Hydrogen peroxide powered rocket packs fly for around 30 seconds, because they have a specific impulse of around 125, meaning that one pound of propellant can make 125 pound-seconds of thrust, meaning that it takes about two pounds of propellant for every second you are in the air. Mass ratios are low for anything strapped to a human, so the exponential nature of the rocket equation can be safely ignored.

A pretty hot (both literally and figuratively) bipropellant rocket could manage about twice the specific impulse, and you could carry somewhat heavier tanks, but two minutes of flight on a rocket pack is probably about the upper limit with conventional propellants.

However, an actual jet pack that used atmospheric oxygen could have an Isp ten times higher, allowing theoretical flights of fifteen minutes or so. Here, it really is a matter of technical development, since jet engines have thrust to weight ratios too low to make it practical. There is movement on this technical front, but it will still take a while.

John Carmack

The main skill you need if you wish to become management has barely anything to do with the fields you have flitted between. I've been in the industry since the late 90s and have only seen one (1) (besides me) under 30 person become management, and that was because a) She was one of the best technologically rounded people I've ever known and b) She knew how to communicate requirements both to the Client (Management) and to the Geeks doing the work in a diplomatic fashion. She was also very organized, driven and able to talk to anyone about the projects she was heading. If you can't bridge that gap between the plebs and the geeks in a graceful, organized and illuminating manner, you won't get anywhere and people will dislike you on both sides of a project.

Sorry if I sound dubious about your question, I'd say 99.999% of the Geeks who want to move up to Management aren't going to be good at it because they are inept at diplomacy (I'm not talking the board game) and the creative thinking that you need to have to deal with interpersonal relationships. You're not only dealing with project requirements and timing, you're dealing with egos (which are wild and varied in the Geek community; much easier to judge someone NOT in the technical field). You need to be very flexible in your thinking about situations (which most Geeks aren't, thank you logical thinking!), and be prepared to change based on someone's bad mood and not take it personally.

I skipped from developer to owner of a company, which is a whole new level of diplomacy (read as insanity). Just know that what you're thinking about doing shouldn't be taken lightly and might not be as easy to jump into with your limited credentials. Take some business classes and see if it is of interest to you still.

Hi,

Flash is typically *rated* for 10^5 writes.

I worked at trimble navigation, radio group in sunnyvale, ca in the summer of 2000. One of my projects was stressing flash eeprom in the embedded systems we were developing, using rapid thermal cycling, and finding ways to exceed and recover flash beyond manufacturer's rated duty-cycle spec. Yes, we all know this is similar to MTBF calcs and not the same as real world failure modes (*cough* google's hard drive paper). The funny thing was, flash rated at 10^5 writes, even after 10^6+ writes it simply wouldnt fail. What I read is that the failure modes were generally single bit column errors (multiple bytes with the same error), or sector stuck errors. The way to get longer useful life is simply use bigger flash and 2D ECC.

Regards