British Airways is having a bad start to this holiday weekend. The airline has announced that its computer systems are having problems around the globe due to a "major IT system failure," and as a result it's had to cancel a number of flights departing from the UK, as well as hundreds more being delayed.
Of all the "fictional" technologies that enable personal flight, Iron Man's suit is the hardest, and most dangerous, to pull off. Flying with a jetpack is no longer science fiction, and even a hoverboard has made substantial progress. But a jet-powered suit? Hardly. That never discouraged British inventor Richard Browning from trying. And his dedication, and perhaps insanity, has finally paid off. He has become the real-world equivalent of Iron Man by donning a suit that, in practice, puts mini airplane engines on his arms and legs.
Scientists at Stanford University have trained a Parrotlet called Obi to wear some pretty rad goggles and fly through laser sheets in an effort to test models that predict the lift generated by flying animals. The purpose of this experiment is to help develop better flying robots in the future. Obi wears those cool goggles to protect his bird eyes from the laser beams he is flying through.
The Airlander 10 is a massive flying airship said to be the world's largest aircraft. The giant airship took to the skies for the first time this week with a short flight over an airfield in the UK. Airlander 10 is massive at 302-feet long and its maiden flight happened at Cardington airfield about 45 miles north of London.
Solar Impulse 2, which we've written about several times before, is a small, single pilot, solar-powered aircraft making a slow-but-steady flight around the world in order to prove the potential of renewable energy. The plane arrived in New York City in the early hours of Saturday morning, seeing the project complete the US leg of its journey, and celebrating with an iconic flyby of the Statue of Liberty.
Franky Zapata has grabbed a new Guinness World Record title for the farthest hoverboard flight ever recorded. Zapata went 7,388-feet absolutely destroying the previous record held by Catalin Alexandru Duru of 905-feet, 2-inches set last year. These records are for actual hoverboards that fly, not for the small two-wheeled contraptions that burst into flames frequently.
Following a long 9-month delay in Hawaii, the Solar Impulse 2, a small solar-powered aircraft, finally departed on Thursday to continue its trip across the Pacific Ocean, just a single leg in its flight around the world. The project's team has revealed that the plane successfully completed its flight to California, landing south of San Francisco in Mountain View at around 11:45 PM on April 23rd.
The last news you may remember hearing about the Solar Impulse 2 project, which aims to fly a small solar-powered aircraft around the world, was last summer when the plane arrived in Hawaii with "irreversible damage" to the batteries. The aircraft and its pilot had just spent over 4 days and 21 hours flying across the Pacific from Japan to Hawaii, setting a world record for the longest solo flight in the process, only to be grounded due to severe overheating damage.
The state of in-flight entertainment has been steadily improving over the last few years, with WiFi increasingly being offered by more airlines, and a wide range of movies and TV shows available from the built-in seatback displays. But what if airlines went all out and provided flyers with luxurious-sized touchscreens to help distract them from the miserable amount of legroom? Well, it might look like these 21.3-inch screens in a prototype from Thales, a French aerospace company.
It's still not the Iron Man that Australian entrepreneur David Mayman may have dreamed of. In fact, it is closer to Rocketman. But last week, the dreams and hopes of may technologists and geeks have made one huge step forward when Mayman became the first to pilot a personal jetpack, fly around the Statue of Liberty in New York, and live to tell the tale. A dream come true for many, it opens up the possibility of a new form of personal transportation, though probably still a few years into the future.
The name "Jetman" might conjure up images of a death-defying hero with special abilities. In this case, it might be warranted, sans any superpower or mutation. Also known as Yves Rossy, an inventor and, obviously, a daredevil, Jetman has taken to the skies numerous times to tempt fate and entertain as well. Together with Jetman #2, his new protege Vince Reffet, himself a skydiving champion, the two take on their biggest and most dangerous challenge yet: flying over Dubai beside an Emirates A380 superjumbo plane.
NASA has just announced an app its developed that aims to help the pilots here on earth, rather than those heading into space. Dubbed Traffic Aware Planner (TAP), the app runs on a standard tablet and can be added to a plane's cockpit without the need for changes. TAP works by trying to determine a route that will shorten travel times, in turn reducing fuel consumption and carbon emissions.
