Wingsuit flight is a highly specialized type of sport flight that has gained notoriety over time thanks to some heroic pioneers. A wingsuit is essentially a special suit that is used to add surface to the body of a human skydiver. This gives it a noticeable increase in "lift," the upward thrust that keeps it up in flight.
I don't need to tell you this is a dangerous sport, and I don't need to tell you HOW dangerous it is. The wingsuit currently has very limited maneuvering capabilities, reaches high speeds and essentially has no propulsion systems, meaning it can spiral out of control quite easily.
What if we added control capabilities to a wingsuit?
We need an engine, of course. But the engines weigh and consume: a major problem.
Increasing safety by equipping a normal wingsuit with new powered flight capabilities has always been a lifelong goal for the Austrian air sports expert. Peter salzmann.
Salzmann was not born yesterday and he is not exactly a novice: he collects flying hours with his wingsuit and also lends his evolutions to films and documentaries. Its latest partnership with BMW Designworks amply demonstrates its worth. The creation is something remarkable, to the point of having already been included in the famous Guinness World Records, the publication that collects all world records for the most disparate disciplines.
Image Credits: Guinness World Records (still image from YouTube video)
This is the first fully electric wingsuit. I'll show it to you first than to tell you about it, so I suggest you take a look (clearly on the fly) at this video:
