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The Truth About New Jet Pack Hype
An anonymous reader writes "This week a sub-$100,000 rocket belt was unveiled and will be on sale this summer, but that's the sad thing: it's still not a real jet pack. Here's a fascinating inside look at the human-flight industry, full of law-suit scandals, technical difficulties, fuel-economy woes and endless delays. The good news? It all points to the next generation of rocketeer research, with real applications for medical rescue and military technology actually coming on the horizon. From the article: 'With a little patience, and a little funding, we could actually have the pleasure of grumbling over regulatory issues we never dreamed possible. Like being limited to specific kinds of air strips, because the jet strapped to your back is classified by the FAA as an ultralight. Or being required to wear a ballistic parachute, because Amarena's Thunderjet design could reach altitudes as high as 10,000 feet (and, for the record, speeds of up to 160 mph, provided someone can solve wind-resistance issues).'"
It hasn't been tagged with whatcouldpossiblygowrong yet!?
My humor is probably your flamebait
Just because it looks cool in a Bond movie doesn't mean that it will ever be practical in real life.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I suspect if you could "solve the wind resistance issues" most airborne transportation could get one hell of a lot faster than that.
Two fun facts about this project that were glossed over in the old school movies of these things in action are the NOISE and the short flight times.
The TV series Wings covered the first generation of these jet packs and broke my heart when they revealed the true story behind the promotional movies. The pilot wasn't flying for the whole movie, of course, the film crew filmed a few seconds of flight, the pilot would land, refuel and the whole process was repeated and pasted together in post-production. They also dubbed new sounds over the outrageous screech/howl the original packs made.
Watching the film as a kid, I clearly remember thinking there's no way the thing could fly for that long, but the excitement of seeing a guy fly through the woods overcame my skepticism. Clearly though, even with the new films and fuels, we have the same jet pack, the same limited range, the same ear shattering exhaust note. Nothing new IMO.
of your flying car. You could go anywhere!
When we had a service here in Vancouver the initial problem was that if it was classified as a boat it was not allowed to go faster than 15 knots in the harbour -
;)
and if classified as an airplane it was not allowed to fly under the Lions Gate bridge.
Some technologies simply don't fit in our pre-conceived systems.
Think of the problems we'll have when we finally crack the problem of personal anti-gravity for our vehicles
Been there, done that, paid for the T-shirt
and didn't get it
As soon as they make one that's cheap and looks cool enough so that it makes Jennifer Connelly fall in love with me I'll be on board. Until then, I wanna try one of those sweet wing suits out over some Norwegian fjords!
I just had a mental image of soccor moms firing themselves into walls at biblical porportions, drinking a latte, chatting on the cel phone,
I hope there is an IQ minimum *shudder*
Hi, I Boris. Hear fix bear, yes?
Or any "reasonable" height for that matter. Jet pack use does not fail gracefully. No glide ratios or gyroscopic descents, just Ahhhhhh... splat. A parachute sounds like a fairly good idea here.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
You can only store so much energy in a package that is liftable by a human being. That has always been, and has remained, their biggest practical failing. A jet or rocket pack that only gives you even 10 or 20 minutes of flight time (much less the more-typical 20 seconds), is just not very practical.
You insensitive clod, you just killed my dreams of being the rocketeer
:'(
As long as I can build my rocket ship with it I don't care if the flight time is only 35 seconds!
"Solving" wind resistance? Golly gee, that sounds like a great idea. Maybe after that's in the bag, we'll "solve" the energy it takes to boost an object into orbit, or we'll "solve" the atmosphere lowering the power yield of terrestrial solar panels.
Yahoo! Pipes are awesome. How awesome? http://pipes.yahoo.com/jesdynf/slashdot
...from holding my breath.
I solve wind resistance issues by coating myself with astroglide.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Including, please, banning such toys from any and all airspace that anyone with a proper pilot's licence might want to fly in. I've had one near miss with a toy already and that's enough thanks.
(OK, it was just a child's balloon, and I didn't hit it. But I really don't want to come across untrained idiots who can take my aircraft out of the sky if I hit them.)
Why would you need a ballistic parachute at 10,000 feet? Wouldn't a normal parachute work just as well at that height?
But, I can see how it would help at 30 feet...
It looks like a jet pack. It's a pack, on the guy's back, and it flies -- apparently with some kind of jet-like propulsion system. Neither article appears to answer this question that the summary gives as axiomatic. Anyone know?
everything in moderation
is that I could really use a Jet pack to get the aerobird swift out of a tree. It's about 75ft up, and I tried the wrist rocket / 65lb uglywire(p.s., it's more like 25lb) method to yank it out w/o any success.
Anyone know where I can just "borrow" a rocket belt in the south puget sound area?
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
In case you haven't seen it before, you outta take a look at the real jet-man. No, I'm not kidding. Know your limitations and work with them!
BTW: this guy is FREAKIN NUTZS but I sure wish I had cajones like his - this would be such a RIP!!!!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
On model aircraft people often use ducted fans instead of real jets. I wonder if that would be a better solution for personal flight systems like this?
How about one that's somewhat of a jet-assisted glider design?
... For I am the perfect jetpack. I work for hours on minimal fuel, and the fuel I consume is biodegradable.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHYXrqoS08o
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'm setting your self promoting blog to be my new home page.
Is that most people seem unable to do very well in two dimensions; drive the freeway much? Everyone thinks a flying car would be GREAT because they envision themselves as the only people having one. Now imagine the sky over San Francisco completely packed with these things. You take off in the morning, and instead of just looking two ways before getting onto a street, you have to check above you and on all sides before lifting into the air, only to be smashed into by some hippie who just came through that patch of fog. Oh, and then you fall 50 feet to the ground and explode. "The solution is to have predetermined lanes of travel for flying cars!", you say? I know, we can call them "sky-roads", and there will be on-patterns and off-patterns and little narrow residential sky-roads, and of course for safety you will all fly at the same altitude.
Klingon programs don't timeshare, they battle for supremacy.
from the article:
"The number of companies looking to sell them to private consumers has increased by as much as 33 percent in the last week alone... while last year there were two commercial rocket-belt manufacturers... there are now three."
Going from two to three would be a 50% increase, not "as much as 33 percent"
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
There's a company called JetCat that makes miniature jet turbine engines for model airplane use. In the past few years some daring individuals have strapped a few of these engines to their bodies and have flown. You may have seen the video's on YouTube(sorry, no links to YouTube while I'm at work). I'm disappointed there was no mention of this in TFA.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
I guess you never read the comic book.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
So, I wonder how much explosive a svelte terrorist could carry...
- T
I kid, I kid!
Obviously they're passing the savings from their borrowed VHS camcorder craptastic demo video to their customers. Wait, do they have customers? I just want one so I'm bitter.
The enemy of my enemy is quite possibly also my enemy. I've made a lot of enemies.
Much simpler and achieves the same goal. That goal being a wrecked model and down or burned to a crisp tree.
Try a long fishing pole with a heavy weight. Someone with a good cast will be able to snag the model for you. Use a big treble hook if all else fails. Be prepared to lose a lot of weights, hooks and line.
(sociopath) Offer the nearest 'climber monkey' kid a $10-$20 reward for climbing up and getting it down. If he falls 'think of it as evolution in action' (/sociopath ).
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Come on what's the danger in strapping a container of 98% hydrogen peroxide to your back? Sure 98% hydrogen peroxide is unstable, but its not that unstable. The only problem is getting 98% hydrogen peroxide these days, people are worried that terrorists could use it to make explosives or something.
Auto accidents kill millions annually. Most accidents are preventable incidents caused by human error - a very small portion are actually caused by vehicle failure.
The technology is being developed to allow vehicles to drive themselves. At some point this will be a feasible means of controlling vehicles safely.
The mainstream would never accept it. We want to be in control - we're more efficient than machines. We don't want to hand our freedom over to a system.
Many drivers struggle for lane discipline in 2 dimensions. They brake in corners and follow dangerous lines which would result in disaster if they had to make any changes due an unexpected lane blockage or vehicle movement. Add in a 3rd dimension. Add in the same resistance to a computer-controlled vehicle. Add in a more volatile fuel.
This would result in a disaster. Jet packs and flying cars are a dream and will remain so as long as we resist the incursion into our freedom.
Still a flying car with fly-by-wire controls and auto-levelling software would address some of it - I really can't see that in a jet pack though.
This sig contains a manual self-destruct. Kindly please put your foot through your monitor in 8 seconds.
you get behind some asshole on his cellphone.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Thanks for that very informative essay.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
We don't run over pedestrians any more. We just fall on them when we run out of fuel.
Definitely. Now we're going to need ways to get 45-year-old men wearing a spent rocket pack down from the top of a redwood tree.
Why do Slashdot articles always discuss military uses for any possible new technology? Are the editors all a bunch of war-fetishists or something?
Okay. There IS a limit, as shown by the other reply. But I concede your point. What I meant to say was: "There is a limit to the chemical energy you can fit into a package that is liftable by a human being."
Definitely the best article yet- sorry you didn't get the attention you wanted, but at least your article is better :)
These are technical problems that can be fixed. Put in a gyro and a directional laser and a computer to control it all and you're good to go. Maybe radar and collision avoidance software as well. You shouldn't have to worry about navigating around other objects in the air; your jet pack will have all the smarts it needs under the hood to take care of such things.
And while you're at it, you might as well add some control surfaces to augment directional control and stability, and how about a ballistic recovery parachute system in case of failure of your engine or thrust vectoring system, which also brings up the idea of maybe also some wings so you can glide to a better forced landing area in case you'd otherwise have to deploy the BRS over a really hostile place like a power transformer distribution station or a sewage treatment plant. And after you've got all that stuff added, you might as well be able to take a friend along for a ride too, so why not add another seat or two , and for passenger comfort how about an enclosed cabin too Next thing you know, you've ended up with one of these babies which would be very cool to own indeed.
All those technical ramifications for no jet packs are certainly valid, but what about those poor organizations against operating machinery while under the influence?
MADF just doesn't make any sense, unless you have a speech impediment.
Something like that suit the guy in the upcoming Iron Man movie wears. That would do me.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Yeah - the main problem will be knee injuries - there are enough dumbasses around that can't control a car in 2d..
On the other hand it's rather costly and injuries should be deadly in a good proportion of cases - might actually get rid of a bunch of lawyers that way.
That's a nice article. Thanks.
http://depletedcranium.com/?p=103
Surely you tried promoting it beyond Slashdot? I only see one link to it on Google.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Not to be a Troll, but every thing you say except for the lebensraum(more later) is a self-perpetuating cycle that is entirely a result of the American idea of entitlement(i.e. "Me and My kids are entitled to have the perfect life with no contact with reality").
The "White Flight" as it is occasionally known results in significant urban sprawl, economic stratification, abject poverty in the city center, increased strain on mass transit, depressed downtown economies, etc. And it doesn't solve any problems, it just results in an ever increasing commute time.
The method that cities use to survive and maintain their tax base is called annexation. The City expands its borders, recapturing the people who have moved to the suburbs, regaining its tax base(in some cases increasing it). Then the cycle repeats, people don't like living "in the city" so they move another 10 - 20 minutes away, and are annexed in the next round.
As far as the elbow room you crave, there are choices between an urban apartment and a horse farm in the country. I understand wanting a back yard, and even though I live downtown, I have one. I wanted to have room for a garden, and wanted to have a neighborhood where I knew my neighbors, but I could still easily walk to the city center. I'm perfectly happy where I am, I've been there for years, and have no intention of moving.
--The FNP
I wouldn't mind something like a "dragonfly pack" so that we could fly around like Tinkerbell. Perhaps with enough wingbeats per second, it could dynamically adjust to instabilities caused by the movement of your body, etc.
I can't wait to get my jet pack. Hobnobbing with Howard Hughes, fighting Nazis, and best of all, dating Jennifer Connelly. That's the life for me!
Proverbs 21:19
Can you imagine the panic that internal combustion engines, with their infernal racket and belching smoke, would induce in horses and other beasts of burden! It would be pandemonium in our streets! Bedlam! They're surely just a fad, but this nonsense must nevertheless be nipped in the bud. Ban horseless carriages now, before they become a scourge to our society!
Boundless Expansion, Self-Transformation, Dynamic Optimism, Intelligent Technology, Spontaneous Order- BEST DO IT SO!
But, what are you going to do? It is a free country...and lots of open land out there. And, when an area starts going 'downhill'....when poverty and crime starts creeping closer, it is natural for people of means to try to move away from it.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Anyhoo . . . not likely to happen anytime soon, but we can hope, right?
--The FNP