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Practical Jetpack Available "Soon"

Posted by kdawson on from the coolest-desire-left-to-mankind dept.

Ifandbut was one of several readers to point out the arrival in Oshkosh of the first practical jetpack. It was invented by a New Zealander Glenn Martin, who has been working on the idea for 27 years. He plans to sell the gizmos for somewhere in the neighborhood of $100K. While previous attempts at jetpacks have flown for at most a couple of minutes, Mr. Martin's invention can stay aloft for half an hour. Both "practical" and "jetpack" may need quotation marks, however: The device is huge and it's incredibly noisy. And, "It is also not, to put it bluntly, a jet. 'If you're very pedantic,' Mr. Martin acknowledged, a gasoline-powered piston engine runs the large rotors. Jet Skis, he pointed out, are not jets, and the atmospheric jet stream is not created by engines. 'This thing flies on a jet of air,' he said. Or, more simply, it flies."

4 of 237 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Jet Packs Are Still Hype! by clarkkent09 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Wrong jetpack. This is the one tfa talks about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyb6vnX1My0

    It barely gets off the ground too though

    --
    Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
  2. That's no jetpack... by elynnia · · Score: 3, Informative
    ...that's a a ducted fan. As fancy as they are, making a personal flying device out of one was just a matter of improving the power-to-weight ratio.

    Although, having read the article, that may be much more simple than an actual jet-engined jetpack for the time being.

    -Aly.

  3. Re:$100k? by rcw-work · · Score: 3, Informative

    Second, try taking off or landing a Cessna in your driveway.

    Unless your driveway is in the sticks, you'll only be able to take off and land this thing there once. After that, the neighbors will have taken out restraining orders preventing you from operating it near them.

  4. Nope, there's a backup by localroger · · Score: 3, Informative

    The existing device includes a ballistic recovery system, basically an explosive-launched parachute that you deploy when something goes wrong. The main trick with that is to be flying high enough for the parachute to deploy and float you down. It's a common thing in ultralight aircraft and probably accounts for a lot of the cost. Most ultralight fatalities occur because the failure occurred too low for the BRD to deply, or it fouled in a propeller or something.

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