First 'practical jetpack' clears for take-off
Sir Richard Branson beamed in to the Mojave desert in California on Monday to unveil the latest addition to human space travel - an exotic craft that will carry a passenger ship to 15 240 metres before releasing it into space.
On Tuesday Glenn Martin unveiled an equally exotic craft, a jetpack that has taken test pilots to altitudes as high as 3ft. Martin, who describes his machine as the “world’s first practical jetpack”, is confident that by next year he can make a staple of science fiction a reality.
Martin, a New Zealand inventor, plans to sell his jetpack to Buck Rogers wannabes for $100 000. And although the jetpack—not actually powered by jets, but by rotors—is more of a Heath Robinson-style contraption than the sleek device of the popular imagination, he trusts enthusiasts will be drawn to the freedom and excitement of solo flying.
“If someone says, ‘I’m not going to buy a jetpack until it’s the size of my high school backpack and has a turbine engine in it’, that’s fine,” he said. “But they’re not going to be flying a jetpack in their lifetime.”
The jetpack, unveiled at the Experimental Aircraft Association’s AirVenture show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, is powered by a V4 petrol engine running two large rotors. Aviation authorities have classed it as an experimental ultra-light airplane.
“It was very loud, very noisy, very hot. It was like a beast that roars,” one of Martin’s test pilots—his wife, Vanessa—said of an early flight. “But once you throttle up, you feel it bite, and you leave the ground, and there’s this feeling of floating and freedom—you become quite overwhelmed.”
In May, a Swiss test pilot stepped out of a plane to fly to ground at 297km/h wearing a jet-powered wing. - guardian.co.uk
