man powered flight

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0E77j1imdhQ

[rakinroll]

Excellent, thanks...

[zapatista]

pretty cool

thx for posting it !

[Avimimus]

Go UoT!

Now that I've said that, I wonder what their opinions would be of the BiCh-18?

Perhaps someone should build a replica?
http://ram-home.com/ram-old/bich-16-18.html

[BadAim]

Now that is cool!

[Blackdog_kt]

I can't believe all those people in the youtube comments section debating about how it's not practical/wasted money/etc.

Perhaps they forget that all the breakthroughs in science and engineering came from people who at one time decided to build "non-practical" things. These things evolve however and the people involved in their development and construction gain valuable knowledge in how to improve them over time and make them into something practical.

I bet many people were saying similar things when the Wright Flyer made its first flight: "Pfft, it's not practical, it can only fly for a few hundred meters".
And yet, today aircraft fly across the globe.
Maybe they said the same when Gallileo presented his first telescope: "Bah, it's a blurry mess, no use for it all". But today, we can see so far into the universe that it's not even funny.

Every single invention in history, steam engines, internal combustion and cars, electricity, was not practical when it was introduced. It became practical because a visionary slaved away in his basement for years working on it and improving it, for no other reason than to satisfy his/her own curiosity first and foremost.

If people like those belittling this project in the video commets ran the world, we still wouldn't have wheels because when the first octagonal wheel-like invention was presented they would have said "it makes for a too bumpy ride with all these angles, it's not practical, stop wasting time on it", instead of thinking to improve it by making it round like the people who let their mind drift beyond what's only useful here and now do.

Astronomy,cosmology and other fields of science like this also have limited practical impact on the grand scheme of things, but i bet the same people who criticize stuff like that are also jealous of a spaceship captain when they watch a sci-fi film or play a space game on their PC. At one time Richard Feynman (one of the top physicists of the previous century, involved in the Manhattan project and the Challenger accident investigation team) received a call from one of his astronomer friends. The astronomer was invited to a radio talk show and was anxious because he knew that the question of "what's the use of it all" would inevitably come up. Feynman told him to relax and tell the talk show host that there's no use for it yet, but we do it to satisfy our own curiosity and this is what advances science.

Fun little anecdote which might not be entirely true, but illustrates the point perfectly. In the time of Newton and later, it was very much in fashion for rich noblemen in Europe to sponsor scientists. When Farraday presented some of his electrical experiments to an English nobleman, the lord asked "Very nice to look at, but what's the use of it?". Farraday replied "I don't know yet, but i can bet my life on it that you'll be able to tax it some day".