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Another Pass at the Personal Jetpack
Engadget is reporting that dreams of a personal jet pack may not be quite as distant as you might think. Skywalker Jets, created by Rick Herron boasts a 90-pound jet pack capable of propelling a 200-pound pilot through the air for about five minutes without the hassle of charred lower extremities. The production model, which he hopes to run past the FAA soon for approval, will only cost you somewhere in the neighborhood of $200,000 — so start saving your pennies.
people who forget to check how much fuel they have left while still hundreds of metres in the air plummetting down like bags of wet cement.
whatever about the cost of purchasing, running and maintaining one of these - I can't imagine any insurance company taking on the risk that the pilot won't do serious damage to property and by-standers.
The insurance premium will be huge.
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The crowd won't exactly be 10 feet off the ground. One guy will be 50 meters up and heading east to his job. Another will be 30 meters up and heading northeast. Another 100 meters up heading south, and so on and so on.
Once they've figured out the jetpack technology, they're going to have to get to work on some pretty clever crash prevention tech as well.
Lessee...the plane:
So why, exactly, would I spend money on this? It might have a larger coolness factor, but that'll wear off fast.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
The video suddenly pixelates when he lifts his feet. It is a scam.
First entomology, then virology, and finally bioinformatics systems. Bugs follow me wherever I go.
(is it jeep?) where the guy kisses his wife, and parachutes into the canyon to his car?/ how do you think exactly, he goes from the driveway back to his house...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The Bugatti Vayron is the worlds fastest production car. It's top speed is 250MPH. At that speed, the only place it can be used is on a speedway. It's fuel supply will last all of 17 minutes.
It's my dream car.
The wright brothers first flight didn't even last a minute. It was worth it.
Utility isn't the only measure of value.
I'm just wondering how the hell you steer the thing. You know that a bunch of idiots wont be able to figure it out and will splatter like a loogie on the side of a building. That's probably the biggest reason the FAA is going to give a big nono to this.
The prototype can hardly leave the ground.
... You'll find that one of the main reasons they've never taken off, aside from the extreme risk and cost, is they're *incredibly* hard to control! The throttle's extremely sensitive, the power is immense, and if point it the wrong way, you'll either spin out of control, or plummet.
Just like a jet fighter.
That's why you build the control algorithm into a $10 10MHz microcontroller - it can compensate faster than humans.
The gas mileage on these things is going to suck, right when gas hits $10-20:gal when they finally arrive. Maybe jetpacks and flying cars will inspire inventors to produce alternate energy sources for them, just like Rudolf Diesel originally planned for the engine he invented.
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make install -not war