Jet Pack Runs For Hours On Water 268
Ponca City, We love you writes "Jet packs have been around for half a century, but there's always been one problem: they run out of fuel in around 30 seconds. Now a German company has taken the standard jet pack design, run a fat yellow hose out the back, and connected it to a small unmanned boat that houses an engine, pump, and fuel tank and sends pressurized water up the hose, where it's shot out by two nozzles just behind the wearer's shoulders. Called the JetLev-Flyer, the design purportedly can reach a height of 15 meters, a speed of 72 kph, and a range of 300 kilometers based on four hours of flying time. A digital fly-by-wire system is used to control the throttle. Future designs may achieve higher altitudes, higher top speeds, and extended range, and even travel below the water's surface. The American manufacturers claim it is 'amazingly easy to learn and operate' and they're taking orders now at $130,000 each."
Team sports (Score:5, Interesting)
This sounds like a recreational device, and perhaps an interesting one. Calling it a "James Bond-style jet pack" is rather misleading, though.
Safety: a fall into water from that height is not safe but not suicidal. I wonder how bad it is to be underneath and accidentally get sprayed by one of those jets? The video clip is silent; I'll bet the thing makes a hell of a racket. I wonder how many waterfronts will put up with it.
I'm thinking, team sports. An extreme kind of polo or soccer or something. With players deliberately maneuvering to hit each other with the jets and/or tangle their hoses.
Re:are you crazy? (Score:2, Interesting)
YOu have no (big) problems diving deep down and rising quickly up as long as you are not using presusired breathing.
Free diving [wikipedia.org] with a jet-pack?