Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Personal Air Vehicle

Scientific American reports that NASA researchers plan to showcase a hover-capable model of a prototype 1-man flying suit at the American Helicopter Society in San Francisco.

According to Scientific American, the suit is capable of lifting itself and a pilot with 60 horsepower. The article claims the suit will be able to travel 240 kilometers per hour (149.2 miles per hour) and dash at 480 kilometers per hour (298.4 miles per hour).

The suit will have a range of 80 kilometers (49.7 miles). It will be powered by electrically by lithium phosphate batteries but NASA hopes better energy technology could give it a range of 320 kilometers (198.8 miles). NASA has designed it for stealth military operations but if it does well in that area, we could see this revolutionizing how we travel.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Livescribe Pulse Pen


I just got my new Livescribe pen in the mail a few days ago. It’s pretty cool. It captures everything I write within these special notebooks and can even record audio. I haven’t tested this out yet, but say I was in a physics class and the professor writes an equation on the board. I write this down as he’s talking about the equation. When I go to review my notes on Livescribe’s software and play the audio, what I wrote will light up when the audio gets to the part about the equation. I can imagine this would be useful for journalists during their interviews too.