One of the more, um, unusual designs to emerge in the ongoing pursuit of personal flying machines combines two awesome ideas we don’t see often enough: Rocket and helicopter.
As menacing as the combination might sound, the Dragonfly is rather tame. It’s super-simple to fly and uses two small but powerful hydrogen peroxide motors mounted at the tips of the rotor. The engines are small, just 8 inches long 1.5 pounds apiece. But don’t be fooled by their diminutive size. This baby will top out at 100 knots if you’re really pushing it.
“Each engine is equivalent to 102 horsepower,” says Ricardo Cavalcanti, the man marketing the latest iteration of an idea that’s been bouncing around since the 1950s. “So 204 horsepower to move a unit that is only 230 pounds.”
And the exhaust? Water vapor.
