Dude Invents Something Long Thought Impossible: A Hoax Video

This guy claims he's invented an independently-powered Green Goblin style hoverboard.

If you watch the video, you'll notice something suspicious about his ability to control this thing, which is supposedly four 250 horsepower "turboreactor" rockets and a few stabilizer rockets on the size. The suspicious thing is that he's able to control it all.

Where are the control surfaces?

Is he just controling this with straight body English?

Here's some nonsense he said.

an you tell me more about how it works? How many engines are in there?

We have four engines inside, and the power is 250 horsepower each. It’s about 1,000 horsepower total.

How do you keep it stabilized? Is there something helping you other than you just shifting your weight?

It’s a logic system inside the board that helps stabilize the machine. It’s extremely hard to stabilize, so yes it’s not only my balance. For example, we use like the same kind of electronics like you use on a drone to stabilize. The problem is to create the algorithms, the right algorithms, to combine the intelligence in the board and in your brain. So we spent about four months to make that work.

What are those algorithms controlling to help stabilize, is it just thrust level?

No. We adjust the top speed of the small turbines on the side, and also the inclination of the turboreactors itself. So it’s like we have six systems working together plus my brain and my legs.

So it will actually change the angle of those turbines?

Yes, it changes the angle of the turbines, it changes the angle of the thrust nozzle, we adjust also the power for each engine, and also we adjust the thrust of the side turbines, the small ones.

Apparently he's made real flying things, that shot water out of their bottom nozzles for propulsion; but those always had a vehicle (another boat) drafting behind him, pumping the water up the hose and providing power. * (See second video to see what I mean.)

Anyway, enjoy your Hoax Video of a guy suspended by a wire above him with the wire digitally erased in post-production.

* It's possible the trailing vehicles here are doing the same thing, providing him with highly pressurized air to rocket out of the bottom of the board, but with that hose then digitally erased.

Except that he still looks like a guy hanging from a wire to me, and I still don't see how he controls it.

Actually: You know, he is wearing tanks, and of course we know rocket jetpacks exist. So maybe he's got enough propellant for this. Maybe the "board" part of the rig isn't as important as he's making it out, and most of the propulsion comes from the tanks on his back.

I don't know. I just find this very suspicious in all the details, from the claims that there's only one exemplar (so no you can't test it), that no one could possibly fly this without "50 to 100 hours" of training (so no you can't test it), to the failure to mention which software company put together the flight logic for the thing.

When you do something like this, I mean when you do it for real, you mention all the vendors who helped put it together. So why not shout-out to "Avionex Software" or whatever? Why does he seem to claim he put together the software in-house?

In house? Really?

Just a lot of things seem fake to me here.

Like why he doesn't just flip over.

It took NASA a lot of practice to get its rockets not to tip over. You've got a lot of thrust on the bottom that naturally wants to move up above the rest of the thing -- it wants to topple over. You have to fight to make it not topple over.

This guy keeps from toppling just by body English, and some advanced flight logic software developed by someone he won't name.

It's all a secret, I guess.

Real? Well, Guinness says they were there to confirm it was legit and now the record-holder for longest hoverboard flight, over 2000 meters.

They previously confirmed this guy's 250 meter flight.

Some commenters are saying it looks real to them. Zombie suggests the amount of digital manipulation I'm talking about would be so expensive it would just be cheaper to develop a real hoverboard.

posted by Ace at 04:18 PM

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