This Weird Flying Board Is A Jetpack For Your Feet

Too high to hover, too low to be a plane
Flyboard In Flight
How far above the ground does someone have to be before they're just flying and not hovering? Screenshot by author, from YouTube

“Flying machine” needs to come back in style. The catch-all term, which conjures up Jules Verne as much as anything else, is the term we need in an age where everything from maglev boards to motorized scooters are hoverboards. “Flying machine” instead captures the simple beauty of a device like Zapata Racing’s Flyboard, an aerial maneuvering platform with a human on top.

The Flyboard isn’t the first board-shaped flying machine we’ve seen, though it seems more in company with self-styled jetpacks than hoverboards.

In a test flight, it flew for almost four minutes, and reached a top speed of 34 mph. Watch that flight below, complete with unnecessary soundtrack and computer voice:

 

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Kelsey D. Atherton Avatar

Kelsey D. Atherton

Contributor, Tech

Kelsey D. Atherton is a military technology journalist who has contributed to Popular Science since 2013. He covers uncrewed robotics and other drones, communications systems, the nuclear enterprise, and the technologies that go into planning, waging, and mitigating war.