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

Re:Jet Packs Are Still Hype!

[geekoid]

Have you seen the new video?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBGIQ7ZuuiU
I may take out a second mortgage to get one of these. She gets at least 100 feet int the air!

Jeez, do some research before posting.

Didn't Mythbusters debunk this?

[Duncan Blackthorne]

This thing looks almost exactly like something that Mythbusters built from purchased plans. They're far from being idiots, and they couldn't get the thing off the ground.

Re:Didn't Mythbusters debunk this?

[Duncan Blackthorne]

My math is fine.

We've been flying for, what, about a hundred years now? And this fellow has been working on this for roughly a quarter of that time and it still doesn't work?

Re:Jet Packs Are Still Hype!

[geekoid]

Nice try.
Here is the real one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBGIQ7ZuuiU

Re:Huh?

[cashman73]

A live video of the jetpack is available here.