Mike Helton
3 HN mentions · mentioned in 3 months, 2009–2014
2:00 · 1.1M views · Feb 28, 2006
A short clip of a jet-powered flying lawnmower, the Sky Cutter, and related RC flying lawnmowers.
Cited as a favorite flying oddity and as a joke about projects that get airborne through sheer thrust.
3 comments from Hacker News
My personal favorite flying oddities are the lawnmowers: this video The reason that the SR-71 surprised me is that it seems like it doesn't have that much wing area (which is probably somewhat counterintuitive given the length), and it wasn't flying at a significant upward angle like those foamies.
RC plane builders have known for a long time, that if you put ridiculous amounts of thrust on something, you can make anything fly. this video
Until GOOG approaches MSFT's revenues, I don't think Microsoft will worry. If there's a 'war' between those two companies, Microsoft is probably handling it as one of attrition. Google has one strong source of revenue (search advertising) and has been thrashing about for years in an attempt to build at least a second source without notable success. Microsoft has many different sources of revenue and continues to build on each. To take out Google, all they have to do is have Bing, Yahoo and the rest patiently chip away at GOOG's search advertising dominance by a few percentage points each year and that revenue will dry up. Then, without that revenue, all of Google's vanity projects will collapse in a heap. Google's many projects remind me of the Flying Lawnmower: this video You can make anything fly if you have a strong enough engine shoving it and Google's engine is its search advertising revenue. Once that revenue decreases enough, their lawnmower will fall to earth, and Microsoft is surely happy to see them tack on new expensive doodads like YouTube and Chrome O/S to hurry that day forward.