Slashdot Mirror
Dubai Buys Commercial Jetpacks For Firefighters (martinjetpack.com)
_Sharp'r_ writes: Want to fly a jetpack? Join the fire department in Dubai. In a skyscraper filled city where cops drive Ferraris and Lamborghinis, it was actually cheaper to buy twenty $150K jetpacks (plus two simulators) for fire rescue rather than find 2700 ft ladders. Slashdot has had stories about these coming for five years. A VR-headset based jetpack flight-simulator for the masses would be fun, too, even better if the object were to put out fires in skyscrapers..
This is 'prestige' buy more than anything else. My suspicion is that these have almost no practical use in any real emergency situation. The comments under one of last year's articles seem to agree with me.
How much water or other suppressant can it carry? Doesn't help if you can get to a fire, and not have anything to put it out.....
Yes, no shit they are dangerous. Life is cheaper in Dubai, so ironically they are ending up beta testing something that we would never dare to try.
It's pretty pathetic how collectively risk-averse we are nowadays (I include myself and my country in that remark).
They are commercially available Jetpacks dammit! They are incredibly fucking cool! What is wrong with you all?
Why does nobody have anything positive to say about personal fucking flying machines? What would it take to get you jaded miserable sods excited?
Come on, they aren't even trying! So we have these jetpacks, and a news article about them. It has video of a guy talking about them, a guy riding in a jetpack training simulator, and some CGI shots from inside the simulator. Where the hell is the video of the actual jetpack in use in real life? What the hell?
Also, these things tend to have heavy weight restrictions. No way it can carry a firefighter, in full gear, holding a full grown Adult - not even a thin one.
About the only use for this might be to save a kitten or a child. Maybe a very thin women.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
While pressurized water jet packs, commonly used over water, might be interesting - they cannot climb to high heights as the weight and forces from the supply hose limits you to something like 30-60 feet. Nowhere near thousands. Secondly the peroxide jet packs have very low weight capacity and run for only 1-2 minutes, probably no more than four tops before needing extensive refueling and servicing. You couldn't even fly to 2800 feet and back down again, much less try to save someone.
it would be more practical, but less fun, to try just about any alternative.
I know as the submitter I'm the only one who read TFA, but it carries 265 lbs and can be either piloted (for surveillance) or else remotely controlled.
So the idea is to go look at the fires spread, look for people trapped, etc... and as a last resort send it up under remote control to pick-up a person or two.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
Back when I was in the fire academy, we learned how to control a house so that the house wasn't randomly splaying around.
No, scratch that. Gravity usually takes care of that for us. Most houses I've ever seen are actually rather stationary.
I see the UAE is continuing its fine tradition of having more money than sense.
Oh, tell me they're going to send a guy up on one of these with a high pressure hose! I'd pay good money to see that!
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
Not only that, but 2700 feet of pressurized fire hose probably has a significant weight even before you open the valve. If 4 feet of hose hold one gallon, that would be roughly 5,000 pounds of water (not counting the weight of the hose itself or the butterfly resting on the handle). 200 horsepower is not enough. Furthermore that bulky contraption is not nearly as sexy as the ancient jetpack that James Bond used.
...omphaloskepsis often...
I think we all agree that people wearing jetpacks are not going to do much to put out a fire, but how about heavy-lift quadcopters that can haul up pressurized tanks of flame retardant foam? They could make periodic landings to swap out empty tanks and batteries for full ones, and they could actually pump meaningful volumes of foam or gel into the upper floors.
Also, how cool would it be if they would swing a harness attached to a bungee cord to people in windows waiting to be rescued, and have the people do a bungee jump "anchored" to a quadcopter? From skyscraper heights, it would be a lot safer than jumping into air pillows.
Relax guys, there are no real fire fighters in Dubai. It's just for looks. They got so much money, they let everything burn to the ground.
Oh, Dubai. Is that the place where you can beat your wife unconsciousness in public, and nobody cares?
I've heard that in a lot of oil rich countries that the stairways of their skyscrapers are used just to store things. Their mentality is that a concrete building would never burn. It's all about the fire load inside of the building, and if your paths of emergency egress is blocked, then your fatality rate is going to be much higher. A regularly inspected fire pump/sprinkler system, automatic magnetic doors closers, and training coupled with a safety plan isn't that expensive or difficult in the context of running a high rise. Followed properly, it will be the safest place you can be in.
Sig: I stole this sig.
For the month after delivery, when we get the first jet pack assisted terrorist attacks.
It's more like a manned/unmanned drone. After watching their first responder sales video I might actually be more confused about what it's first responder role might be. Who knows. Maybe Dubia will do something amazing with it.
Quack, quack.
I'm just waiting: given how incompetent and disobedient of basic safety practices so many drone operators are, and how they like to rubberneck at disasters, I'd expect the first firefighter death from tangling with a drone to occur in the first year.
even better than in the US.
It's horrible to be poor in Dubai, even worse than in the US.
Absolutely no fucking way this will *ever* 'pick-up a person' via remote control. Without trained rescue personnel on hand you aren't going to have people just climb aboard a wobbling contraption 2000 ft off the ground without a high likelihood of plunging to their death. And if you can get a rescue worker to the site you don't need the helicopter ('Jetpack' is just marketing after all). And yes I DID read TFA.
top of a 2000ft towering inferno, I would take my chance with the backpack even if I had a 95% chance of plummeting to my death. better than 100% chance of roasting alive.
Yet more proof of what happens when fools get their hands on too much money. To say that the rulers of the emirates have their priorities misplaced is putting it mildly.
Who decides who on your floor gets to try first?
They are not jetpacks since they do not use jet propulsion.
To buy base rigs for every resident/worker in the Burn.
*insert pithy sig here*
I guess these could get up to the 150th floor to offer some assistance. If the building is on fire, there will be all kinds of up and down drafts happening, the turbulence will be a huge challenge. There will be soot and ash to plug up air filters.
Imagine being up 1500ft, when the engine suddenly is at 30% power. The air filter sucked in a pound of ash, and now you are heading down. The vehicle will be dropping maybe as slow as 40mph, but that is still gonna hurt when you hit the ground. They have ballistic parachutes, and they probably will open when deployed above 1000ft, but where will you end up? The turbulence around the building may suck you into the fire or may prevent the parachute from opening. I am guessing if the engine lost power gradually, the person driving would hesitate, try to troubleshoot the problem, and then pull the 'chute a lot below the 1000ft level.
These are fun but dangerous toys. I don't seem them as being tools.
How about make the jetpack the firehose like those water jetpack things. I don't suppose it would be very effective, but that isn't really the point.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
OK, am I the only one who watched this?
JetPack Aviation JB-9 JETPACK - YouTube
World's only JetPack flies in New York - YouTube
If it's CGI it's pretty good...
In the long run we are all dead. - John Maynard Keynes (1883 - 1946)
So people are so absolutely shit-scared of drones that they'd rather throw some gimp into one of these "jetpacks" and place him in danger of his life (at a huge cost) rather than just fly a low-cost drone and perform the same surveillance role?
And when the MJP fails and falls from the sky, it's not just the pilot who gets to see Allah but also anyone who is unfortunate enough to be standing beneath when it hits.
At least it has a lovely ballistic parachute which (in a firefighting roll) will open just in time to cover the wreckage and bodies like a decorative shroud.
Why are they wasting their money buying a skidoo with fans when they could buy a *real* jetpack with real jet engines?
Absolutely no fucking way this will *ever* 'pick-up a person' via remote control. Without trained rescue personnel on hand you aren't going to have people just climb aboard a wobbling contraption 2000 ft off the ground without a high likelihood of plunging to their death. And if you can get a rescue worker to the site you don't need the helicopter ('Jetpack' is just marketing after all). And yes I DID read TFA.
You send up the rescue worker, who subsequently loads people in for the ride down. Very much as they do now for helicopter evacuations, using slings or litters. Nothing new in theory, just a different ride.
Drones ... cheaper & more fit for purpose??
I am a firefighter, and you are absolutely correct, there is no possible way this could be used for a suppression or rescue application. Lifting capacity is 265lbs according to the article, whereas a typical 1 3/4" attack hoseline weighs roughly 50 lbs per foot when charged with water. Even if it could lift it, at working pressures reaction force (the back pressure caused by the water discharge) can approach 90 pounds, depending on the nozzle pattern, which I can't imagine this device could handle. Moreover, the "pack" aspect of this forces the firefighter to operate without proper personal protective equipment, specifically SCBA (air pack). This alone renders it useless for structural firefighting.
Victim rescues are out, as well. American fire service ground ladders all have a rated strength of at least 750lb. This is intended to allow a firefighter and a heavy victim to descend at once, with substantial margin for safety. Firefighting PPE weighs about 50lbs. At 265lbs, this thing would offer the leanest gal on my company not even 100lbs of lifting capacity, and zero margin for safety. Non-fire "pick-off" rescues are conceivable, I guess, if the victim was a child and the rescuer very light, but I can't imagine a legitimate fire department that would allow an operation that put both the rescuer and victim at the degree of risk.
Perhaps this has some application in terms of transporting a single medic to the roof of a building, or some kind of law enforcement application that I can't get my head around, but I cannot imagine a realistic fire service application other than as a recruiting tool.
you mean one firefighter cannot put down an entire industrial fire with just a 1.5 inch hose like in Backdraft?
mfwright@batnet.com