Here Comes EXO-Wing Man!

June 17, 2008 — There’s Superman, Batman, Spiderman and Wonder Woman. But you may want to add EXO-Wing Man to the list of superheroes with one big difference. EXO-Wing, the world's smallest human-piloted jet, can make anyone fly. Through September 1, the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art is displaying two of Atair Aerospace’s inventions alongside high-profile superhero collections from Hollywood and the fashion industry. The exhibit includes Atair's EXO-Wing and AeroSuit. The EXO-Wing is a futuristic aircraft constructed from advanced aerospace composite materials and should be available commercially in 12 months, the Chicago Tribune reported. The twin micro-turbine-powered craft is so small and lightweight that a person wears it like a backpack, and then jumps out of a plane, ignites the two engines and deploys parachutes to land. The AeroSuit, a flexible wing suit constructed with advanced composite textiles, allows a skydiver to glide to a target miles away from the drop point. The arms and legs of this garment include inflating webbed panels that form the elements of a wing, dramatically improving the aerodynamics of a skydiver. "We make a lot of James Bond-like toys, but what really pulls it together is it's all lifesaving technology," Daniel Preston, the 37-year-old founder and chief technical officer of Atair, told the Chicago Tribune. In addition, the company has invented Onyx, a GPS-guided parachute system that guides the parachute and its cargo to a preprogrammed target, and its Chimera tactical vehicle, a two-seater car that can be parachuted from a plane and then driven away as a tactical ground vehicle with a ground speed of 50 mph. Headquartered in Brooklyn, N.Y., Atair is a high-technology prime defense contractor dedicated to modernizing military and government logistics by creatively solving complex aerospace and engineering problems that integrate the state-of-the-art in parachute designs, and guidance, navigation and control systems.

Atair’s EXO-Wing is now on display at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. Photo credit: www.engadget.com Atair’s AeroSuit allows a skydiver to glide to a target miles away from the drop point. It is on display at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. Photo credit: www.engadget.com.

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