I remember watching the Bell’s Rocketbelt years and years ago when I was much younger and dreamed about having one – very cool until I got older and smarter and really learned it was really expensive, the fuel was rather volatile (hydrogen peroxide) and could only fly a handful of seconds. However, there may be a REAL one “just around the corner” that may make a lot of dreamers sit up and take notice:
Jetpack Aviation is the brainchild and passion project of Australian businessman David Mayman. “I’ve been flying it off the public radar for some time,” Mayman told us this morning. “It was time to bring it out of the closet, so to speak. I’ve spent my life in software and mining and fairly sensible occupations, but my overriding passion has been to build a jetpack, since I was very young. Nelson Tyler and I got together 10 years ago –he’s an extraordinary engineer and inventor based in Hollywood. And that’s really what’s made it possible.”
The JB-9 uses a carbon-fiber corset that straps to the pilot’s back, with the majority of the “backpack” section carrying fuel. Mounted to each side is a small jet turbine engine that provides upward thrust. These engines mix ambient air with their exhaust gases to bring temperatures down to a comfortably warm airstream, but Mayman still wears a fireproof Nomex suit just in case: “The exhaust temperature actually declines really quickly. It’s still warm, don’t get me wrong. On a cold night it’s exactly what you want running next to you, but it’s not something that sets the ground on fire.”
…The JB-9 already has some pretty fearsome capabilities. “The New York video was showing a hundredth of what this thing is capable of and what I’ve done, but clearly I was being a bit cautious on the day,” Mayman tells us. “We’ve limited JB-9 to the required standards, which is 55 knots, or just over 100 kilometers per hour. JB-10, which we’ve already got a prototype running for and which I’ve already flown, will be capable of well over 200 kilometers per hour. That’s horizontal speed.
“Vertical speed depends more on your fuel payload. You’d probably get an initial climb rate of 500-1000 feet a minute. As your fuel burns off, you get extraordinary vertical rates. You can go up a thousand feet a minute. Being turbine engines, they don’t run out of performance as the air thins. They’ll just keep going, they’re compressing the air like a turbocharger. You could keep going up to 10,000 feet. But I won’t be putting my hand up for that one immediately!”
Mayman says the current JB-9 design is perfectly legal to sell and fly: “Technically we could start selling them in the ultralight category tomorrow. It couldn’t hold more than 5 US gallons of fuel (meaning a flight time around 5 minutes), and there’s certain restrictions about where you could fly them.
And it does 55 knots for about 10 minutes – the next version can do 100 knots for about 30 minutes. Now, THAT’S what I’d love to have.
Er, TMEW just looked at it and gave me “the look” – I guess I won’t be getting my hopes up any time soon even if it does come on market.
(H/T: GizMag)
