A Giant Leap Closer?

For those of us who have been anxiously awaiting a world in which we can hop from place to place with our personal jetpack strapped to our back, that day may have gotten closer with the successful altitude test of a jetpack last month.

A dummy strapped to a remote-controlled jetpack soared almost a mile into the air over Canterbury Plains in New Zealand, beating the old jetpack altitude record by more than 4,500 feet.

It helped that the pilot was an actual dummy and not an extremely stupid human. And while real human beings ARE piloting jetpacks and have been doing so since before the first Big Screen jetpack flight was filmed for the 1965 James Bond movie, Thunderball, no live pilot has yet gone much more than 50 feet into the air from a dead start.

True, there have been flights by live jetpack pilots jumping out of planes at even higher altitudes and last year’s jetpack crossing of the Royal Gorge in Colorado. But the May 29 flight in New Zealand was the first time such an altitude was reached from a starting-from-the-ground position.

“This successful test brings the future another step closer,´ said Glenn Martin, the jetpack’s inventor and founder of New Zealand-based Martin Aircraft Company, in a statement to the press. Martin, by the way, is seeking additional millions in investment to bring his jetpack in for a commercial landing.

And while it was perhaps another milestone toward everyday jetpack flight for Average Joes, safely landing a jetpack-strapped human from such a height remains still slightly out of reach.

The main point of the exercise, according to an article on cosmiclog.msnbc.com, was to test the jetpack’s emergency landing system. The contraption’s engine was turned off by remote control at 3,000 feet and a parachute attached to the jetpack was deployed, slowing the landing impact to just under 16 mph.

Doesn’t sound too bad, but consider the average parachute landing speed – which can still involve broken ankles or legs if not done correctly – is between three and eight mph. 

“The aircraft (dummy and jetpack) sustained some damage on impact, but we would expect that it is likely a pilot would have walked away from this emergency landing,” the company said.

Walked? Uh, maybe. More likely limped. Or possibly crawled.

These jetpacks weigh something over 120 pounds. So it would be like coming in for a landing with another person riding on your back. Very hard on the body – especially the knees.

And let’s not even mention the extremely explosive fuel resting on the pilot’s back or the possibility that the jetpack’s guidance system somehow goes awry during flight.

But at least three companies are working on perfecting the jetpack for military, rescue and even recreational use, offering the extremely dangerous gadgets starting at around $100,000.

At that price, these things will likely remain a rich man’s toy and something for professional stuntmen to drop jaws at air shows and state fairs for the foreseeable future.

But just watching one of these flights sends chills of excitement up one’s spine, no doubt similar to that experienced by onlookers when Orville and Wilbur first proved human beings really could fly all those years ago.

And maybe – just maybe – some of us will live to see the next great evolutionary step in human flight.

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