Boeing slams $2m on the desk, bellows: Now where's my jetpack? Boeing and its pals today offered a whopping $2m (£1.49m) in prizes to anyone who can design and build a working “personal flying device." The GoFly competition aims to spur on the development of safe, quiet, ultra-compact jetpacks that can hover, take off and land, and fly for at least 20 miles. "Now is the time,” as the …
"The jetpack from Thunderball" aka the Bell Rocket Belt indeed was real - but the thing is, this new challenge is asking for something that can fly 20 miles and the original Bell Rocket Belt could manage about 20 seconds flight time.
I do wonder if Boeing (etc) are being entirely honest about their hopes for the proposed new technology. It's hard to imagine regulatory authorities being entirely convinced of the overall benefits of personal jet packs given just how bad people are at driving cars along roads, for example - unless the envisioned end application is more along the lines of that intended for the Bell Rocket Belt (first demonstrated in 1961), namely that of improving infantry mobility.
"Where does it say Boeing expects the general public to use this?"
From the article: “What we are seeking is an 'everyone' personal flying device, capable of being flown by ANYONE, ANYWHERE. It should be a device for ALL: young and old, city-dweller and country-dweller, expert and novice.”
I'm not saying you're wrong about us never getting jetpacks, but Boeing pretty clearly state (in shouty capital letters, no less) that they expect the general public to be able to use it.
This post has been deleted by its author
It has already been done several times, first time in the 60'ties...
There are several problems:
* fuel capacity
* heat
* weight
The previous main problem was stability but modern computers would fix that.
Actually an ultralight autogyro would be a better solution for personal transport.
It has already been done several times, first time in the 60'ties...There are several problems:
* fuel capacity
* heat
* weight
The previous main problem was stability but modern computers would fix that.
Ultralights from the seventies fixed all of that.
(They were an unholy cross between a hang glider and a go-kart.)
Cheap, stable, could take off and land in mere meters.
Hugely popular in the US until the FAA cracked down, then you could only use them if you owned a large field to fly over, or spent months doing paperwork and getting permissions, per flight.
The same thing that'll happen to anything that comes out of this.
If cars were newly invented today - you and I would never get to drive one.
You'd have to show that you'd completed not only your mandatory training plus X hours of on-road experience, but also sit exams in mechanical theory, legal liability and queuing theory. You'd have to show that you had a safe parking space, and that you knew what routes you planned to take everywhere. Then you'd have to maintain a log of your travel, prove that you'd driven at least 100 hours a year, and re-take the exams every 3 years.
Fortunately (?), cars were grandfathered in from a simpler time. But jetpacks would face all this and more.
Possibly not: under UK rules they'd probably pass under the foot-launched-aircraft exception (I need to check the wording, but afaik with one special exception that's basically anything under a certain weight that doesn't have wheels).
The rest of the Air Navigation Order applies, though (someone was fined fifteen hundred quid recently for being in a CTA without permission) and I suspect the insurance requirements would be, um, interesting.
But as the ANO states: you can't overfly cities or groups of people, which will make commuting problematical.
"Anything will fly if you add enough enough propellors! - Professor E."
Filthy plagiarist! - Robur the Conqueror
Ultralights: Bicycles of the Skies - was how National Geographic covered them back in the seventies. Thanks for providing information about what happened to microlights since.
The silence criterion... Owls fly very quietly... lots of owls.. on string... Hmmm, will need to silence the upset squawking but that's an engineering problem.
if you believe it will reach that range. An expert (Zapata) can make it look like any kid that can use a skate board can fly it, but I'd sooner believe it could use computer control for most pilots. If it is a fake - it is a very good one - not sure it could fly 20 miles though - but then, no one knows what the fuel limit in weight is on the thing, if it isn't a fantastic hoax!!
Engineering this is really quite tough. Most of the "jet packs" were in fact rockets (because jets actually have pretty poor T/W ratio unless they're attached to wings). The constantly falling mass meant take off was easy, but hovering and landing insanely tricky. Like the lunar landing simulator, but without the on board computer.
So how fast do you want to go? As you're carrying the fuel can it needs to be fuel efficient as well. My instinct is contra rotating rotor blades could be adequately quiet, relatively easy to steer and reasonably fast but sadly lacks the "coolness" factor of the turbojet whine of a supersonic airflow at your back.
They've gone a stage better than that now. Boeing are just pissed off that the Ruskies did it first.
Do you think the Russians will enter the competition? No, I think not either. Of course, it won't have helped that a Russian won a UK defence competition, but was denied the prize money.
Twin-engined commercial airliners have oversized, over-powerful engines. Why? because they have to be able to climb out safely even if one engine flames out permanently and completely at the worst possible moment, just after V1 (speed of no return: you gotta take off). If certified for ETOPS240, one engine has to be able to keep the plane aloft for four hours above the ocean, to get you to land, if the other fails.
It is unthinkable that a personal flightpack would be much less safe than a commercial airliner, for the same reason you'll never see large numbers of heavy (>10kg) drones over built-up areas or other concentrations of people (whatever shyte Amazon comes out with). That's because with large numbers the probability approaches certainty that people on the ground will be regularly maimed and killed by falling hardback "50 Shades of Crap" compilations.
The economics of delivering shiny tat mean that you simply cannot fly a fleet of thousands of drones to the same safety levels as commercial passenger travel.
And you cannot make affordable flightpacks for public use to the same standard as commercial airliners, not only in this case because of economic exigencies but also because you'd need two engines, *each* separately capable of flight. The weight penalty makes the concept hopeless. You can't expect them all to have parachutes, since however easy that activity looks, it is not—and even the best parachutists would think twice before jumping over a busy city. (Even jumping a well-trained parachute company onto uneven terrain is expected to cause significant casualties.)
None of which even touches on the question of user training; carrying enough luggage (backpack, laptop, books, shopping?) to make the trip worthwhile; collision avoidance (with each other/drones/buildings/birds/Flight BA009 on finals); traffic control; certification; refuelling points; safety checks ... all in all, while the idea might be trailblazing some low-cost engine technology, as a concept for mass travel it is beyond stupid.
OH, For the Love of G-d. You can't give MOST peepul, ESPECIALLY Americans, a can opener without them nearly disemboweling someone and provoking an International Conflict. NONE of 'em can drive, spell OR read- WHY would you give them JetPacks????
As the G-d Emperor Lord Leto so sagely noted: "Make th' lil' f*ckers walk. They could use the exercise."
Note that Boeing are only "sponsors". This is all hosted on some kind of crowdw*nking site (herox.com) with lots of optimistic patter. The GoFly people may or may not know what they're talking about: as others have pointed out, the tech for this exists in micro-jets but you can't lift a person and enough fuel to make the required distance. In any case nobody in their right mind would strap on something with an exhaust temperature that would burn you to a crisp. The James Bond rocket belt would have flayed the flesh of anyone foolish enough to put a hand in the super-heated steam exhaust.
By the time you've added safety stuff, flight controls, redundancy etc. you've got an aircraft, not a "personal flying device".
My verdict: somebody is running a nice little scam.
In a car you only have to miss someone else coming from the x & y axis. How many deaths are there going to be when we all have to add in the Z axis? Boeing might be putting up $2m for this but how many civil aviation authorities are going to allow personal air-transportation packs when we can't even use small drones without putting planes at risk?
Just needs a few tweaks, a bit more power, and the Intra-County Ballistic Human apparatus from the minds the folks who brought us iBots, Segways, & Slingshots will have this prize sorted. Just got to work on sticking the landing a bit.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2023
