Who knew that the secret to a great jetpack was strapping a giant, powerful, dangerous hose to your back and jetting above a body of water? Required viewing: video after the jump.
You know how some jerk in a water gun fight always cheats by grabbing the hose? Well, this pilot could totally beat that guy at his own game.
PopSci’s Adam “Easy Joke” Weiner has worked out the physics of a super crazy Japanese water jetpack. Science is cool and all, but I just like watching this guy get tossed across a lake.
newVideoPlayer("/jetpackcanyon_giz.flv", 512, 308,""); Stuntman, jet pack pilot, and Evel Knievel-wannabe without the Elvis suit Eric Scott has broke a world record by flying 450 metres in 21 seconds over the Royal Gorge in Colorado, 312 metres over the Arkansas River. Pardon my French, but it has to take some balls to do this jump. Some balls and a hydrogen peroxide-powered jet pack with a carbon fibre design.
I don’t expect you mere wingless mortals to truly appreciate the accomplishment of a pilot who just crossed the 35km English Channel with a jetpack—that’d be like someone who can’t read claiming to love the study of Cuneiform—but from one rocket man to another, I salute you, Yves Rossy.
There’s more than a little scepticism surrounding the new Martin Jetpack. Promising a new era of ultralight flight, many of the claims (altitude capabilities and safety, especially) sound too good to be true. Before we took our test flight, we asked Glenn Martin, inventor, some of the tougher questions that we hadn’t seen asked anywhere else. Being a good sport, he actually answered them:
newVideoPlayer("/MartinJetpackFINALmovie_ga2.flv", 506, 423,""); “Don’t cover your ears, this is what you paid to see!” Glenn Martin shouts to me over the apocalyptic roar of an F22 fighter jet performing a leisurely flyby. He’d abruptly broken off a conversation with someone else just to make this point–before we’d even been introduced and hours before I flew his pack. “That’s 3.15 billion of your tax dollars at work!”
I flip the ignition switch and 113kg of engines, turbines and gasoline roar hello. In terms of horsepower, I was carrying a small sports car on my back. I’d like to say that I grin confidently and give the cameras a wink, like some young Chuck Yeager or Evel Knievel, but the smile leaves my face.
Jetpacks are great, but never could they reach the levels of ridiculousness this strap-on helicopter provides with its rocket-powered rotor blades. The pack is powered by two hydrogen fuel canisters and the rockets at the end of the blades negate the need for a tail rotor. It’s entirely possible this is just a drawing that will never actually get made. But as DVICE points out, Tecnologia Aeroespacial Mexicana, the firm that designed this, made an actual prototype of their last jet pack. So I’m holding my breath for some trial videos to hit YouTube. [Tecnologia Aeroespacial Mexicana via DVICE]
We don’t ask for much here at Gizmodo, but what we really, really want is a jetpack that costs $200. Sure, we have brought you the deal with jetpacks before, but we want something that lasts longer than two minutes, (so do our girlfriends.) Also, we would not mind a Jetsons type transportation mode that costs less than $200,000; to be exact, a $200 price point would be ideal. So, what would we do with our stratosphere explorers?
