Fresno Famous

Honda to make flying cars, capable of 350mph

Road Track;

Honda's Hovering Concept Car
The wild Fuzo flying car that goes 350 mph!
By Jim Hall • Photo-illustrations by Jonathan Mahieddine

French industrial and automotive designer Jonathan Mahieddine has created quite a stir on numerous popular tech-oriented websites with his Honda Fuzo, a futuristic design for a flying car.

The young, creative designer envisions the Fuzo as a lightweight and sturdy vehicle — thanks to extensive use of Kevlar, carbon fiber and carbon nanotubes — that would be capable of traveling through the air at a top speed of 350 mph, thanks to four powerful turbine engines. It would also be able to take off and land vertically, like Britain's famous Harrier jump jet and the U.S. military's own V-22 Osprey. What's more, upon landing, the Fuzo would extend its retractable wheels and tool around town like a normal automobile.

Honda Fuzo Concept
http://autos.yahoo.com/articles/autos_content_landing_pages/988/hondas-h...
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welcome to the future

as I said, the future starts here

With a team of engineers, Paul Moller works on the Skycar

Talks Paul Moller: Take a ride in the Skycar

Paul Moller talks about the future of personal air travel -- the marriage of autos and flight that will give us true freedom to travel off-road. He shows two things he's working on: the Moller Skycar (a jet + car) and a passenger-friendly hovering disc.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/paul_moller_on_the_skycar.html

Moller International has developed the first and only feasible, personally affordable, personal vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) vehicle the world has ever seen.

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welcome to the future

Center encourages aerospace entrepreneurs

hmmm, & people thought I was kidding, if Colorado can do it, California can do it bigger, better, faster, smarter, here in the Valley, lets see Fresno State has WET, why can't it have SPACE

Space
Pioneering
Advanced
Center
for
Exploration

Center encourages aerospace entrepreneurs
By Jim Spellman

CNN
LOUISVILLE, Colorado (CNN) -- While the economy sputters here on Earth, space entrepreneurs in Colorado are looking to the heavens.

"Our goal is to help small aerospace companies to get off the ground," said eSpace director Diane Dimeff. eSpace will help entrepreneurs "to commercialize their technology and to help develop the work force that will fuel their growth."

The center's Incubator doubles as the headquarters of SpaceDev, which Tibbitts founded almost by accident more than a dozen years ago. He developed a paraffin actuator, a mechanism filled with a waxlike substance that melts when it reaches a certain temperature, flipping a switch.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/space/02/23/space.entrepreneurs/index.html
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....uh...

all that AND epiphites and parasites huh???

(I really need to go take a shower after reading that, ---and remind me not to walk around naked in a room that has flowers in it anymore...)
-even plastic ones...

orchids are wild about sex

they're transvestites, hermaphrodites, bi,
they trap, they dunk, hit & sucker punch
they tease, use pheromone perfumes
they're parasites, they're Epiphytes

and that's just for starters

orchid sex

Charles Darwin was not exaggerating when he renounced that the various contrivances and adaptation of orchids vastly transcend those which the most fertile imagination of the world's most imaginative man could dream up with unlimited time at his disposal.

from: http://www.ionopsis.com/Opolination.html

hermaphrodites...

...never really have learned what to say to the word hermaphrodite...

I mean, I get the picture, undserstand the situation, and always just felt that I'd be a third wheel, ya know?

feminine in nature?

ahh, they're hermaphrodite. about 98% of them anyway and dual-symbiotic

1) with fungi
2) with pollinators

They're also on Star Trek

...?

...wah, Miss Orchid, ah du declayuh...

-and by the looks of that orchid-link, somebody named and orchid after me, too... (not quite sure what to do with that, I always considered orchids to be, uh, feminine in nature... and I, despite some acquired social graces, most definitely am not....)
-hmmm.

Rutans from Dinuba

as far as my comment about the "Future starts here", for being just a mid-sized city, there's a lot happening here, available or just ready to take off

art
http://www.fresnoarts.org/arthop.htm

poetry
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendI...

civic
http://www.1000friendsoffresno.org/

political
http://www.peacefresno.org/

orchids
http://www.aospacificcentral.org/CentralCa2005/centralca05.html

transportation
Thursdays, 4:30pm in the 2nd floor conference room at the TW Patterson Building, Downtown.

etc., etc...

I think you need an import, like me, someone that choose to come here, to tell you about all the plusses, all the potential right here, the unexplored or wasted opportunities, just waiting for the right person, right time, right use, right idea to take off into the future. to tell you to stay put & make a go at it here, before you export yourself out

Gas was cheap... come to think of it, so were Texans.

English is a funny language, if someone just read this comment, they'd think we didn't think so highly of our SW accented friends, instead of these little numbers

Texan
http://www.warbirdalley.com/t6.htm

and as far as the other plane mentioned, found these:
Hawker Sea Fury
http://www.deroeck.co.uk/planes/Hawker-Sea-Fury-01.html

Land-based version
1949 Royal Australian Navy Hawker Skyfury MK-II
http://www.freqofnature.com/photos/cma2002/P8101058.jpg

taken from this site
http://www.freqofnature.com/photos/cma2002/index.html

Rutans from Dinuba

I believe they are from Dinuba

well smack me with a board, and send me to Turlock..

I had no idea that the Rutans were local champs...

I remember seeing my first Rutan, live, out on a ramp, and just wanted to bow... (Funny a BeeDee (sp?) just didn't have the same impact, though I've seen them tons of times...)

Rutans just blow me away...

There also was a Hawker Sea Fury based close to here, 'Miss Merced,' but I don't know what happened to her...

Long time ago, my dad was riding along in a rental car not far from here, headed off to the coast, and he came across a bunch of AT-6 Texans sitting by the side of the road in Luftwaffe markings...
-This threw him a little, so he stopped to talk to one of the guys working on a plane..

-Apparently not real far off was another strip where there were an equal amount of Texans painted in US Markings...

The guys would all get together, fly off towards each other and mock dog-fight, ever couple of weeks or so,,, --and would change markings on their planes every once in a while to represent different airforces, (I think they studied the techniques of those country's pilots as well, just to keep it real...)

Gas was cheap... come to think of it, so were Texans.

(Seeing Death Race 2000's cars would have made me a bit... concerned.. (But they were all George Barris Customs that were Volkswagen powered, right??? (I think he still has them.)

---There IS a faction of a Biker group over in the East Bay(?) that do drive replica 'Mad Max,' vehicles around, (one of them is a female Opera Soloist...)
Remember them getting into trouble with the boys in blue over re-enacting a scene where a Fuel Truck is overtaken, and they forgot to clue in the necessary folks that they were just playing... (minor oversight.)

local boys done good

I think from Dinuba or Tulare?

Rutan Brothers

My father in law knew the Rutan brothers growing up While he liked this Rutan he didn't care for the other Rutan too much. Kinda of a jerk, I guess.

1st Rutans

I was stationed at Edwards AFB from 74-79, I was always driving, going or heading somewhere, so on either hiways 14, 58, 138 or 395, I drove by several times when "Deathrace 2000" was being filmed out in the Mojave, saw the cars & 1st generation vari-viggens (both models & life-size) flying

Deathrace 2000
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072856/

vari-viggens
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutan_VariViggen

yes, I saw the movie too

in praise of the cunard

Rutan is a genius...

The only thing wrong, was one of his greatest designs, (the VariEZ) and a lot of his homebuilts, were found to have major problems with the aluminum main spars becoming rigid, -causing them to crack and fail, -based upon the flexing and annealing that could occur.
(This sucks, but I think they figured out a way to replace the thing, without coughing up the whole ship...
(Loud little bastards though... jeesh, you can hear a variEZ waaaaaay off, sounds like a huge model airplane, must be a real treat to fly in the thing, noisey noisey noisey...

Personally?
It's cool to sit down at the end of FAT, and watch the 18's and 16's take off at night on full afterburner... (waaaaay fun.)

And before I leave this fair whacked coast, I am going to go to Reno and catch the unlimiteds... (who knows, maybe even this year...)

They got big doin's down at Chandler, I hear, (and that the place has not been updated or really worked on for 40, 60 years???
Guy wants to build a major F.B.O. and train pro-pilots over there... (Which is a good time, no doubt.... I just wonder if I can get some 100 octain LL fer me truck... (that will give the horse some oats fer sure...)
Not exactly a rocket ship,,, but pretty durn close, (you just have to change the plugs a little more often...)

I'll find out next time one of the Confederate, er... Commemorative Air Force teams comes up, (I think last year they had a B-24 and a B-25 (or it may have just been a Gooney and a B-25) on the ramp to be drooled over, maybe blow a ton of cash and get a ride in...)

Orcaoid, you are just full of surprises... somebody else in this place who likes airplanes... way to go.

rutan brothers

I was really thinking about a full-blown rules, air-traffic lanes, ala Futurama or Jetson's, ready for the day that they get something better than Moller's or Rutan's little gadgets whizzing by, I knew about the aforementioned Barstow, etc…,

ok, so I was daydreaming a little

SpaceShipOne
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6167761/

Mojave Spaceport
http://www.mojaveairport.com/

or a party like, something along these lines
http://deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov/dsn/features/barstow.html

Space Command

I wanted to be a Space Commander ever since watching "Clutch Cargo".

SpacePorts

America has two civilian owned spaceports... the 1st one is also known as the 'Mojave Airport and Civilian Aerospace Test Center' that made history when Scaled Composites SpaceShipOne reached in to space on June 21, 2004. The Second Civilian owned Spaceport is currently being built in Spaceport America (Also known as Southwest Regional Spaceport) in the desert near Upham, New Mexico.
There are plans for more Spaceports in California, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Florida, Virginia, Alaska, Esrange in Sweden and Wisconsin, as well as Singapore and the United Arab Emirates.

There have been a few Federal Spaceports in the US since the late 1950s, most notably Vandenberg Air Force Base home to the 14th Air Force, 30th Space Wing, and the Kennedy Space Center aka Cape Canaveral Air Force Station & Patrick Air Force Base home to the 45th Space Wing. If you want to see listings of more Federal Spaceports look up Air Force Space Command and you may have thought that NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration ran it all.

Other active spaceports can be found in Russia (old USSR), was once the Soviet space program is now known as Russian Federal Space Agency RFSA. There is the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency or JAXA, Canadian Space Agency aka CSA ASC, European Space Agency (ESA), Italian Space Agency aka ASI and Brazilian Space Agency AEB, who have an advantage for launching rockets because it's said that it takes less fuel to escape the pull of gravity the closer you are to the equator.

uh oh..

orcaoid,,, sweetheart,,, -have you been hitting the Crown Royal again? (I know it's the weekend, but, oh,,, you are going to have such a headache...)

I'll send one of the cats over with some tylenol and a baloney sandwich when it starts to get light out...