
Personal flight, once a pipe dream, is within our reach - blisterpeanuts
http://www.wsj.com/articles/is-the-jetpack-movement-finally-taking-off-1465221130
======
claar
Looks like a nice competition:

Jetpack Aviation JB-9/JB-10 (from this article):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3AwBSwFV2I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3AwBSwFV2I)

* Specs from [http://jetpackaviation.com/](http://jetpackaviation.com/):
    
    
      - Up to 10,000+ feet
      - Top speed > 100mph (>160kph)
      - Max flight time: 10+ minutes
    

Flyboard Air:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEDrMriKsFM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEDrMriKsFM)

* Specs from [http://zapata-racing.com/flyboardair-en](http://zapata-racing.com/flyboardair-en):
    
    
      - Up to 10,000 feet
      - Top speed of 93.2 mph (150 km/h)
      - Max flight time: 10 minutes

~~~
Animats
The Flyboard Air is an extreme sports device. It's really cool, but very hard
to fly. It's from the people with the water-jet Flyboard. Here's someone
really good on that.[1] The Flyboard Air people insist that people get good on
the water-jet version before even trying the jet-powered one.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JhUSu8v2N4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JhUSu8v2N4)

~~~
Nanite
Hard to fly for a human for sure, but I would guess it could be augmented with
some avionics to reduce the skill needed.

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6stringmerc
As much as I appreciate the Flyboard Air, and really truly think it's
impressive, my inspiration for a personal flight device is more along the
lines of what Jetman has been using. Vertical take-off and landing - in my
opinion - are stupidly wasteful "necessities" that only compound the problem
of being able to have a decent amount of flight time.

A wing for lift is, to me, essential if a personal flight device is ever going
to be compelling. I'm working on a different invention right now, but in time
I do hope to return to my ParaWing concept, which combines modern scientific
findings and design with composites in mind to have a lot of performance
potential. Seems dangerous as all get out but that's the fun.

------
pilom
If you want to be able to fly around like this at low altitude, why not just
get a powered paraglider? Cheaper, safer, longer flight time and you can buy
one today?

~~~
mikeash
VTOL and speed would be two major differences I see, but I agree with the
overall theme that existing solutions tend to get unjustly ignored. I
especially liked this bit:

"There is some talk of having two jetpacks on top of every skyscraper in
China."

Sure, you could have a near-experimental jetpack which requires significant
training to fly safely and which costs a quarter of a million dollars, or you
could spend $2,500 on a standard airplane emergency parachute which any random
bozo can use safely with about three minutes of "here's how you buckle the
straps, and here's the ring you pull."

Same basic thing for a these weird hybrid car/airplane contraptions they call
"flying cars." For less money you can buy a great car, a great airplane,
another great car for your most frequently visited destination, and have
enough money left over for rental cars for all your other destinations for the
rest of your life.

~~~
VLM
And yet, WRT your last paragraph, SUVs still sell, so there remains some kind
of market for swiss-army-knife-cars.

~~~
mikeash
The vast majority of SUVs on the roads are just larger cars. They're minivans
without the stigma of sliding doors.

~~~
techdmn
Which is too bad, because sliding doors are one of their best features. As a
parent, I've taken to parking next to minivans at the grocery store and
whatnot, because I know how careful kids typically are when opening doors.
Sliding doors = no dings.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I've driven a minivan, and I've driven a few SUVs, and even before I was a
parent, I knew that I'd much rather have a minivan than an SUV.

Now I just have to fight my wife about it, who'd rather have a small SUV...

~~~
andyjdavis
Small SUVs are curious things. Being large would seem to be somewhat essential
to the function and nature of an SUV. Making it small would seem to make it
just a regular car but with external styling that mimics the look of an SUV...

~~~
mikeash
That styling tricks people into thinking they have more space.

------
nervoustwit
"Is the Jetpack Movement Finally Taking Off?" TLDR; No

------
DenisM
Where's Pentagon in all this? I would think they'd be the first to find a
practical use for it. Much faster than a paraglider, and much easier to deploy
than a helicopter.

I can imagine a group of commandos crossing the enemy lines at 100mph to
sabotage something or other, or a spy escaping back to the safety of his own
side. At least there has to be a movie based on this. Like, a jet-troops vs.
jet-troops fire-fight.

~~~
mschuster91
> I would think they'd be the first to find a practical use for it.

Problem is, the pilot is SUCH an easy target. A helicopter can survive pretty
heavy fire, and a glider doesn't care about a couple bullet holes in the
wings.

Hit the jetpack, though, and the pilot goes either up in flames or dies of
massive impact deceleration.

~~~
Roritharr
That would make Just Cause 3 a war Sim. Crazy Imagery.

------
stefanix
Always was so fascinated by this until I got my PPL. Now I just fly and wonder
why I was waiting for a mystical new machine. In retrospect it was just a
weird mental block.

Just go fly a glider, UL or, VLA. Buckling up feels like putting on a wing
backpack, I promise. They become an extension to your body after about 50h of
flying. Most importantly these flying machines are available right now. Also
they work really well. Mindbogglingly well. There are ULs that can fly 1000km
on 15 gal. With about 100h of experience you can fly a glider 500km and more.

I hear you say but it's expensive. Glider flying can be quite affordable, like
2000 bucks/year affordable. It's more flying anyways especially when you live
in a mountainous area. Many clubs also let you reduce the fees when you help
maintain the gear.

I hear you say it takes a lot of training. Well, you are pretending to be a
bird. Chances are you will welcome the training until you feel very
comfortable in the air. I never thought the required training is tedious. It's
really part of the fun.

In short, If you want to to fly it's more doable than you may think and tiny
flying addons (aka jetpacks) are generally overrated.

------
kafkaesq
And we thought leaf blowers and car alarms were bad enough. I really, really
hope I don't have to listen to one of my neighbors firing up one of those
things in his backyard, any time soon. And I'd even more hate to be... a
"resident" of his goldfish pond.

------
BatFastard
Anyone notice 11 gallons of fuel for 10 minutes of flight? Calling this a gas
guzzler would be kind!

------
lucio
I don't know why, but the flyboard has a waaay much cooler "air" to it...

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNKRxsNyOho](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNKRxsNyOho)

~~~
agumonkey
Felt like a tiny personal spacex barge landing ceremony.

------
ChuckMcM
This looks like a really fun toy. Like others I've wondered when material
science and miniaturization were going to span a credible jet engine at
"backpack" sizes. The noise has to be pretty incredible though.

My take on them is that they won't be practical but like supercars I'll wish I
owned one anyway. Now if I could just challenge Elon Musk into making it
electric and practical ...

------
mrfusion
How about gyrocopters for personal flight? They seem stable, and inexpensive.
And I think you get stovl?

------
Aelinsaar
Unfortunately it's still really, "Personal flight [for fun and thrills]..."
We're still not any closer to everyone jetting around as a general mode of
getting from point A to B, and won't with anything like this kind of
technology.

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velox_io
I've just seen this.

I wonder if a version of this (with computer assisted flight) could be come a
personal commuting device?

------
mentos
Fun thought experiment is imagine the jetpack had infinite fuel and was 100%
safe what would you do with it?

For me I'd probably just go get a slice of pizza heh

~~~
losteric
Fly through canyons, dance around clouds, land on skyscrapers, troll some
eagles...

~~~
nickcano
That's interesting, I wonder what happens if you take one of the current
prototypes and hover off the ledge of a canyon... Will you drop suddenly and
go splat, or will you keep altitude? Intuition says the former, but I'd like
to know objectively.

~~~
losteric
If you're flying high enough before going over the cliff, you'd keep
hovering... it's no different than a helicopter. These jets can definitely fly
that high.

That said, if you're not flying high enough... if it's just the jet pushing
air against the ground... you will go splat.

------
PhasmaFelis
The original title did not use the word "practical," which this manifestly
isn't.

~~~
dang
Yes, the submitted title ("A practical jetpack is just around the corner") was
rewritten, which violates the HN guidelines:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

Submitters: the rule on HN is not to rewrite a title unless it is misleading
or linkbait. If a subtitle is more informative, it's ok to use that. (We've
done so here, because the title is a question and we all know what that
triggers.)

~~~
Raphmedia
Omg, Hanlon's razor totatlly predicts that Occam's razor will says that
because of Betteridge's law of headlines the original title of the article is
soooooo clickbait...

;)

