Martin Jetpack Climbs 5000 Feet Above Sea Level

rh2600 writes "For years the Martin Jetpack has stayed just a few feet off the ground, invoking frequent suspicion about its true abilities. Well, today that all changed [video] with the first climb test in New Zealand (with weighted crash-test dummy) reaching over 5,000 feet above sea level. The emergency parachute test was also a success. Kiwis can indeed fly."

Re:Endurance

[Anonymous Coward]

Earlier in the program [2:03] Mr. Martin refers to 'flying around for up to 30 minutes'. and at [7:17] in the video there's a call of 800 ft/min climb rate. Methinks you can get a lot better than just up to 3500 ft AGL.

BTW - Aviation authorites have little or no sense of humour. Testing equipment with live (perhaps deserving) volunteers without testing the safety systems will get you shut down, in a very official and unpleasant manner.

Re:Who keeps the Metric System down?

[Anonymous Coward]

I support metric but it's currently the standard world wide in aviation to measure altitude in feet.

Re:To hear the Kiwi version of events. . .

[QuantumLeaper]

There were a lot of inventors who had a fix wing aircraft before the Wright Brothers but the reason they get to say they invented it is because they could TURN the Wright Flyer. Before that they all flew in a straight line, even the French who didn't believe them, had to admit they won, when the Flyer banked away from a row of trees in Paris.

Re:To hear the Kiwi version of events. . .

[Kenneth Stephen]

You are mostly correct, though you didn't mention the key word: control system. The patent that the Wright Brothers file was not for the shape of the plane, or the engine they used, but for the control systems that let them control the pitch, yaw, and roll of the aircraft. Indeed, controlling the aircraft in stable flight by defining parameters like pitch, yaw, and roll was a key insight of theirs. All their competitors weren't able to achieve stable flight because they were still guessing their way around how to keep their aircraft up and steady, and didn't really have a solution that let them control the aircraft.