Flying Bamboo Apteras

Really? Are you kidding me? I can’t believe you did that.

Does it go?

Holy crap, it goes.

There’s a big thing here, about China’s DIY plane culture, which is quite interesting. The trouble with low-energy planes though is you need a wingspan so big that the whole thing becomes a bit of a liability.

Interesting idea though – partly because I’m a bit obsessed with a bamboo version of one of these:

Which is for driving round on roads – but does actually look a bit like a plane cockpit. I’m pretty sure that the future of cars (and yes, they do have a future – if we’re to avoid going back to horses) is an open-source version of something really really cheap to put together and run.

And if it’s open-source, it means it’s quite possibly a plugin-platform… and one of the plugins could well be wings… so the much lamented lack of the flying cars we were promised could well be remedied by people doing it for themselves – rather than waiting for the lead from the big auto-manufacturers who are more interested in selling “lifestyles” than anything that people actually need.

Anyway, there it is. Video of human-powered plane (almost) flying here: