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05/15/2008: "And I Think It's Gonna Be A Long, Long Time ..."
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I'm not sure what exactly he's trying to prove, but it looks pretty cool ...
Yves Rossy is a 48-yr old Swiss airline pilot, but like many of his coworkers is a former fighter pilot as well. Apparently, he's jonesing for the thrill of flight that you just can't find at the wheel of an Airbus. Since he's a little old for jet fighters, he's found his own way - a strap-on carbon fiber wing, complete with 4 jet engines. He demonstrated his new toy yesterday by stepping out of a plane flying 7,000 feet over Bax, Switzerland. After gliding unpowered for a while, he lit the candle on the jets and hit 185 mph as he soared over the Swiss countryside, ending his performance with a slow barrelroll.
"I don't steer it, I fly it," Rossy said. "It's like a child playing airplane, like that, exactly like this. It's totally intuitive."
"Pure flight," he calls it. Like flying in an airplane - without the airplane.
"You're almost naked. You have just this little thing on your back, and moving your body it turns, it flies, it climbs," he said. "Its like something artificial - but it's real."
I don't know how much of a practical future it has, but Rossy - who refers to himself as "Fusionman", presumably for the "fusion" of man and plane - can certainly find a job on the set of the next Bond flick ... assuming he survives his upcoming attempt to fly his contraption across the English Channel ... 
