Jetman Attempts Intercontinental Flight

Last year we ran the story of Yves Rossy and his DIY jetwings. Yves spent $190,000 and countless hours building a set of jet-powered wings which he used to cross the English Channel. Rossy's next goal is to cross the Strait of Gibraltar, from Tangier in Morocco and Tarifa on the southwestern tip of Spain. From the article: "Using a four-cylinder jet pack and carbon fibre wings spanning over 8ft, he will jump out of a plane at 6,500 ft and cruise at 130 mph until he reaches the Spanish coast, when he will parachute to earth." Update 18:57 GMT: mytrip writes: "Yves Rossy took off from Tangiers but five minutes into an expected 15-minute flight he was obliged to ditch into the wind-swept waters."

Comments

He already failed

[SoCalChris]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article6931566.ece

Better luck next time.

Re:Engineering Effort?

[zippthorne]

He's evolving down from "skydiving" to a workable personal jetsuit, rather than up from "rocket skating." An early iteration had no engines at all, just a delta-wing personal glider (and it could probably be considered as an incremental improvement over the "wing suit" which came after the "balloon suit"...)

It's just safer this way. If he fails, he's ditches the wing and activates "plain old skydiving" mode with a parachute. If he'd started from the ground on the first try, there are dozens of places where a failure means death without any fall-back options at all.

In previous interviews he has stated than an eventual goal is to do a complete flight including takeoff.