Some people go to very great lengths to twist history to fit their bizarre ideologies.
Summary: Because there was slavery 150+ years ago, capitalism is bad and we should all convert to Communism which is clearly far nicer.
There have been a lot of “personal air vehicles” designed over the last decade, most designed for VTOL operations and many with purely electric propulsion systems. One such design – which I can’t vouch for on either technical or financial fronts – is the Delorean DR-7 from Delorean Aerospace, founded by the nephew of *that* Delorean.
Their website, lean on details:
http://www.deloreanaerospace.com/
An article from 2017:
And a patent (US9862486B2):
Vox asks the question none of us have been thinking:
Summary: America needs more submission to authoritarianism.
It seems that Kung Flu can bring with it a certain extra special something… ICU Delirium. Sounds like a hoot.
The failure of the Edenville Dam in Michigan:
Cool? Undeniably.
Certainly one of the more interesting ways to get from one boat to another. What you’d do once you got to that second boat isn’t entirely clear, as you’d be weighed down with a hundred pounds of stuff of no immediately apparent practical value on board a vessel.
Another ten years of development and these systems will likely have some sort of carbon fiber powered exoskeleton that takes all the load, so the pilot doesn’t have to have Schwarzenegger-arms. Make ’em so the propulsion systems pop right off when you land, and you’re left with a Navy SEAL with power armor. That would seem to have a few applications…
Can’t afford a surgery robot? Build your own! What could go wrong?
Last year I moved from the Utah desert to somewhere rather damper. As a consequence, my cats have an all-new environment to look out upon… including all-new critters. Squirrels confuse the frak out of my cats, since they’ve never seen them before.
People have been yapping on about “smart guns” for decades. Why can’t we have a pistol that only the owner can use? If we have smart phones with thumbprint readers, why can’t we have that tech in pistols? Well, there are good technological reasons… a thumb covered in sweat, dirt, oil, blood, etc. isn’t going to be conducive to 100% reliability in a device required to function 100% of the time. Wear gloves, and the thumbprint reader is right out. Similarly, devices that rely on magnetic or RFID systems built into rings, watches, surgical implants, etc. have a chance of failure or inavilability. But the biggest thing that has suppressed American firearm companies from even trying is politics. In particular, the Democrat Party of New Jersey passed a law that made it a dead certainty that nobody in their right mind would even try. An interesting (if predictably left-leaning) writeup of the issue is here:
Of course, smart guns *will* become available in due course. GIMME:
Huh.
The company is targeting Sunday (May 24) for its Launch Demo mission, with a backup opportunity on Monday (May 25). The four-hour window will open each day at 1 p.m. EDT (1700 GMT), Virgin Orbit representatives announced today (May 20).
The 747 “Cosmic Girl” will be used to haul to 35,000 feet the seventy-foot-long LauncherOne rocket, lifting off from the Mojave desert. The rocket will, if it all works out, be dropped, fire its main engine and blast off into orbit.
Good luck to ’em, but it seems like Virgin Orbit has a hell of a task in competing with SpaceX. Speaking of which…
Discovery and Science Channel will be sharing live coverage of NASA’s launch of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon Capsule on May 27. The launch will mark the United States’ first time sending astronauts into space in nine years.
The multi-platform “Space Launch Live: America Returns to Space” television event will be simulcast at 2 p.m. ET/11 a.m. PT
SpaceX will doubtless also live stream the launch on YouTube, and I gotta believe that NASA TV will also carry it. That said: