4 ms·

Scrambling to reach someone over difficult terrain also carries risk to life. As does being unable to reach patients for 90 minutes whatever the emergency.

• Retric 6y ago
  Helicopters can reach people in this location just fine in a reasonable time, and more importantly bring people back. Limiting your comparison to a 400,000+$ experimental jet suit vs walking is deceptive. If cost that much of an issue, a paraglider costs 1/10th as much and are likely much safer to operate. Or if getting a single person on site is all you need, tiny helicopters cost as low as 50k new.
  • wil421 6y ago
    A medivac out of the Grand Canyon can cost $15k. If you could use a $400k jet pack to stabilize someone until a ground crew gets there it could be a win for everyone.
    • zizee 6y ago
      How much would it cost to helecopter a medic in to stabilize someone until a ground crew gets there?
    • Retric 6y ago
      Multi million dollar helicopters large enough to remove people from the grand cannon plus a crew cost 15k per flight. A single person helicopter’s cost as low as 50k brand new and thus less per flight than this thing.
  • itsoktocry 6y ago
    >Helicopters can reach people just fine in a reasonable time Try to imagine a world where helicopters work in some rescue situations, but not so well in others.
    • Retric 6y ago
      Clarified, as reach people in this area just fine. It might be interesting to look at this kind of jet suit for rock climbers, but this specific design doesn’t seem capable of that.
    • NoOneNew 6y ago
      Rain? High winds? I doubt a 250 pound dude in a jetpack is going to fair any better than 15,000 pound copter. Tight areas... maybe. But if the tree canopy is too tight, I don't see how a dude with a jetpack is truly going to navigate that efficiently. They'll just find a near by clearing to land and hoof over... which, the same can be said of someone in a copter. Though, the one from the copter can ruck 70+ pounds of life saving medical equipment because they're not carrying jetpack equipment. Forest Fires? I mean, what advantage do they have to smokejumpers? All that extra jetpack gear means less firefighting gear on them. Look, it's cool. It's awesome. I also want to be the first person to get a DUI in a jetpack. But for the price of a cheap helicopter and going to a scenario such as a fell (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fell)... a less complex helicopter that can ACTUALLY carry gear seems like the smarter investment for a search/rescue department.
      • Neil44 6y ago
        Chopper needs a very large clear not sloping area to land in, jet man not so.
        • Retric 6y ago
          15,000 lb is a large helicopter which can winch people down and up. It’s the single man sub 1,500 lb helicopters that would need to land.
  • justinclift 6y ago
    There are plenty of cases here in Australia, including recently, where people have fallen off a cliff and can't be reached by rescuers for hours or perhaps until the next day. When that happens, it seems to be because the location (bottom of cliff) has extensive bush covering around it. That being said, I know nothing at all about any of the above cases. There may have been bad weather involved too, which would probably also be a problem for a jet pack solution.
    • Retric 6y ago
      The geography of the area is such that a person can walk to these people in 90 minutes. A jet suit with a slightly different design might be a meaningfully better option for rescuing people climbing el capitan or the bottom of ravines, but that’s not what is being considered here.