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Comment Re:Iron Man's Suit Defies Physics -- Mostly (Score 2, Interesting) 279

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

Comment Re:in aus (Score 2, Interesting) 356

I think the use of enough keywords so that useful results come out when they enter their keywords in. Most of the time, when people ask me to find something for them, I usually tell them to try Google first. Most of the time, they pick search terms that are too broad, or don't bother doing simple things like putting quotes around phrases that they want, or just giving another keyword to narrow down the results, and end up getting all sorts of useless results. I've noticed this from some of my fellow students.

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