Practical Jetpack Available "Soon"

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."

Comments

Huh?

[clang_jangle]

TFS concedes this is neother "practical" nor a "jet pack", yet still trumpets the headline "Practical Jetpack Available 'Soon'"? Well, I guess all it needs is a line at the end saying, "Ha -- made you look!".

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

It brings to mind the Ogden Nash rhyme:

A child does not have to be very clever
to realise that "soon" means "never".

Re:Huh?

[vikstar]

They get around the whole 'jet' naming problem by saying that 'This thing flies on a jet of air'. Yep, and I love my home latpop computer, it's so super... so it's a supercomputer.

Re:Huh?

[decoy256]

Like they said in the article... the first manned flight was a whopping 12 seconds long and probably wasn't very "impressive"... but I bet you'd still like to have been at Kitty Hawk. The point is that this is a great first step towards practical personal flight. While it may not be practical right now to own one (100k is out of my price range), how expensive were the first PCs? Now they're dirt cheap. I really can't stand all the whiners on /. who down play everyone else's achievements... what was the last thing you invented? Jackass. Honestly, you people get more excited about some obscure scientific discovery that won't have any practical applications for decades and yet something that is tangible and available NOW is just pissed on. Get real and get a life.

Didn't the myth busters try to make one and failed

[Joe The Dragon]

Didn't the myth busters try to make one and failed at it?

Jet Packs & You

[Manip]

The concept of a personal flying machine (e.g. Cars, Bikes, Jet Packs) is two fold at the moment.

1) Energy / Power (inc. Storage & Delivery)
2) Safety

Now I'm going to assume for the sake of this post that we could solve the second one if it was viable to do anyway.

The real kicker is really energy. We need a very rich energy source that is cheap, light, small in volume, and safe.

We can often tick two or three of those boxes but no energy source comes remotely close to hitting all four. Hydrogen for example is light, small in volume, but there are questions over safety and cost.

If we invented some kind of completely safe energy source that had the energy output approaching a nuclear reactor and weighted very little we could be in flying cars within a few years.

But frankly such dreams are far off.

Re:Jet Packs & You

[lennier]

"Hydrogen for example is light, small in volume..."

No, actually, that's exactly wrong. Being light by definition means it is NOT "small in volume". It takes a huge volume of H2 in room temperature gas form to store a similar amount of energy to a heavier molecule. The volume problem is why it's a pain to store unless you go to cryogenics, hydrides, or other complicated systems.

Re:Jet Packs & You

[Sibko]

Hydrogen for example is light, small in volume, but there are questions over safety and cost.

Actually, Hydrogen is light, huge in volume, very safe, and inexpensive. There's a reason it was used to fly blimps, you know.

And before someone goes around throwing the hindenburg in everyone's faces, keep in mind that it was painted with rocket fuel, and that more than half the people on board survived the crash. The same cannot be said for your average airplane.

What gets me though, is that in the face of a personal flying machine that flies around in a video, and is capable of doing so for half an hour, you go on about how personal flying machines aren't possible. Flying cars are known as Helicopters, and your average person could likely afford a hot air balloon. Personal flying machines are everywhere - from cessna's to hang gliders. They're just not as ubiquitous as automobiles, nor as practical for getting around.

Re:Didn't the myth busters try to make one and fai

[hellwig]

Yeah, but they worked in TV time, which meant they had a week before the producer got bored and told them to do something else. This guy has been working 27 years, so I wouldn't doubt he put a little more effort in over that time.

Besides, the mythbusters fail to reproduce a lot of things, even when they know before hand it's not really a myth but actual fact.

Re:$100k?

[avandesande]

Someobody that is going to buy this isn't to buy it in place of a cessna.... it's an expensive toy, albit a very expensive one.

Re:$100k?

[hellwig]

This should classify as an ultra-light, meaning there's no pilot's license necessary, and you aren't tied-down by most of the traditional FAA regulations. Second, try taking off or landing a Cessna in your driveway.

If you want to talk impractical, look at the Segway. The thing costs over $5000 (USD), and for what, cause you're too lazy to walk somewhere, or too uncoordinated to ride a bicycle? Why not buy a moped for a hell of a lot cheaper?

This will fall into the same niche market as the Segway. People with too much money and nothing better to spend it or their time on.

Re:Jetpack?!?

[Guysmiley777]

Depends entirely on how much excess power it has. If he's hovering at 6' off the ground at 75% throttle, it's a pretty good guess he'll be able to go much, much higher. If he's at 90% throttle at 6', I would seriously doubt 3,000' would be possible.