{"id":11809,"date":"2013-03-30T22:32:45","date_gmt":"2013-03-31T03:32:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/?p=11809"},"modified":"2013-03-30T22:38:40","modified_gmt":"2013-03-31T03:38:40","slug":"iflew","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/?p=11809","title":{"rendered":"iFlew"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today I tried iFly<\/i><\/a> indoor sky diving. Basically, a big fan blows air up from below at anywhere from 120 to 170 miles per hour, while you surf the updraft, suspended above a net at an altitude of anything from two feet to about thirty five feet.<\/p>\n

I loved it! And it made an interesting comparison to real skydiving.<\/p>\n

The real thing is much wilder during free fall — you don’t have control over temperature or wind speed, since you are literally falling through the sky after having dropped out of an airplane.<\/p>\n

Compared to that, the iFly<\/i> experience is a bit like skydiving in your living room. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. <\/p>\n

While you are “flying”, there are people all around the glass enclosure watching you. I had a great time waving at them, giving the thumbs up, and occasionally making a funny face.<\/p>\n

The wonderful science fiction short story “The Menace from Earth” by Robert Heinlein describes a similar enterprise on a moon colony. Only on the moon they are able to make the whole thing a lot bigger, having only have 1\/6 earth gravity to contend with.<\/p>\n

I would imagine the experience Heinlein describes, with lots of room to swoop and glide, would be a lot closer to real flying. I guess we’re not going to find out until moon colonies have recreational facilities.<\/p>\n

After the iFly<\/i> experience, I found myself thinking “wouldn’t it be great to have one of these for my very own!” Imagine “flying” in one of these while wearing a wireless Oculus Rift<\/a>. Now that<\/i> could make for one cool video game experience.<\/p>\n

Alas, the price for even the smallest and least expensive “vertical wind tunnel” starts at about $250K, and goes up rapidly from there into the millions.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, suppose I were to design one from scratch…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today I tried iFly indoor sky diving. Basically, a big fan blows air up from below at anywhere from 120 to 170 miles per hour, while you surf the updraft, suspended above a net at an altitude of anything from two feet to about thirty five feet. I loved it! And it made an interesting … Continue reading “iFlew”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11809"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11809"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11809\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11818,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11809\/revisions\/11818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}