19-year-old Keith Fraley, a sophomore software engineering student at Michigan Tech, was minding his sweet ol’ business when his roommate “Mark” stumbled in one night in a drunken stupor around 11:30 p.m. one night. Mark immediately asked where his textbooks were and upon receiving a satisfactory answer he ran off, only reappearing at 1:30 spouting off info on aerospace mechanics and toting a whiteboard along with him. As it turns out, Mark had designed a plane. Err, an erkronoplan – one of those planes that only hover above water, sort of like a limited helicopter I guess. Whatever, I’m not an engineer. According to The Guardian,
Mark, although very intelligent towards math, also works towards industrial design and some minor graphic designing. It is no surprise to me that his work while intoxicated was still very visually appealing.
So, would the aircraft fly? Does the design hold up in a sober setting?
Well technically, it’s not an airplane like I claimed. It’s actually called anekranoplan, which is more like a very high speed aircraft that floats above the water (Mark is trying to dumb this down for me). Mark says that he imagines his design may work, and he looks forward to trying to recreate his work into a remote-control model with his colleagues …
Since showing the world Mark’s designs Keith’s tweet has been retweeted more than 70,000x. and favorited over 130,000x. According to Mark, the next time he gets black out drunk he hopes to either cure cancer or “finalize his design plans for the craft in Siemens NX to be 3D printed later for prototyping”…whatever that means.
so my roommate came back drunk last night and doesnt remember designing an entire fucking airplane pic.twitter.com/A8El9Jyrn6
— keith (@spasepeople) September 6, 2015
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[H/T The Guardian]