October 31, 2010
What do you do if your countryside is so flat, even the holes duck for cover? Why, build the highest climbing wall in the world of course.
Meet Excalibur, the 37 meter climbing extravaganza of Bjoeks Klimcenter in Groningen. The tower was built in 2004 by Polsar, also from Groningen—the same owners in fact.
(Link: Damn Cool Pics, which has some interesting photos of the tower made by cameras dangling from kites. This photo by Jan Lafeber, who released it into the public domain.)
June 24, 2009
The vehicle pictured above consists of a kite, a cabin and a keel, and should be able to take you across the Atlantic Ocean. The 157 m2 kite should produce enough power to make you go 90 km/h, the cabin seats two, and the keel makes sure you can actually steer the thing. The only catch is that the Hydrokite so far only exists in the minds of former astronaut and kite nut Wubbo Ockels and ten of his students at the TU Delft.
At 90 km/h you should be able to reach New York from Amsterdam in four days and 1 hour, which would break the old record with three hours, although Kennislink doesn’t say what record that would be (sailing? flying? kiting?).
Laurens Alblas, one of the students, told Kennislink that it will probably “take a couple of years before a control system for kites is developed. But once we have such a system, and assuming we can find sponsors, we will build the Hydrokite and we will try and break the record.”
(Link: Kennislink. Source image: TU Delft)
Tags: Atlantic Ocean, flying, kites, records, TU Delft, Wubbo Ockels
August 6, 2008
