Rocket Men

theodp writes "Slate reports on the guys who really, really want to fly, who got together the other week at the Niagara Aerospace Museum for the First International Rocketbelt Convention. To date, only 11 men in history have free-flown a rocketbelt (aka JetPack). More men have walked on the moon. Why? 'It's not a matter of if you get hurt, it's when,' says Eric Scott, an ex-stuntman who's in the exclusive club."

Re:And this is different from

[Itninja]

I guess the big difference is that if you bite it boarding, you might get seriously hurt. With an outside chance of death. Whereas, if your 150ft in the air, travelling at 25mph, and your jetpack decides to crap out.... there would only be an outside chance of NOT becoming a mangled corpse.

Re:Gyroscopic stabilizers

[kimvette]

That is not the only problem; other problems include fuel capacity (range) and thermal management. I would love, repeat, LOVE to fly one of those, but a homebuilt high-performance jet aircraft (like Viperjet) or even someday a homebuilt spacecraft would be more fun, IMHO.

rocket "belt"

[macadamia_harold]

Why is it called a rocket "Belt", when it's typically something the size of a surfboard with a pair of propane tanks that you strap on your back?

Re:The 1970's Jet Pack...

[Fullhazard]

They figured out that something that's expensive, dangerous, incredibly loud, only provides 30 seconds of thrust at best, and weighs about 100 pounds isn't a very good military tool. Go figure, right?

Re:rocket "belt"

[Hangin10]

This part of it I don't understand. I can understand being strapped to it, but why should the human have to support it? Why not have "_|"-shaped (excuse the ASCII-art excursion) bars under the arms and up over the chest/shoulder area with the human ON the device (like a flying Segway, just not quite so white and nerdy). This probably changes the whole concept, but I'd rather get into what I described rather than strap a rocket to my back. Strapping a rocket to one's back seems rather ill-advised in a rather distinctly "Acme" fashion...

Re:What about women?

[Steve Newall]

While impressive, Isabel's flight was not "free-flown" and does not count towords the list.

Re:Gyroscopic stabilizers

[evanbd]

Hmm. I don't know how good those gyros are; I was of the impression that there wasn't really a whole lot between the cheap sensor grade stuff and the good navigation grade fiber optic ones. Also, AIUI the differences aren't just in drift rate, but also in things like vibration sensitivity and cross-axis coupling.

I suppose you could use the inexpensive ones, as long as your goal was to change the pilot requirement from "top of the line test pilot" to "very good helicopter pilot," and not an attempt to make it flyable by anyone with a bit of simulator practice.

You might do an ok job if the gyros just tried to hold the spin *rate* to zero, and let the pilot handle leveling the vehicle; one fewer integral makes for much slower error growth.