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Jetpack Entrepreneur Creates Iron Man-Style Human Flying Suit (venturebeat.com)
"British aeronautic engineering startup Gravity unveiled a new human flying suit Friday," writes VentureBeat. An anonymous reader quotes their report.
It's a six-engine jet-propelled personal flying apparatus that the company says will take regular humans to superhero heights at several hundred miles per hour. At the moment, flights are limited to just a few feet above the ground. The suit includes six miniaturized jet engines, two of which are worn on each of the pilot's arms, and two of which can be mounted on the feet, or, in later incarnations of the suit, low on the pilot's back. Each of the jet engines gets fuel from a backpack...
Gravity says the human body is "the airframe" and that your arms and legs serve to both direct and control thrust... "We've already had a few comparisons to Tony Stark, but this is real-world aeronautical innovation,"Gravity founder Richard Browning said in a statement. "We are serious about building a world-changing technology business. We stand at the very beginning of what human propulsion systems will do."
Browning tells TechCrunch "It's no way as dangerous or crazy as it looks."
Gravity says the human body is "the airframe" and that your arms and legs serve to both direct and control thrust... "We've already had a few comparisons to Tony Stark, but this is real-world aeronautical innovation,"Gravity founder Richard Browning said in a statement. "We are serious about building a world-changing technology business. We stand at the very beginning of what human propulsion systems will do."
Browning tells TechCrunch "It's no way as dangerous or crazy as it looks."
Can just imagine being caught up in the moment and then instinctively trying to scratch your nose when it gets itchy.
There is a reason the original jet pack was on the back. He's put a lot of effort and probably money into a design that is questionable at best. The thrusters on the legs present a problem if they start to push him heels over head. Having human joints absorbing the brunt of the forces and relying on them to provide stability in flight is just plain stupid. If there is a problem, using your hands is out. Just so many things wrong.
Not completely.
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That's shitty.
Beware of the Leopard.
When I saw they changed the slogan to "Slacker news," I considered that they were embracing the site's steady exodus of intellectuals.
This must be a late April Fool's thing. TFA's picture shows the gas turbines installed on his hands backwards - the intakes are pointing towards his elbows, the exhausts towards his hands. Unless you're expected to fly backwards and land using hand-stand maneuvres.
Yes he trained much like a gymnast to make sure he could hold his weight on his arms, you need a lot of core strength, it's in the video...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZ05iAuIAlc
Also he took the jets of his boots after one near backflip, their position makes them rather precarious for control and you would need very strong legs too.
And the comments section here has orange headlines, causing me eye cancer :-/
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
I was thinking that while Gravity says "the human body is 'the airframe'...", gravity says this is a bad idea. But on further reflection I realized that if something goes wrong, it may be better to be alone up there with a parachute already strapped to you, than to be trapped inside an airplane with no 'chute.
On the other hand, if the suit fails while you're below parachute height but still a couple dozen metres or more in the air, break out the butter, 'cause you're toast. Ironman aside, there is no suit of armor that will save you from the rapid deceleration at the end of such a fall.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
He's getting extra "thrust" from being near the ground. This design can hover, but it can't fly.
Maybe later he'll add more thrusters, or more powerful ones.
a visit to the emergency room.
Imagine a couple of these engines on a small winged experimental aircraft!
I don't think those earplugs are going to cut it when strapping 6 engines (yours for only $24,000) close to your body.
According to JetCat, that turbine uses 725ml/min of fuel... For 6 turbines, that's more than 4 liter per minute... several hundred miles an hour peak speed in very, very short hops...