REAL LIFE NEWS: A PRACTICAL JETPACK
by Hazed
I hate the daily commute to work. There’s so many things that can go wrong. Yesterday, the bus I was on broke down, while it was trying to switch lanes on a one-way system. It ended up blocking two and a half lanes of traffic, causing gridlock. This meant no other buses could get through, so after climbing out of the bus in the middle of the road, dodging the cyclists that were swerving around the jam, I had to find another way to get to work.
So the invention of the teleporter can’t come soon enough for me.
Meanwhile, how about a jetpack? That would get me to work quickly and easily. Trouble is, although people have been working on the idea of a jetpack for over one hundred years, until now all attempts have been too bulky for personal use, or only run for 10 seconds. Not much help with the daily commute.
I said, until now. Last week a new jetpack was unveiled by its inventor, who flew it around the Statue of Liberty in New York, pausing the salute and pirouette before landing again. There’s a video of the flight at the source link below.
The JB-9 jetpack runs on kerosene and uses two vectored jet engines. It can reach high speeds and altitudes and, crucially, it can fly for over 10 minutes, depending on the weight of the pilot. Ok, that’s still not enough to get me to work, but it’s a lot more impressive than anything produced previously.
This new jetpack has been invented by Australian businessman David Mayman. “I’ve been flying it off the public radar for some time,” he said. “It was time to bring it out of the closet, so to speak. I’ve spent my life in software and mining and fairly sensible occupations, but my overriding passion has been to build a jetpack, since I was very young.”
Mayman got his wish when he teamed up with Nelson Tyler, who had worked on the Rocketbelt flight project at the 1984 Olympics. He’s also been obsessed with creating a portable jetpack with decent endurance that anyone could fly. The two collaborated, and the JB-9 is the result – the first design that really does look and behave like everyone’s idea of a real jetpack.
The bad news is that they are not selling the JB-9 yet. Mayman explained, “We’ve had some people in the office writing some pretty large multi-million dollar cheques in front of us and we’ve said no. I want to be sensible about who’s got their hands on this thing. We have certain responsibilities here and in other parts of the world with countries that are friendly to the situation I’m in at the moment – expectations that we don’t go selling them willy-nilly.
“I’d wanna feel like we have an infrastructure to train them … we could technically just send them the unit in a box and say ‘good luck’ but it’s not necessarily going to end well if you’re doing 200 km/h, 5 feet off the ground, you know? It could be a monster. But we’re working on it. We’ll get there.”
The plan is to make the device able to stabilize itself, using sensors, accelerometers and other gizmos, and have it driven by computer. That means you’ll be able to fly without any training. Can’t wait.
As it stands, even with a mere 10 minutes flight time, the possible uses for the jetpack are huge. I would image military forces are definitely going to be interested.
Meanwhile, they are looking at the possibility of setting up a race series. That sounds exciting!
Source: http://www.gizmag.com/jetpack-aviation-new-york-flight/40286/
