I’ve been seeing many a gadget blog buzz about the Hotelicopter today. I suppose this is one of those coolest gadgets that I can’t help but report about either.

The Hotelicopter is exactly what it sounds like: a hotel in a helicopter. It is a Mil V-12 prototype that was originally built in Russia in 1968. It looks like there was a sale after the cold war ended, and someone plans to give the Mil a 5-star hotel makeover with queen size beds, a mini-bar, and even add extra amenities like Wi-Fi.

In the October Popular Science, veteran aviation journo Bill Sweetman writes about secret airplanes he believes might be under development at the Air Force’s remote Groom Lake test facility in Nevada, a.k.a. Area 51. Sweetman describes three demonstrators unveiled in recent years — the Northrop Grumman Tacit Blue and Boeing Bird of Prey manned stealth planes and the Lockheed Martin Polecat drone — but insists these are just consolation prizes offered up by a military that is keeping its major black airplane programs under wraps.

Not that he has a ton of proof. “Hint[s]” and guesswork, mostly. The new construction at Groom Lake must mean something, he figures. And then there are those “obvious… significant gaps in the military’s known aviation arsenal — gaps that the Pentagon can reasonably be assumed to be actively, if quietly, trying to fill.”