Ben Preiss
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The Israeli-invented X-Hawk VTOL (Vertical takeoff and landing) craft, now being jointly developed with Bell helicopter, will debut as a 12-man troop transporter that will reach 155 m.p.h. (250 km/h) and climb to 12,000 ft. (3,700 m).
 There is something about Rafi Yoeli's physique — he's wiry and reed-thin — that somehow creates an impression of weightlessness. And there's something about his latest invention that actually appears to achieve it. If ever a designer and a machine were meant for each other, it's Yoeli and his new CityHawk hovercraft.
Yoeli, 56, grew up in Israel, where he attended the Technion, the local equivalent of MIT.
In the 1950s and '60s, the U.S. military experimented with just such aircraft, but they wobbled, and a gust of wind could send them spinning. "Nobody had touched this technology for 40 years," says Yoeli. He decided to revisit the hovercraft, this time with the help of light modern materials and advanced computers and other electronics. In 2003 he unveiled the result, his futuristic CityHawk, which in its first test rose and hovered just as advertised
(time)References: technovelgy, time Filed In: |
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