Planes are never this close together, but through the magic of video (no animation, just editing), we see how well choreographed takeoffs and landings are. You can watch a behind-the-scenes look at the making of this video at GE. Link -via The Daily What

The paradise tree snake (Chrysopelea paradisi) can glide over long distances. It does so in order to jump from tree to tree in its native habitat. Jake Socha of Virginia Tech dropped snakes from a 15-meter tower in order to examine this ability under controlled conditions:

Rather than a smooth, even glide (known as equilibrium gliding, as executed by airborne birds), these snakes seemed to slither frenetically through the air. But all of their thrashing worked to reduce their fall speed (from about six meters per second to four meters per second) and gliding angle (from 32-48 degrees to 18-32 degrees).

“The snake is pushed upward—even though it is moving downward—because the upward component of the aerodynamic force is greater than the snake’s weight,” Socha said in a prepared statement. The new research suggests that the snakes’ soaring might be due to specifically tuned undulations which could create vortex-induced lift, Socha and his colleagues noted in a study, to be published November 24 in Bioinspiration & Biomimetics.

Link via io9

Previously: Jake Socha’s Flying Paradise Tree Snake

This one is a bizarre story of disguise and air travel: a man wore a realistic disguise to turn himself into an elderly man and boarded an Air Canada flight. Mid-flight, he went into the bathroom, took off his mask, and turned himself back into a young man.

The incident occurred on October 29 on Air Canada flight AC018 to Vancouver originating in Hong Kong. An intelligence alert from the Canada Border Services Agency describes the incident as an "unbelievable case of concealment."

"Information was received from Air Canada Corporate Security regarding a possible imposter on a flight originating from Hong Kong," the alert says. "The passenger in question was observed at the beginning of the flight to be an elderly Caucasian male who appeared to have young looking hands. During the flight the subject attended the washroom and emerged an Asian looking male that appeared to be in his early 20s."

After landing in Canada, Border Services Officers (BSOs) escorted the man off the plane where he "proceeded to make a claim for refugee protection," the alert says.

Scott Zamost of CNN has more: Link

Following repairs, the Wrights finally took to the air on December 17, 1903, making two flights each from level ground into a freezing headwind gusting to 27 miles per hour (43 km/h). The first flight, by Orville, of 120 feet (37 m) in 12 seconds, at a speed of only 6.8 miles per hour (10.9 km/h) over the ground, was recorded in a famous photograph. The next two flights covered approximately 175 feet (53 m) and 200 feet (61 m), by Wilbur and Orville respectively. Their altitude was about 10 feet (3.0 m) above the ground.  (Wiki)

In honor of the anniversary, here’s a video of the Wright Brothers in France, 1908, demonstrating their new flying machine.

(via Wired)

]]> http://www.neatorama.com/2009/12/16/those-magnificent-men-in-their-flying-machines/feed/ 6 http://www.neatorama.com/2009/12/04/solar-aircraft-flies/ http://www.neatorama.com/2009/12/04/solar-aircraft-flies/#comments Fri, 04 Dec 2009 16:58:09 +0000 Miss Cellania http://www.neatorama.com/?p=27988

The first successful flight of an aircraft powered by the sun was completed in Switzerland yesterday as the Solar Impulse HB-SIA took off and landed safely. Solar Impulse founder Bertrand Piccard had dreamed of the day his plane would take flight for a decade.

With a good weather window on Thursday, test pilot Markus Scherdel was given the go ahead to take the spindly aircraft to up to take-off speed shortly after one o’clock local time. With the airplane lined up on the runway, Scherdel powered up the four motors using the on-board batteries and HB-SIA gained speed until he was able to lift off the pavement.

In a flight very reminiscent of the Wright Brothers first flight in 1903, Scherdel flew 350 meters down the runway at an altitude of only one meter in a flight lasting 28 seconds.

The team hopes to achieve a 36-hour flight by next summer. Link to story. Link to website. -via the Presurfer

(YouTube Link)

“Aerodynamics say that if drag and thrust are equal, as in this video, the plane should move forward, not stay in the same position… why is this? Because the left one runs slower? than the right one.”  Sounds logical, but what an impressive visualization.

via Unique Daily

Photo: Jesse van Kuijk

Dutch teenager Jesse van Kuijk designed and built a crude but functional human-powered aircraft:

Dates pour out of him as he relates the history of human-powered flight. The year 1979 was another landmark: Another craft, dubbed the Gossamer Albatross, made a successful flight over the English Channel, flying over 35 kilometers in less than three hours. The Gossamer Albatross was flown by American Bryan Allen, who now works in California as a software engineer for the Mars exploration project. Van Kuijk contacted Allen and the two exchanged emails about van Kuijk’s dream of self-powered flight.

In 2006, with his calculations complete, van Kuijk began to collect building materials. For over three years he gathered extremely light balsa wood, polyurethane and the light, rip-resistant foil that would eventually line the craft’s 26-meter-wide (85 feet) wings. And then he built what he had designed….

And then suddenly, unbelievably, “the earth under my feet slipped away,” van Kuijk exclaimed afterwards. He was flying! Alone, under his own power and in the aircraft he had designed and built. His aircraft flew, he had always known it would. But he could barely believe he had actually managed to defeat gravity’s pull.

Link via Gizmodo

The mysterious boom and flash of light seen over parts of Virginia Sunday night was not a meteor, but actually exploding space junk from the second stage of a Russian Soyuz rocket falling back to Earth, according to an official with the U.S. Naval Observatory.

The Russian-built Soyuz rocket lifted off Thursday from the Central Asian spaceport of Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to launch a new crew and American billionaire Charles Simonyi — the world’s first two-time space tourist — to the International Space Station. The spaceflyers arrived at the space station on Saturday.

link