[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaNZzUg5Opg[/youtube]
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s birdmen Yves Rosset and Vince Reffet flying their jet propelled wingsuits over and through one of world’s most futuristic cities, Dubai. The two air daredevils, each strapped into specially designed and constructed wing suits staged a 10 minute acrobatic jet flight at a location best known for its edifice audacities; including the world’s current tallest building, 2,716 foot Burj Khalifa. (It’s also the world’s largest poop-producing tower!)
The jet propelled wing suits, which first passed successful flight tests in Finland in October, 2005, propelled the two aeronauts at heights well above Burj Kahalia and at speeds of up to 120 mph. Their amazing test flight and air acrobatics is shown here in the following video:
Each specially fitted wingsuit has two small turbo jet engines attached to it. According to test data from previous jetmen flights, each jet engine provides around 16kgs of thrust, and is primed with a mix of butane and propane. Once ignited, the engines operate on a steady supply of kerosene based A1 Jet fuel.
This jet fuel burns at around the rate of 0.5 litres per minute, on full power, for each jet engine.Judging from the amount of exhaust smoke being expelled from these jetpacks, this extravagant air show display does not appear to be very environmentally friendly, to say the least.
Of course, there is some excitement to this kind of flying, if you take into account that these birdmen are realizing their dream of actual uninhibited human flight. Maybe the next step will be doing such a feat using renewable energy instead of polluting A1 jet fuel. The damage to Dubai’s environmental habitats, due to so much construction and the artificial islands in the Arab Gulf, is very sad indeed. Areoacrobatic displays like jet powered wingsuits do not appear to offer much of a contribution to improving the local enviromental scene there.
Read more on un-green issues affecting the Arab Gulf region and the world at large:
It’s not the tide. It’s not the wind. It’s us.
Crazy heat dome will mean no one can live in Arab Gulf by 2100
Amazing “Atlas” tracks Arab world habitat destruction over time
