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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..
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.....
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?
Even after decades, planes and helicopters are inherently unsafe. A jet pack is similar to a chopper so no amount of beta-testing is going to fix fundamental safety problems.
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.
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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.
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...
Recent Stability and engine tests
5000 ft. test from 2011, including testing the emergency chute.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
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.
More importantly it's likely to cause an emergency of its own.
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 never understood why they don't just make buildings out of non-flammable material.
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.
Being a firefighter is dangerous; damned dangerous. Going up in a jetpack to get a good, close-up look at a fire it a skyscraper isn't going to change that one way or the other. I'm sure that they'll have no difficulty finding people to use them.
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It's hard getting tenants to give up using paper and switch to stone tablets.
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*
Being a firefighter is dangerous; damned dangerous.
In the US it is actually a safer (2.5 deaths per 100,000 workers) than average (3.5 deaths per 100,000 workers) job.
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?
Ok if you think asbestos is so safe go and find some and try breathing in the dust.. I heard one of you idiots say DDT was safe the other day. Next you will be telling us being shot in the head with a gun is safe - 'It wasn't the gun shots or the holes in their bodies that killed those children it was the evil commie rays from Ronald Reagan's dead corpse...'
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
From a safety standpoint, there is a major difference between helicopters and 'jet packs': given sufficient altitude/air speed, the helicopter can auto-rotate (essentially, glide) to a controlled landing. If you lose power with these toys, your only option is a parachute.
[As I recall, a ballistic chute is either standard equipment or available as an option - but I haven't been to their site lately, so don't quote me.]
It's a duct fan so I would say it doesn't have the inherent unsafe problems facing a helicopter as it relates to air-lifting someone out of a dense urban area. See footage of the helicopter in Brazil which snagged a power line and caused mayhem.
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.
you mean one firefighter cannot put down an entire industrial fire with just a 1.5 inch hose like in Backdraft?
mfwright@batnet.com