Usagi Yojimbo DojoBoard

WAAAAY off topic relative to UY, but it's an interesting (daft) extension of cosplay.

"Kazuhiko Hachiya’s flying wing, Moewe 1/16 (2003), a recreation of the airplane in Hayao Miyazaki’s animated film Naushika of the Valley of the Wind. Underneath the 1/16 scale balsa and foam model, a video shows the successful flight of a 1/2 scale, radio-controlled version. Hachiya hopes to flesh out a full-scale (8m) anime aircraft large enough to carry a real person."

The rest of the article at the link below talks about the gallery it's displayed in, and has a small picture.

http://metropolis.japantoday.com/tokyo/recent/art.asp

So, any volunteers to ride a jet-propelled flying wing with no control surfaces, windscreen, or seat?

So is it actually called "Moewe"? I've got the Spanish edition of the Nausicäa manga and they translated it as "Meve" (I haven't seen the anime ). Whatever. It'd be interesting how a real scale one would actually work the way it does in the manga: what kind of energy source does it use? How does it fly without any helixes or jets? Perhaps it's a lifter, or something? The control surface issues could be solved like in the Segway: a bunch of gyroscopes, sensors and computers maintain the ship on balance while monitoring the pilot's body movements and translating them as commands (pressure on the left arm could be interpreted as turning to the left, and so on).

By the way, is my highly damaged brain (due to college's exams and NOT having read UY #66-67 YET) altering my perception of reality or did Sakai-sensei draw a very similar ship on Space USagi? It's on one of the last stories of the book, the one about the murderer of Space Usagi's father; the ship in that story is called "flivver", though.

Moewe, meve, meuve... mauve? Someone who's seen the hiragana in the original manga could probably help with the question: anyone I know "flivver" was used in Brave New World as descriptive of any flying transport (a rash student might assume Sakai-sensei has read Huxley...), but I think it was originally an American slang term for a sports car, about 80 years ago.

That lifter thing is fascinating, but a 250g payload's a bit shy of lifting a man (for US readers, that's about 1/2lb, if my old brain's working right). Rockin' cool link, tho'!

That lifter thing is fascinating, but a 250g payload's a bit shy of lifting a man

Hey, they managed to lift a hamster . Guinea pigs are next, and then rabbits . Eventually they'll be able to lift cats and rhinos, so we won't have to worry about Neko ninja or Rhogen being unable to ride one of those things .

That was me . Damn cookies .