OK, so none of us probably have any use for a flying bike, but it’s alright to want one. It’s perfectly natural. So just let the wild envy wash over you as this Frankenstein machine takes flight.
Developed by three Czech companies working in unison, the bike was demoed for the first time in Prague today, where it underwent a remote-controlled five-minute flight. The 95kg rig with its four battery-powered propeller pods isn’t quite capable of carrying around a real human being yet, so instead a dummy got the inaugural ride. Hope he enjoyed it.
According to the bike’s developers, it will need more powerful propellers before it can sustain flight with a human on board, but even so it’s be wildly unpractical for any number of reasons include the bike’s crazy width, a doubtlessly huge price tag, and the fact that vertical flight on a bike is both wildly unnecessary and wildly dangerous. A full-on speeder bike would probably be a better end-game, but, let’s face it; we’ll just have to take whatever crazy flying bikes we can (maybe) get and hope against hope that no one gets shredded into ribbons. (Haha, just kidding, RIP propeller bike victims.) [Associated Press]
Picture: AP Photo/CTK, Stanislav Zbynek