Apparently an Australian company has developed a Star Wars style speeder bike to the point where it can hover and move, and has posted video footage to prove it.

I think I deserve one of these for being me.

There needs to be more of this kind of development. Where is my jetpack? My AT-AT (admittedly not very useful in Tokyo)? One group of researchers in Japan managed to build a semi-functioning Mehve (from Nausicaa) but it only seems to be able to travel about 100m. Clearly physics isn’t the problem, since these things fly fine in the movie and I know that Hayao Miyazaki and George Lucas wouldn’t be sloppy about these kinds of details – I just think the researchers need to get on with the important research. There must be some swine ‘flu funding or Mars Rover money that can be diverted to actually important projects. I mean, what’s the point in getting a human on Mars if he or she doesn’t have a speeder bike on arrival?

NASA haven’t been able to get their funding priorities right since they started work on the space shuttle!