foot·ball
/ˈfo͝otˌbôl/
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noun
noun: football; plural noun: footballs

1.
a form of team game played in North America with an oval ball on a field marked out as a gridiron.
British term for soccer.
play in a game of football, especially when stylish and entertaining.
"his team played some impressive football"
2.
a ball used in football, either oval (as in American football) or round (as in soccer), typically made of leather or plastic and filled with compressed air.

I don't know if you were being a smartass or just didn't know, either way, football means both american football and soccer.

Nice to finally hear pumped hydro mentioned when discussing energy storage.
Sure, it takes space, but it's non toxic, proven, doesn't bleed off like compressed air, and doesn't wear out every 10 years. Chemical batteries should be just for quick load shifts with hydro used for the majority of energy storage, imo.

A great way to scare off bears and loose dogs while biking or hiking is to carry an air horn. Walmart sells them in the boating section. A can of compressed air with a loud, shrill blast. Boaters use them sometimes to signal bridge keepers to raise the drawbridge.

Hmmmm....so they inflate with a pump now, not compressed air canisters? Progress.
(Looking on their website, yes, they use a battery operated pump for multiple deployments and to make it easier to get on planes, with no compressed air canisters that may be denied).

It's not IN a vacuum. the pressure is just very low, like a high-altitude jet airliner. The skis the pod runs on aren't even electromagnetic, they use micro jets of compressed air, like an air-hockey table.

As for Thunderfoot, I get he likes debunking things like those retarded snake-oil "smart pavement" people. However, saying Musk is one of them is ignoring what Elon's already accomplished. I can GUARANTEE Elon Musk has dumped more money than Thunderfoot will make in his lifetime in engineers and pure scientists just to see if it was FEASIBLE, let alone possible.

Extra info from YT : "Helpers were bubbling air from compressed air bottles into the pool to ease surface tension. Yet, he failed in hitting that spot but went away without injury. It is reported that at a first glance they suspected a pelvis displacement which luckly couldn't be confirmed."

Your video, Cats versus Ssscat compressed air blasts, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

And this...

http://videosift.com/video/Cats-versus-Ssscat-compressed-air-blasts

lol

I've played airsoft like this for a few years now off an on so feel well enough qualified to comment.

It's largely a matter of range. Most sites allow up to 500fps on snipers (and some american ones go up to 800 or so I believe), but they have a minimum engagement range (usually about 25 meters, presumably more for the silly american ones).

Basically, non automatic sniper rifles are allowed to be significantly more powerful than the 330fps (400 in some countries) other weapons are limited to, but as a result can't be used at short range (that's what pistols and compact SMG's are for!).

If you are close to the minimum range limit and it hits unprotected skin, they sting really badly, enough to draw a little blood sometimes. It's not entirely dissimilar to being whipped by a wet towel, excruciating for about half a second then it tails off to just stinging and swearing.

If it hits your vest, glasses, hat etc. then it wont really hurt at all (but you still felt it you cheating bastards! ), likewise if you are out beyond 50meters or so as the power drops off with range as you'd expect. (My brother can sometimes make shots out to 70-80meters with a VSR but you can barely feel it)

Shoot at point blank and your target can be forgiven for walking over and punching you in the face....right after they stop swearing and get up off the ground. (entirely possible to penetrate exposed skin at that range)

In practice though, trying to storm a building/room vs automatic rifles etc. tends to be far more painful an experience than being sniped. Unless that is someone snipes the inside of your nose sideways on (it hurt as much as you imagine it did).

We also once had a guy knocked clean out by a grenade launcher to the face at point blank . But it was a Co2 powered thing and I believe they aren't allowed inside buildings any more (can't think why).

Re: paintballs, in my much more limited experience, they are waaaaay worse than BB's if they are full power and reasonably close range. Concussions, broken bones and broken skin are all entirely possible (though not likely), but bruises and welts are basically standard issue.

I believe some sites run compressed air guns (rather than Co2) at much lower power levels, so I imagine they are a lot more tolerable.
Paintballers tend to be more on the extreme sports side of things (wheras airsoft tends to be more biased towards military geeks/gamers), and so many sites have a bit of a "pain is weakness leaving the body" attitude to power levels.

In the UK at least the velocity limit for paintballs at competition level is 300fps, for most airsoft sites the limit is 330fps. You only have to look at a BB vs a paintball to see what a discrepancy in energy that equates to!!!

I said boring dive site, and I stand by it. Featureless, lifeless rock is not exactly my idea of an interesting dive site.

And taking a lungful from the cameraman's octopus would be a really bad idea.

If you're free diving, you don't inhale compressed air at depth unless it's an emergency, and you're going to resurface with the safety diver very slowly.

@Curious, the diver is Guillaume Néry. He's real and he's done this kinda thing before.
*related=http://videosift.com/video/Underwater-Base-Jumping

This might work on air, because you can compress air, but I'm pretty certain it won't work on water.

Water is not a marble. It's not even millions of marbles, though that might better illustrate how it would move through the 'valve'. In reality the water is going up all those side channels AND the central 'smooth' channel all at once. The back eddies from the side channels will serve to help guide the water flowing up the main tube and if you can get ANY suction out of that sucker at all I'd be amazed.

Like I say, air is more complex. It might work there, but the efficiency would be so low I can't ever see this replacing a standard pump.

This isn't an exercise in engineering so much as marketing.

The pneumatic motor is limited by the extreme lack of energy stored in compressed air. All inneficiencies in translating that stored energy into motion are failures in the system. The goal is to carefully remove all unnecessary sources of energy loss from the motor.

So there's an interesting engineering challenge in making this work 'at all' using Legos. There are design compromises that must be made, given the restrictions on form imposed by available parts; as well as the stress limitations of the material. It's like someone giving you a pile of reeds and asking you to build a Manhattan 5-Story Walkup. Can it be done? Is there enough stress resistance in the material for something of that scale? A fun challenge with no practical implications. Manhattan low-rises have been built before, you're not innovating architecture and you're definitely not contributing anything to the future of construction.

The question is, does it require a "technology genius" to accomplish? Someone tell me what a "technology genius" is first. Whatever it is...I suspect you don't need one on your team in order to search the internet for pneumatic piston motor schematics and copy/paste a parallel series of 256.

This exercise is inspiring and fun...until you add the marketing entrepreneur, casting hyperbole around and spending other people's money. It is unsettling to think that the new generation of capitalists are chasing the specter of Elon Musk; self promoting egotists who create nothing and take credit for everything. As a longtime member of the internet in good standing, I reject every stealth intrusion of marketing and entrepreneurship into my sandbox.

Hooray for Raul Oaida, engineering buff and hobbyist. Down with Steve Sammartino, marketer, entrepreneur, "brainchild" originator, keeper of secrete locations, crowd funder, project contact and fathead.

I don't actually know, but I assume there is a cylinder of compressed air somewhere running the engine... this doesn't really make it useless, although the practicality of air cars in general is... well... usually limited:

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/fuel-efficiency/vehicles/air-car.htm

I'd really like to know what "Powered by air" means?

Is it pressurized air? if it is, then the engine is totally useless, and is only there for show because the compressed air is doing all the work.

Or is the engine somehow pushing air through it in a pneumatic system to move the car, but that would likely require a form of electricity to do, thus making it not powered by air, but moved with air.

The amount of people who never clean their desktop or laptop keyboards amazes me.
I use wipes and compressed air and will take the sucker apart.