Flight of the Jetpack

Just another great example of Kiwi ingenuity. A Kiwi was the first to fly you know....! ; )

This is another failed attempt. The two "Safety Guys" are there to help lift it, not provide a safety spot. They also help contain the air, enhancing ground effect. A kid is the pilot to lower total weight, not to "show how easy it is to fly". Clearly this vehicle does not have the power to leave ground effect. It is also unstable my nature. The fans are too low, placing the center of blast acceleration BELOW the center of gravity. No amount of tweaking will get this to work. They should ask Paul Moller for his sucker list.

this doesnt promise anything. even if you could get your own jet pack whats the point? you cant fly it anywhere. it just becomes another toy that the average person today cant probably afford and lets face somthing WE DONT NEED. it is neat though i wont lie, and i have no problem for someone building them selves one and having fun with it. theres just no point to even try to market it though

what did the naysayers say again when the telephone was invented? they said it was just a toy. and look what we have now: cellphones!

Martin showed multi flights on video monitors in his tent at EAA that had the device being flown in New Zealand with his safety guys NOT holding the guards- the video also showed it taking off with the guys not making contact- it WAS able to lift itself with a pilot without help in NZ- so I think the only reason that they made contact at EAA was for SAFETY and insurance reasons...

This is some of the UNASSISTED video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58YXSwiyRco

...And as you can see by the video, it never leaves ground effect.
As Paul Moller pointed out, it is very hard to raise money for this type of research. Taking advanced orders is really the only way to do it besides promoting it to the military. But in taking orders and presumably people’s money, there is an obligation to be truly forthcoming. It has been a secret for 27 years, yet open air test flights are still “only months away.” Do you honestly believe they have never once tried to leave 6 feet for “safety reasons”? How about a crash test dummy and remote control? At this point, all they are selling is a dangerous hovercraft.

PhilInYork, that's hardly just a "kid." He's 16 and almost as big as his father.

I doubt it will work, though. The disc loading on such small fans is way too high, upping power requirements from the engine. Some kind of wearable helicopter would have better potential. There's also no failsafe system. If the engine dies, you'll plummet to your death. No gliding or autorotation here.

I'm a skeptic on the utility of these things for a decade or 2 at the very least - materials and improving power/weight for propulsion might one day render them useful though.

Some of the comments here are quite ignorant however. Centre of gravity; the powerplant is behind the pilots knees, surely lowering the CoG. Safety; if you visit the website of the maker, it will have a ballistic parachute. Bad luck if you're too low & slow I guess, but safe for most circumstances.

I can *almost* see a market beyond Toy for such a craft. Imagine in many cities a direct commute with a flight time of 15-30min (as the makers aim for). This could be equivalent to 1-2 hrs by car. A direct route could of course be over water too (Auckland NZ is an example i'm thinking of).

One day...

I followed this one for awhile before I gave up

http://www.21stcentury.co.uk/technology/solotrek_xfv.asp

Are you sure they aren't from Australia? That jetpack sounds just like a didgeridoo when it's idling.

I'm surprised about all the negative feedback. I think it is amazing that a small team of people have a working prototype.

Another company got a little farther along with a similar design. "Bud The Chud" has a link, but this is the more current site. While the video is from 2005, you can see that it is working very well.

http://www.trekaero.com/index.html

Hasn't this one already been done?

http://rotorcraft.arc.nasa.gov/research/solotrek.html
http://www.trekaero.com/Trek_VTOL_Springtail_Vehicles.htm

All I know is, I want one! Maybe this will be the one to break through...

Here's hoping.

I'm not saying it was, but the demo came off looking like a scam. When you can
A. Fly the length of the runway and back at 30'.
B. Complete three touch and goes.
C. Return to show center.
C. Hover and land.
All untethered You will prove your concept.

Thumbs up for keeping safety first.
Good luck, you will get there.

I would rather wait until they have a flying suit. I would use either stacked flywheels or a small injection reactor to supply the power for either a jet engine or an electromagentic field engine. The jet engine would either be a motor-driven turbine shaft jet or a compression-field engine that would have no moving parts. The electromagnetic field engine would circulate a displacement field that would displace the electromagnetic fields of the earth like a UFO is supposed to do. The direction of the circulation and the speed would determine the direction and speed of the flyer.

The range with flywheels might be over 500 miles and it would take less than ten minutes to respin the flywheels back up to speed. With a reactor it would have virtually unlimited range. If a particle field is placed around the suit, it could fly at supersonic speed without the suit melting from air friction since the field would take the friction.

I knew this technology would be invented. Anything imagined on film eventually comes to be. Some things take longer to be invented, but before you know it some engineers will get together and say, "I wonder how we can build something like that." I'd say another 20 years (only because of lack of funding and big money interest) and this technology will be well on its way to becoming available in the consumer market. Of course, then there's the more complicated issue of licensing people to fly them, HAHA... Imagine that! I suppose that would suggest that the technology is possible but totally impractical.

it's a novel concept. my memory of a jetpack is the one they used in lost in space. my opinion is there are too many variables to contend with here. something like the air scooter a 1 man coaxial heli is a much more viable concept plus they are quite a bit cheaper.

wow that is lame l a m e puts some more power into that puppy and get rid of those guys on the side of it

This looks like it can work.
It appears that most of the mass is at about shoulder height, making the center of gravity exactly where it should be.
The ducted fans look like they have more than enough power to lift a normal person, and did a very good job of lifting the pilot. The two safety helpers could never have made the difference in lifting the heavy machine and pilot (they would need to provide very large amounts of torque from their biceps so it's more likely that the machine actually worked) Like somebody mentioned above, the pilot may be a kid, but he appears to be fairly massive, so his age shouldn't figure into the math.
And if it's dangerous.... so? It's a prototype, and a home-grown one at that. They came very far for a group of average citizens with a new idea. And I'm sure that they're not planning on selling the current one for commercial use. More likely that the $100,000 is meant for a larger company that may take an interest in producing more refined versions of the machine.
And it's a cool idea! I like it!

I can see the use of this kind or aircraft in transportational and military feilds, but everybody from the government to engineering companys to private inventors have been trying to make a machine that is powerful enough and manuverable enough to be of any use for years. this is the farthest anybodies got. but it still isn't good enough to do anything usefull yet. i think the concept of the whole craft has to be rethought down to its power source and engines.

Phillnyork, you're obviously wrong when you said they assisted him in taking off at demonstration..... so obviously you must be one of those skeptics that, as usual, you don't know what your talking about...!

because you just can't see passed your nose..

This is not the jetpack of the future, that much is obvious.

- Let's try putting two jey motors on my sons back and then lift him up making it look like he can fly!

- Yeah that's a great idea!
lol