At long last the object of many geek's desires is on the market, a jetpack that actually works.
Older readers will remember Sean Connery's
thrilling escape from the bad guys using a realistic looking jet pack in
Thunderball. Younger readers may have seen the
opening of the 1984 Olympics where a pilot flew a
Bell Aerosystems rocket pack across the stadium.
In fact the idea of a jet pack is as old as World War Two, where the German army developed a primitive jetpack that would allow engineers to jump over minefields. Since then the idea has been tried and tried again but one fundamental problem remained - fuel.
No-one has managed to come up with a jet pack capable of sustained flight, although a
recent example that uses water power was a brave attempt. Now a New Zealand company,
Martin Aircraft, is taking orders for a workable jet pack that gives half an hour's flight time and runs on ordinary unleaded.
I predict this is going to become the transport device of choice for the well-healed geek in Silicon Valley. The device itself costs $90,000 and consists of a five by five foot unit with twin turbofan engines and a carbon fibre body.
At 250lb it's hardly the easiest thing to move around but the cool factor is through the roof and you won't need a pilot's licence to operate one. Imagine arriving at the office in one of these babies, or stopping off at a petrol station to top up the tank.
Now I wonder where we can get a review unit...
10 Mar 2010
