Do you recall my old post on Airships? Cross the airship with the convience of a personal car and what do you get?
Lots of mini disasters, flaming balls of gas in the sky plummiting toward unsuspecting houses far below? That would be great, but no. What you get is slow moving mini airships, which despite the lack of fireballs is still really cool.
Since early 2002 Skyacht Aircraft, Inc. has been developing a new type of aircraft called the Personal Blimp. The goal of this work is the creation an aircraft capable of silent, steerable, sustained, and affordable flight. No such craft exists today.
Construction of the first human-carrying Personal Blimp prototype is complete. Tethered flight testing began in Q2 of 2006. First free flight took place on October 27, 2006.
The Personal Blimp uses hot air (rather than Helium) for lift and virtually silent electric motors for propulsion. To put it another way: the Personal Blimp is a hot air balloon that can be maneuvered about in nearly perfect quiet.
1 response so far ↓
1 Azazelo // Nov 19, 2006 at 11:46 AM
For once you have tasted flight
you will walk the earth
with your eyes turned skywards,
for there you have been
and there you will long to return.– Leonardo da Vinci HAL-5 - this astonishing device.
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