Flugtag
Our informal and highly unscientific experiment that marked the beginning of our foray into Red Bull's Flugtag competition started with the lowering of our catapult (an old door) from our office to the parking lot.
The idea was to determine how feasible it would be to launch a 160-pound man into the air with a simple catapult. We attempted a scale reduction using a 30-pound bag of sand. We assembled the catapult's fulcrum, and Mike prepared to jump on the edge.
Our suspiciously lightweight door tore open on the first try.
This shoddy door was nothing but a honeycomb of corrugated cardboard inside!
Rob prepares our second catapult, a piece of wood braced with two steel rods.
Success? Mike attempted several jumps. The bag of sand lifted a maximum of approximately 9 inches off the catapult. We decided to return to the drawing board and see if their were other ways to launch a full-grown man a considerable distance into the air...
