Month: September 2019

Your Guide to Buying a Jetpack

Ready to get that jetpack? Here’s where you’ll find them for sale.

 

 

It’s expected that once the jetpack becomes widely available, the first customers lining up to buy them will be the government. Aside from the obvious potential uses the military would have for this technology, first responders and other emergency personnel will find them incredibly useful as well. With jetpack technology, you can reach inaccessible areas quickly, whether it’s the bottom of a canyon or the top of a building.

 

Although the jetpack isn’t widely available, if you have the funds you can get one of your own now. If you’ve dreamed of being able to fly solo, this is your chance to do it.

 

This week on Rob Raskin’s Millionaire Survivalist we’ll be taking a look at some more realistic jetpack designs. This is the second of two parts in our jetpack series, and in this installment we’ll show you where you can get a jetpack of your own and how much it’ll set you back.

 

Where to Get a Jetpack

Wondering where to get your own personal jetpack? Here’s everything you’ll need to know to get started. It may not be easy to find jetpacks that are readily available, but once you’re midflight you’ll understand why the effort was worth it.

 

Lamborghini Aventador $440,000

The Lamborghini Aventador is a jetpack suit created by Gravity Industries, and it’s the top-of-the-line jetpack currently available on the market. If you want the best of the best, this is the model for you.

 

Features

The Aventador can fly at 32 MPH and altitudes of up to 12,000 feet, thanks to its five gas turbine engines. This suit is comprised of a carbon fiber exoskeleton. It is assembled of 3D-printed parts, weighs 60 pounds and has a flying time of up to four minutes. It is rumored that Lamborghini is in development on an updated model that can stay in flight for up to nine minutes.

 

Although the price tag is hefty, Lamborghini throws in mandatory flight training for no extra charge.

 

Where to Buy

You can get the Lamborghini Aventador jetpack from UK department store Selfridges for less than a half-million.

 

Jetpack Aviation’s Speeder $380,000

While not traditionally a jetpack in the sense that we imagine them, the Speeder is a flying motorcycle that is more in-line with what the future of personal flight will really look like.

 

Features

This is the most fun you’ll ever have riding a motorcycle, because you can take the Speeder to the skies for up to 20 minutes at a time, at speeds of up to 150 MPH, and at altitudes of up to 15,000 feet. In fact, this personal flight vehicle is so fast that it is capable of being used in racing. The Speeder features four turbojet engines, and together they put out an incredible combined maximum thrust of 705 lbf. You can use three different fuel sources: kerosene, diesel, or JetA.

 

The speeder can hold a passenger of up to 250 pounds, but it is not designed to hold a passenger. It comes with navigation, and it has an instrument light that will allow for night flight in areas where this is allowed. If it’s raining and you want to take the Speeder out for a flight, that’s no problem It’s designed to fly in light to moderate rain.

 

 

Where to Buy

You can get the Speeder at the Jetpack Aviation website https://jetpackaviation.com/. Only 20 of these were developed for recreational use, with the rest going to the government and military. However, as you well know, money talks.

 

Martin Jetpack $100,000

The Martin Jetpack is closer to our culture’s traditional idea of a jetpack because it’s powered by two ducted fans that are strapped to your back.

 

Features

The Martin Jetpack only flies a few meters above the ground, but if that’s what you’re comfortable with this is a great starter model. It comes equipped with a ballistic parachute because this company takes safety seriously. If you were to experience engine failure mid-flight, thanks to this parachute you’d be able to glide safely back to earth.

 

This jetpack has a 200 hp, two-stroke, two-liter engine that works by blowing air downward at high velicity. It weighs 250 lbs. and has a cruise speed of 63 MPH. The Martin meets the FAA Part 103, Ultralight Regulations requirement, so you won’t need an FAA recognized pilot license to fly the friendly skies.

 

Where to Buy

For the time being, you can’t buy a Martin unless you find one available from a private seller. New Zealand’s Martin Aircraft Company has restructured, with rumors that they’ve been sold to a Chinese company. Will they take the technology to the next level? This remains to be seen, but let’s hope so.

 

 

 

Interview with Richard Browning, who built the world’s fastest jetpack.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAJM5L9hhBs

 

Once you see what this flying motorcycle can do, you’ll want one of your own.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URgznwTph6M

Why We Don’t Have Jetpacks…Yet

Wondering where your jetpack is? You’re not alone.

It has long been believed that dreams of flight are a personal representation of power that signifies you are capable of doing anything. It’s no coincidence that people dream so often of having the ability to fly. If you are in a position of wealth and power, however, you may be able to make that dream reality with your own personal aerial vehicle, aka a jetpack.

 

From Buck Rogers’s degravity belt to George Jetson’s flying suit, as long as humans have been dreaming of ways to make flight possible, we have been imagining a future in which we zip around via jetpacks. Prolific writer and biochemist Isaac Asimov believed by the turn of the 21^st Century we would all be traveling via jetpack, even going so far as to claim they’d be as common as travel by bicycle.

 

Now that we are living in the 21^st Century, it’s obvious we aren’t commuting via the skyways. This has left many people wondering how much longer we’ll have to wait before we each have the ability to control our own sky travels.

 

To understand why we aren’t able to travel by jetpack yet and how far into the future such travel may be, we first need to understand the technology and why previous attempts at personal flight have failed.

 

The History of the Jetpack

The history of the jetpack can be traced back to 1919, when a German rocket scientist worked on inventing a jet powered vest for the US Army. This would be the first of many attempts to build a jetpack, the vast majority of which were halted due to a lack of funding.

 

Over the following decades, many inventors would injure themselves attempting to create a functional jetpack.

 

In 1961, Wendell Moore’s Bell Rocket Belt caused the engineer to break his kneecap after plunging 2.5 meters. When you consider that his rocket was powered by nitrogen gas that was converted into a steam explosion, a broken kneecap doesn’t sound all that bad.

 

Also in 1961, during the Bell Rocket Belt’s first public display, pilot Harold “Hal” Graham landed on his head after falling 6.7 meters, leading to his premature retirement.

 

Next to be injured was stunt pilot Kinnie Gibson, whose knee was smashed, leading to a lawsuit that spelled the end for the 90% oxygen that would be necessary to power a jetpack.

 

Today there are water-propelled hydrolift devices that function similarly to a jetpack but is run on hydrogen peroxide instead of rocket fuel. Google X considered developing a jetpack but ultimately decided against it after determining how impractical it would be.

 

Another company, Jetpack Aviation, has developed personal vehicles that are capable of vertical landings and takeoffs. Their JB10 can have you in the air for as many as four minutes. They plan to release an electric version of their vehicle this year. Whether or not it will work still remains to be seen.

 

Why We Don’t Have Jetpacks…Yet

Despite predictions that we’d all have jetpacks by now, there’s a very good reason we don’t. A couple of them, actually: gravity and rocket engines.

 

Gravity

When it comes to the jetpack, the issue is not so much that what goes up must come down as it is how long we can stay in the air. This all comes down to Newton’s law of mechanics, which states that to get off the ground you’ll need to use enough force to cancel out the gravity that is holding you to the earth. While this is clearly possible in a large aircraft that can hold plenty of fuel, it’s simply not possible with something the size of a jetpack.

 

Perhaps in the future when we’ve advanced to the point that we can use alternate fuel sources that weigh less, this will change.

 

Rocket Engines

When we imagine jetpacks, we’re picturing a specific vision of a rocketeer in flight—one with the rocket’s engine strapped to his back. Now that you understand how much fuel it would take to counteract gravity and leave the earth, imagine how hot the flame blasting out of that rocket jet would be. It would be like holding a blowtorch to your legs, which you wouldn’t have for long if you remained in flight. In other words, the vision we have for what traveling by jetpack could look like is not ever going to be our reality.

 

But that doesn’t mean all hope is lost.

 

What Jetpacks Might Look Like in the Future

This article is Part One in a two-part series. Next week on Rob Raskin’s Millionaire Survivalist we’ll be taking a look at some more realistic jetpack designs. Want to know where you can buy your own jetpack and how much it’ll set you back? We’re going to be discussing that, too, so don’t miss it!

 

 

Meet the world’s only fully functional jetpack.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIMWYeP7O1w

 

Could jetpacks be the future of travel?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Proa4xED6dg