to propel its projectiles (that’s a lot of “pro”s), and implements a rangefinder to determine the distance to the target, and adjusts the thrust accordingly.
The idea, I suppose, would be to incapacitate the target but not permanently. Because wars are more frequently being fought by small forces inside cities (as opposed to thousands and thousands in large battlefields), civilians are in constant danger from stray bullets. Of course, no one wants to catch stray fire of any kind, but if I had to take a shot to the leg, I’d rather it was a rubber round going just fast enough to hurt like hell, and not a 7.62mm meant to go straight through me.
It’s still in the early stages right now, but with any luck they’ll be deployed before the next time I take it to the streets.
A Cessna might be the affordable choice when it comes to personal aircraft, but if fun ranks high on your feature list you’re probably not going to do much better than this pair of Sukhoi Su-27 Flankers which can be yours for just $4.5 million a piece. They were brought to the U.S. by Pride Aircraft, who acquired them from a company doing high-altitude research that went bust, and each have been completely restored and now feature zero-time airframes and engines. (Minus test flights.)
Both aircraft are de-militarized, with all weapons and military hardware having been previously removed, and Pride Aircraft has gone to the trouble of relabeling all the dials and gauges in the cockpit in english, and adding updated IFR U.S. instrumentation and avionics. Now even though modern aircraft like the F-22 Raptor eclipse the Su-27 when it comes to capabilities, there’s still a lot of fun to be had here thanks its top-speed of over 1,300 mph and its 1:1+ thrust-to-weight ratio. And I particularly like that serious buyers can contact the seller, John Morgan, via his @aol.com email address.
Even if you’ve got a micro air vehicle that provides its own power for thrust, like a Rhinoceros beetle with an implanted optical lobe stimulation controller, you still need power for the communication system itself. One ideal solution is to try and harvest electricity from the insect, but a more realistic approach (at the moment) might be a dependable long-life battery, and nothing is more dependable and long-life and potentially dangerous than a nuclear battery.
The BMX bike’s heyday may have ended back in the 80’s, but Rintendo has found a way to make me want one again. They’re currently selling this little contraption known as the Fire Trick Bob which appears to be an actual rocket-powered bicycle. According to their site(Google translation) the turbine engine spins at a rate of 120,000 RPM and produces the equivalent of 4.4 horsepower. The 1 liter fuel tank is good for about 7 minutes of continual thrust, and you’ll probably want to be careful about where you’re riding this thing since the exhaust can reach about 700 degrees. So is it dangerous? Yes. But is it worth 1,000,000 Yen or about $10,000? Double yes!
It really is a rocket bike, and it really does cost a million yen.
Help run the engine, for aircraft equipped with TABINJETTOENJIN RAJIKON structured as a real jet. The smell and the sound of hot air, you can get real experience as real. Full-throttle state (turbine rpm: rotation per minute 120,003 thousand) thrust in the 5 km (4.4 equivalent of horsepower) to get HAIPAWAASHISUTO, continue to pull the pedal in the flat road, and before I knew it fast you can reach. Since there is no sense of acceleration torque but it is not (about to get a child back then), also helped KUREZU takeoff climb also.
The rest of the details can be found at the Rintendo site. Unfortunately, I believe they are out of stock of FAIYATORIKKUBOBUs (Fire Trick Bobs), so you can put that big stack of yens away. For $10,000 you can probably put together your own rocket bike anyway.
NASA’s new Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne Common Extensible Cryogenic Engine (CECE) runs on hydrogen and oxygen. The H and O combine, igniting into 5,000 degree steam and releasing a whole heap of energy in the process. So how in the heck does the engine form icicles while it’s running? Well, the hydrogen and oxygen are stored as liquids, and to stay liquid, they have to be very, very cold: the hydrogen measures a rather nippy -423 degrees F. As the hydrogen circulates around the engine, it cools everything way, way down, and when the super hot steam exits the super cold engine, it condenses into water at the edges and then freezes into icicles.
The CECE is called “deep throttling,” which means that the thrust can be adjusted from 8% all the way up to 104% of its maximum rated output of 13,800 pounds of thrust. It’s designed to take people back to the moon, along with all of the crap they’re gonna need to make themselves at home there for a while.
