If Only I Had It

Flying cars would just remain as dreams. Not even one that we’ve heard that has made a success. Forget about those flying cars, a personal jet-powered flying wing definitely sounds more promising here. As it’s been tested at 8,000 feet above the ground. Here we come Ironman.

Yves Rossy, in Switzerland, has made an official demonstration for his jet-powered personal flying wing. He asked a plane to lift him up to 8000 feet in the sky and drop him from there to let him sail by his jet-powered flying wing. Everything had gone smoothly, the wing worked, and he’d traveled in the air for about 5 minutes, flying horizontally over the mountains at a speed of up to 186MPH before parachuting gently to the ground.

The wing is about 8 feet across, powered by 4 Jet-Cat P200 jet turbine engines, which each can output 50 pounds of thrust that allows a flight time to last up to 10 minutes. The only control of the wing is a throttle, so Yves had to control the direction of the wing entirely by his body.

The engine enables the user to ascend, which is at a rate of about 1,000 feet per minute. But it might have problem to let you take off completely from the ground. In order to fly in the sky, you’d probably need a plane to lift you up to certain height, let go to let you sail in the air on your own. It’d probably involve some complexity, at least, you’ll need to be trained to know when to parachute to the ground. I guess the device is still in the prototype stage. There are still lots of rooms for improvement, such as making it easier to operate. And safety is the main issue to be taken into consideration before it can get materialized as a commercial product.