The whole flying car dream has been getting closer and closer for years now, and a few companies are getting exceptionally close to making their cars a marketable reality. Designers Greg Brown and Dave Fawcett are working on a design they call the GF7, a jet propelled flying car that can reach speeds of 550 MPH in the air.

The folding-wing flying car will fly at altitudes up to 38,000 feet but boast the interior of a luxury automobile. The four-seater GF7 is designed to be very easy to operate and will be able to reach 100 MPH on the ground via a 50 kWh battery pack that is recharged by the jet engine during flight. The battery is expected to get 80-120 miles per charge.

When in the air, the wheels will retract into the vehicle’s fuselage to streamline the body’s shape. Two vertical tails keep the whole thing stable while it’s flying, as does the 23-foot wingspan. Although it has the look of a winged car, it would be more accurate to call the GF7 a road-travelling aircraft. It would need significant runway clearance to take off and land, and it’s meant to work as a commuter craft within a relatively small geographical region.

As you might expect, the price tag for a craft like the GF7 won’t be within reach of most regular commuters. You’ll have to come up with somewhere between $3 million and $5 million (US) to zoom around in your own personal flying car. The benefit over taking, say, a private jet is that you won’t need a large team to coordinate each journey or figure out a place to store your aircraft. You also won’t need to coordinate transportation to and from the airport,which could be a rather satisfying benefit for those who have things to do, places to be, and no time to waste.

Although the team have been hard at work on their design, they don’t yet have a prototype. They hope to have one ready by late 2014, and after that there will obviously be years more of testing, regulation-passing, and government approvals to get through. Still, the flying vehicle market seems to be a burgeoning one with plenty of start-ups throwing their hats into the ring. Within a decade the fabulously wealthy people could be cruising up to their private airports and flying themselves around wherever they need to go.

[via: Gizmag)

The post Conceptual Flying Jet Car is a Luxury Vehicle on Wings first appeared on Gajitz.

The cry of the disappointed ex-futurist has long been “Where’s my jetpack?” Well, the world has heard our cries and finally, there is a jetpack that any average Joe with a spare $100K can buy, strap on and terrorize neighborhood birds with. New Zealand based Martin Aircraft Company wants to bring the dream of personal aviation to the masses…or at least the wealthy adventurers among us.

So far, the engineering behind the jetpack concept has proven tricky. But Martin seems to have solved the weight-to-thrust ratio problem by keeping the fuel tank small and the jetpack material lightweight. The pack can fly for approximately 30 minutes with its 5-gallon fuel tank and requires only minimal training before one can take flight.

The Martin jetpack is being called “The Segway of the Skies,” which may be a very accurate name considering that the contraption isn’t viable as practical, real-world transportation but is good for some fun. It certainly won’t make you into the next Rocketeer, but you might at least be able to scope out the neighborhood from a new perspective.

The post Segway of the Sky? World’s First Commercial Jetpack first appeared on Gajitz.

Obviously, ingenuity doesn’t always equal common sense. There are new examples every year of people strapping ridiculous amounts of propulsion power to things that they really shouldn’t. These eight examples show just how crazy some people can be with their jet engines and rocket power. We really don’t condone trying any of these at home.

Nope, that portable toilet isn’t on fire. It’s just, for some reason, equipped with a Boeing jet engine. The port-a-potty goes can reach a speed of 70 mph and shoots a trail of fire behind it up to 30 feet long. Paul Sender, a mechanic, spent thousands of dollars building this monument to WTF-ness.

There probably aren’t many of us out there who have never hopped onto or into a shopping cart and taken a quick ride. Andy Tyler, however, takes that innocent ride to a dangerous new level with his rocket-powered shopping cart. He got instructions for building the jet engine on the internet and decided to affix it to a shopping cart he’d fished from a river. The powerful engine reaches very high temperatures, so Tyler had to equip the cart with a heat shield. The crazy car can go up to 50 mph before getting a bit wobbly, but at least it’s got a steering system and brakes.

A jet-powered lawnmower may sound like a good idea at first, but then you realize that you can’t actually mow the lawn with this thing. Gary Packham’s crazy “Turbitrac” tractor mower features a homemade gas turbine engine. If you’re just aching to make one of your own to freak out the neighbors, there are detailed instructions on Packham’s website.

Unfortunately, the top picture from Allegro Medical is just a joke, though a very well-executed one. But an enterprising man in England did, in fact, make an actual jet-powered wheelchair. Giuseppe Cannella somehow found himself with a spare jet engine, and at his wife’s suggestion decided to strap it onto his mother-in-law’s wheelchair. Luckily the MIL, who has Parkinson’s Disease, had already purchased a new wheelchair. Cannella puts on shows with the wheelchair to raise money for Parkinson’s Disease research.

Some people say that their favorite armchair is so comfortable they never want to leave it. You could definitely increase your sitting time by equipping your fave chair with a jet engine, just like Bill Decambre did. This insane invention manages to look even more unsafe than most of these others, yet he looks totally at ease riding around on it. Now if you just attached a TV to it, you could spend your last moments comfy and entertained.

Luges are supposed to go fast and be sort of deadly, but this one is going way further than you’d expect. Joel King used a small jet engine, one normally used on gliders and unmanned aircraft, to build this street luge. On it, he reached a speed of 112 mph, breaking the previous world speed record. Going that fast, inches off of the ground and with a jet engine centimeters from your head, must be exhilarating but pretty dang scary.

If you think that bicycle + motor = motorcycle, you probably haven’t seen Bob Maddox’s jet-powered bike. The Oregonian artist/cabinet maker likes playing with jet pulse engines, so he decided to start strapping them onto bicycles and selling them on eBay. Mind you, this was only after skydiving with a rocket strapped to his chest because, according to him, he thought “itâ€d be fun to strap a jet engine to my chest and make myself into a human missile.” Sure, if that’s your idea of fun. The jet-powered bikes have gone up to 50 mph and are loud enough to pop your eardrums if you’re not wearing protective gear.

The post Jet-Powered Genius: 7 Ludicrously Rocket Propelled Vehicles first appeared on Gajitz.