Man has envied the birds of the air since they first lifted their eyes to the sky on a weary trek across the veldt. Ancient Icarus escaped from Minoan Crete with a set of wax bound wings his father made him, but struck with the sheer joy of flying ignored his father’s warnings and came too close to the sun, falling into the sea that now bears his name. One pre-revolutionary French noblewoman sighed at her first sight of an air balloon, saying that she knew technology, having won man freedom for earth’s surly bonds, would someday conquer death itself, lamenting only that she would never live to see the day herself. After balloons came Clément Ader in 1890 to prove that powered, heavier than air flight was possible. Orville and Wilbur took a little longer to demonstrate that one could take off unassisted, control the machine for a perceptible time and land it without breaking anything important.
From that time until now the technology progressed rapidly in the fixed wing lane. Rotary wing aircraft have gone from a bee in the bonnet of Michelangelo Leonardo (thanks, SSG Jeff) to a dreadful nuisance on carrier decks throughout the fleet an incredibly important contributor to battlespace dominance. But since at least the 40′s, each generation of young men had those among them that grew up fantasizing over someday owning a jet pack.
Jetpacks offered the teenage dreamer advantages that fixed and rotary wing aircraft could not: There would be no inconvenient airport commutes with a jetpack, and no queues at the baggage pick-up or parking lot. You could fly it to your girlfriend’s apartment with a twenty and a toothbrush in hand, land on the roof and be living the life of Riley. Neither would there be any of the inherent contradictions that go with helicopter flight, what with all of those specialized hovering skills and moving parts, built to the lowest bid, whirling at fantastical speeds and always in fatal opposition to one another.
But it was never practical, jetpack flight. Until now, or nearly:
Today’s unveiling of the Martin Jetpack is one of the marquee events at the Experimental Aircraft Association’s AirVenture, a weeklong air show that is drawing hundreds of thousands of people – and about 10,000 airplanes – to Oshkosh, Wis…
Theoretically, the jetpack can fly for 30 minutes, and rise to a height of 8,000 feet. But Glenn Martin said the flight envelope will be carefully tested over the coming months. Martin is opening the order book as of today, and said 10 to 20 vehicles could be sold by the time next year’s Oshkosh air show rolls around.
There’s video, which tells this old head that work remains to be done on accelerometers and gyroscopic stabilization before any of this can be made remotely safe. Unless you’ve got your own twosome of wing walkers chasing you all over hell and gone. And to be perfectly honest, it’s less a jetpack that Mr. Martin has developed than a lift fan – no one is going to set any speed records.
Still. It’s kind of groovy.
WANT!!!!!
Um, Lex, I think that helo’s were a bee in the bonnet of Leonardo, not Michaelangelo.
A bit noisy, don’t you think? Can’t imagine the neighbors would be too happy to see me depart or return.
Wonder how much the ground stabilizers cost to hire?
Alas, they’ll perfect this and I’ll be too old & frail to enjoy it.
One of the Bond movies has James using an individual jetpack to exit an airplane IIRC and descend into an ancient well which leads to a network of underground caves. Very exciting sequence, but it looked to me as if the stunt man was having trouble stabilizing himself.
Marianne
^^^ Bell Aerospace made a jetpack YEARS ago. It was a true hydrogen peroxide jet. Three prototypes were made: 1) was featured in Thunderball, sported by Sean Connery 2) Is owned by a private individual and was flown at the opening ceremonies at Barcelona 3) is in the Smithsonian. Why didn’t Bell market it? It only could carry about a minute of fuel. . .but come to think of it, that didn’t stop Boeing and the SuperBug. . .:)
Martin has been working this for years, and received a $1M grant and full access to NASA test facilities to work on it. Glad my tax dollars were well spent.
Who me? Autorotate?
You’ll put your eye out with that thing, kid.
Seems neither jet nor pack, by my reckoning.
Once had a boss who’s childhood family friends included one of the men who worked for Bell. Pat’s story of the story of the orignal jet pack was:
They needed someone to test fly it. They wandered the halls asking for a volunteer. Not a pilot, mind you, just anyone who would say yes. Seems a non-pilot at the plant did.
So, they all assemble in a big warehouse, with a block and tackle rigged from the central point of the ceiling. Man is strapped in, tied off to line hanging from above (for safety), and the duty working party of the curious manned the other end of the safety line.
Off the valiant dude goes on the contraption, free of the confining flat surface beneath. He commences to go round and round.
The line tenders, at the outside of the large circle, try to keep up. You’re getting the picture, I’m sure. So, the “pilot” is circumnavigating faster on the OODA loop than the safety people. Line tangles, Keystone Cop like atmosphere triumphs….No injuries, but a wild “first flight.”
He also said something about said family friend (a real test pilot) was the guy who made sure the X-1 was ready for Chuck Y. Something about being warned not to go too fast, but also something about a little too much nose down and an apology for going too fast the day before the sound barrier was broken by a real iron willed proper USAF pilot…history…ain’t it great?
Sea stories? Maybe, but then it was Pat Grause telling them.