Blogs & Ecology

Why Fly When You Can Float? It has been more than 70 years since the giant Hindenburg zeppelin exploded in a spectacular fireball over Lakehurst, N.J., killing 36 crew members and passengers, abruptly ending an earlier age of airships. But because of new materials and sophisticated means of propulsion, a diverse cast of entrepreneurs is taking another look at the behemoths of the air. ::New York Times

See also Zeppelins are Back, Too

Image from neebong

Sapporo Holdings, proud manufacturers of an essential ingredient in sake bombs, have announced that they’re making an ambitious step to grow their brewery: beer from space.

Clément Ader’s flying machine. Taken by Stephane Delbecque

In honor of Yves Rossy, the Swiss man who flew over the Alps on a personal jet-powered wing Wednesday, Environmental Graffiti was inspired to search for some of the other strangest devices that have carried men aloft. Obviously we have missed quite a few, so we’d appreciate it if you could help us out by dropping some more examples of weird flying machines in the comments.

5. The Gyrocopter

Image from wikipedia

BBC camera crews discovered something absolutely incredible…

They were filming a colony of Adélie penguins on King Geoerge Island, around 750 miles south of the Falkland Islands, when the weather took a turn for the worse.

Instead of the penguins huddling together, as you’d normally expect, they did something absolutely fascinating. They took off and flew thousands of miles to the South American tropical rainforests to bask in the winter sun.

As a kid I always wished I could fly or teleport myself to random locations. Walking can be pretty time consuming job, not to mention boring and frustrating when you have to get somewhere.

Volo dell’ Angelo, (Flight of the Angels). Phillip Voiroin pictured. Image by Castelmezzano.net

As it happens, two Italian towns in the Dolomites called Pietrapertosa and Castelmezzano located near where my parents have a holiday home have come up with an ingenious, yet perilous eco solution (not involving jet power), which will definitely attract the tourists.