We’ve mentioned before the technology that has become reality from the ideas in Star Wars. There are medical enhancements like prosthetic limbs, which Luke got when his hand was cut off by Vader and even portable iron lungs like the Dark Lord uses to breathe. There are things like pseudo light sabers (which are actually lasers that can actually cut metal and other things). But one of the things that we haven’t seen until now is a usable Star Wars hover bike, and perhaps we still haven’t.
While its creator, Australian inventor Chris Mallow calls it a hover bike and it rides like one, it looks more like Luke’s Landspeeder that he used to get around his home world of Tatooine while he was looking for R2-D2. The bike basically floats above the ground with no wheels at all at high altitudes. But that is because it is basically powered by helicopter engines that are capable of spinning the fans fast enough to float the bike and the rider at as much as 10,000 feet, though most uses will be far less than that. According to Mallow, it’s also capable of speeds up to 175 mph, which is faster than most cars. But this is just the prototype which is still in the early stages and most of these are estimates based on the possibilities rather than real world results.
The purpose of the vehicle is less flying car or landspeeder and more as a way to handle cattle mustering. But the team sees a day when it could be used for a whole range of things like camera work on film, firefighting and even search and rescue. And according to the data sheet, it gets pretty good gas mileage for these tasks, drawn from it’s 8 gallon tank. It can do 21.8 miles to the gallon or 92 miles per tank. Not bad, except hopefully one won’t be too far up in the air when it runs out.
But like any project, it takes money for the research and development of such a vehicle. Designers say that 1.1 million Australian dollars would be required to move into the next phase and have put up a website to raise money from the public. This has created a range of doubters that say that since no video has been shown of the thing actually flying, tethered or not, that people should be careful that this isn’t like another big foot sighting. And we can’t say for sure either, but Mallow says that there have been tests of the actual control and maneuvering of the hover craft while being tethered as a proof of concept. Why they have not posted that video is the question, as that would certainly get them more money. We would certainly like to believe.
But the reason that we brought this to you today is because it’s always interesting and fun to see how Star Wars shapes people’s view of what’s possible and that makes it a cool story either way in our opinion. Thanks for reading.
