The Case of the Missing Rocket Belt

Anonymous Coward writes "ABC News is running a very interesting article about the story behind those rocket belts you've seen in some movies. Apparently there are only three known to exist but one of them has gone missing leaving a trail of death and intrigue in its wake. From the article: 'One of its developers was found beaten to death in his Houston home, another is a suspect in the killing, and a third faces a possible life sentence for kidnapping the second and holding him hostage for seven days with a hood over his head.'"

Comments

Not commercially viable

[shadowj]

The problem is not that the machines are too expensive to produce; it's that there's no incentive to produce them on any scale. You need a truckload of support hardware, the fuel (hydrogen peroxide) is nasty stuff, and I imagine you'd have government regulators of all flavors descend upon you like flies to shit as soon as you have a working product.

And once you get all of that together... you have a noisy, dangerous, difficult-to-handle flying machine that will carry one very skilled pilot for about 30 seconds.

There may be a market for a few units for sports events, exhibitions, and... oh, wait, we already have that covered, don't we?