4/23/2003: Jet-powered go-kart

[Undertoad]

If you're not so interested in getting blasted up into space on a private rocket, maybe you'd rather just stay on the ground and go really fast. That seems to be the fancy of this Swiss engineering company called Meditech, which was pointed to in the latest ZZZ Online. The page pointed to is a compilation of a lot of their projects.

And I have a great slogan for them: "Darwin Award-Winning Designs". Any one of these projects could kill you in any number of interesting ways.

If you go on a modem, be patient while you wait for the page to load because it is all images - it's huge. And poorly laid out and such. But amongst their projects:

- Several jet-powered bikes that set world record speeds: 245 km/h (about 150 mph)
- A working "rocket man" jet-pack so you can just fly around
- An after-burning jet bolted onto a stock hatchback of some sort
- Jet cars powered by steam

I want one of each. I probably only need them for about five minutes each.

They claim on the page that one of their next projects is to put that jet above on a jet-pack, you know, so you'd strap it on and fly it. That's clearly completely insane, but it seems these people are already way over the edge.