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A man wearing a jetpack soared across the Hudson River in New York City on Tuesday (Nov. 3), looping around the Statue of Liberty before landing safely on the deck of a boat.
The jetpack-wearing joyrider was David Mayman, an Australian entrepreneur who has spent the past 10 years designing and building prototypes of the wearable flying device. He's been helped in this effort by Nelson Tyler, a Hollywood-based inventor best known for developing helicopter camera systems and other movie-ready technologies, three of which have earned him Academy Awards.
Mayman and Nelson's lightweight pack, dubbed the JB-9, is small enough to fit in the trunk of a car, but it's powerful enough to rocket its wearer 10,000 feet (3,050 meters) above the ground and can hit speeds of 63 mph (102 km/h).
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday November 09 2015, @01:26AM
can hit speeds of 63 mph
I always kinda wondered about that, if it can pull "well over" 1 G vertical (obviously well over, because it can accelerate up, you need 1 G just to hover...) then slamming the thing forward in a dive it should have enough thrust to balance the force like at terminal velocity.
Might be some FAA BS along the lines of licensing it as an ultralight aircraft, from memory they're limited to 1 person, 5 gallons fuel, and some peculiarity about top speed.