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Jetpack Entrepreneur Creates Iron Man-Style Human Flying Suit (venturebeat.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the having-a-blast dept.

"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."

11 of 51 comments (clear)

  1. Itchy nose by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Can just imagine being caught up in the moment and then instinctively trying to scratch your nose when it gets itchy.

    1. Re: Itchy nose by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      I don't think I'll ever get over nacho grande

    2. Re: Itchy nose by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 2

      As do the people below you :-)

      --
      Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
  2. Hope he has really strong arms. by outofoptions · · Score: 2

    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.

    1. Re:Hope he has really strong arms. by scdeimos · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:Hope he has really strong arms. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Think Ironman. You point your hands at the ground. You fly with your hands down by your waist. (He actually has lots of video.)

      Now, whether it's April Fools or not...can't say. But he would have had to make a lot of effort to fake that video. ;)

    3. Re: Hope he has really strong arms. by davester666 · · Score: 2

      well, personally, I think it MIGHT be a bit better idea than having them the other way, as, while it is easier on the muscles to strap the jets to your arms, and then just have the jets pull your arms (and hopefully the rest of you) around, you also wind up with the hot exhaust gases flowing down your arms right into your face. And if one or more of the jets injests something and decides to puke it's guts out the back at high speed, someone then needs to have turbine bits pulled out of their face...assuming you can still see well enough to perform some kind of reasonable landing.

      I'm pretty sure, if this were a real "thing", you would really want some kind of mechanical exoskeleton to control the direction the jets are facing, including when there may be no human input (if say, the occupant becomes incapable of controlling it for some reason). Hopefully they will remember to program it so it doesn't bend your joints in ways they aren't naturally designed to...

      --
      Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
    4. Re:Hope he has really strong arms. by Oligonicella · · Score: 2

      Or the video in the article. However, if you watch the video, it's easy to see that this isn't practical. He only uses the boots a couple of times and they obviously interfere with his balance (0:12sec). The rest of the time he's essentially like being on a set of parallel bars, meaning everything's on his arms.

      It's easy to manipulate a human body once it's off the ground. Watch the video again. He has difficulty any time he gets tilted over maybe 15o. Because of the necessary power, he would be a pinwheel if he tried anything remotely like what Iron Man does.

  3. Re:slashdot really needs to sync its servers with by Known+Nutter · · Score: 2

    Not completely.

    Front page stories remained collapsed, with ads (I'm sorry, "sponsored content") remaining expanded.

    That's shitty.

    --
    Beware of the Leopard.
  4. Re:Funny thing about that... by davester666 · · Score: 2

    what are you talking about? I'm still here!

    --
    Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
  5. Fuel consumption is key: 725ml/min/turbine by jovetoo · · Score: 4, Informative

    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...