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What were we expecting from jetpacks though, really? Is it not more fair to suggest that the past was a little bit naïve about what it would take to operate a j

by ehnto 5y ago

What were we expecting from jetpacks though, really? Is it not more fair to suggest that the past was a little bit naïve about what it would take to operate a jetpack? They're still aircraft after all, at the very least you're going to need pilots license. There's no "bicycle" of jetpacks, you've got three axis of movement and certain death in every direction but up, it's just not a tool that belongs in the every-man's garage. I think the same can be said for the past's perception of what flying cars would be like. You don't see your average joe flying a helicopter to work, for the very same reasons you'll never see personal flying cars be ubiquitous.

dioxide 5y ago
rocket man.
fishtoaster 5y ago
I feel like you could describe cars the same way: You've got two axis of movement at 60mph. Stray a couple feet left or right and you die in fiery inferno. Stop too fast or too slow, same deal. Maybe appropriate for highly-trained specialists, not for every-man's garage. My point is not that "cars are death machines no one should own," although there are certainly those who hold that opinion. Rather that inherently dangerous things can be made relatively safe with enough systems around them: roads, signs, traffic laws, licenses, seatbelts, and so on.
- silvestrov 5y ago
  The big difference is that cars have brakes and that coming to a full stop will avoid most crashes. There is no good "emergency braking" for jetpacks, there is not even "autorotation" as there is for helicopters.
- ehnto 5y ago
  It's not really a "new frontier being misunderstood" though, it's very clear what it's value proposition is, and it's also clear from our history with aviation so far, what the challenges are. As I said in another comment, we don't even trust people to fly small drones without certification and FAA regulation, there's good reason for that, being in the air is nothing like being on a road.
  - InitialLastName 5y ago
    > we don't even trust people to fly small drones without certification and FAA regulation, there's good reason for that, being in the air is nothing like being on a road. We don't trust people to operate cars on a road without DMV certification, FMVSS regulations, and a substantial amount of liability insurance.
  - jancsika 5y ago
    To answer your question-- people in the past were expecting what has happened with small drones. Namely, that there'd be a metric fuckton of them, and that regulators would have to scramble to keep order before angry townsfolk began firing their rifles up at in the sky at them.
    - marcosdumay 5y ago
      Yeah, people in the past overestimate how eager people are to take obvious risks. To be fair, the eagerness of people to do activities that feel risky but actually aren't makes that prediction harder than it looks at first.
- hunterb123 5y ago
  I feel somewhat in the middle between both of your opinions. The "average joe" in some regions may not fly regularly, but around here there's many farmers with Cessnas that do routine work. Currently, if you have a use for it and are somewhat competent, it's practical to fly and not out of reach for the common man. But in no near future do I see them reducing the restrictions, flight hours, air traffic protocols, etc. That being said, I don't see much practicality for a jetpack other than sport or rescue.
  - ehnto 5y ago
    That's a big part of my reasoning, there are some fundamental impracticalities to personal aviation that limit it to particularly niche use cases. Those don't really change just because it's a flying car or jetpack. I can of course picture a world where there are automated skyways, and electric AVs guide themeselves from abode to shopping mall airport, I'm not without imagination. But I'm not hopeful.
- somehnacct3757 5y ago
  The third axis adds the risk of a gravity impact to every accident. Maybe it's solvable with some kind of failproof parachute system, I dunno. I wouldn't invest in it. Showing that cars are scary doesn't disprove that flying cars are more scary
- nerdponx 5y ago
  I think maybe the problems are: 1) the extra axis of movement means more operating complexity, and 2) there is no equivalent of "5 mph in a parking lot" on a jetpack, either you're flying or you're not.
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  yes but the way to make cars safe is to - seriously constrain their movements (all cars here move in this direction, you can get off here, you can get on here etc. ), have different types of licenses for different kinds of cars, and limit their speeds based on location. Jetpacks, and the flying car, have more possible ways to move. The Jetsons used to show the flying car working the way the normal car did - highways in the sky - that's basically the way it would have to work to be made safe, as long as there are any sizable amount of users of the jetpack or flying car. The jetpack has of course other hazards associated with it such as the engine being really close to the human operating it with significantly less shielding than one has on the car. on edit: I think there might have been problems with the car in some Jetsons and George had to parachute to safety, arms crossed and a seriously miffed expression on his face.
  - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
    So all that said - what would be required of the flying car for it to work well enough to supplant the car? (not the jetpack, that will at best be the skateboard of the sky) 1. It would have to be significantly faster, able to go longer (makes sense this would be the case because obviously you can fly quicker than you can drive so I assume this benefit will be a gimme, but it has to be significant for people to care. If you can make the flight to grandma's house in 3 hours instead of 8 there would be interest) 2. It would have to not cost very much more to own or to run. 3. It would have to not be any less safe for drivers than it currently is to drive - at the beginning this might be the case because less drivers means more safe maybe. 4. there would probably have to be significant safety features built in to keep flying cars from causing catastrophic damage if they failed - this seems to right there make it impossible because it has to not cost much more than a normal car. 5. There would probably have to increase in automation of cars to be able to detect when something wrong, when someone breaking flight rules etc. 6. no internal combustion engine flying cars, because a falling car with internal combustion engine is also a potential bomb. so what are the benefits - we've already mentioned 1 but are there others? Conceivably with a mass movement to flying cars instead of cars the infrastructure of cars would no longer be needed or need to be maintained. A utopian vision would then be that all that land that is currently big packed freeways get converted to parks etc. although a cynical vision would say oh nobody would want to pay for that and they turn into dystopian hellholes and kids go there to get eaten by coyotes. Possible benefit #3 - to make safe have to have much routes for everything but given that we have all the sky conceivably there could be more routes, including emergency routes that would be left to emergency services or people registered for a possible quick route (quick routes to hospital for birth etc.) All of this of course implies flying cars with effective computer surveillance of drivers. So I see these benefits to flying car - 1. quicker longer trips enabled. 2. No longer need driving car infrastructure 3. possible solutions to congestion are still available with flying car. But does that mean it is doable. I think the needed functionality points basically cancels out it ever working but maybe I am pessimistic, although I do think that now we are actually getting to the point where the necessary prerequisites for flying cars are starting to be built - specifically good electric cars and driving automation and services (but way early for that, flying cars in 100 years at this rate)
- edaemon 5y ago
  Jetpacks don't have brakes. Once you start moving, coming to a stop is very difficult or very harmful. You have to be a highly trained specialist to operate a jetpack at all, while you can gently learn to operate a car.
  - saalweachter 5y ago
    Flight in general is unforgiving this way. There's only so much practicing you can do under 20 ft and 20 mph. Airplanes you can at least use simulators and flight instructors who can take control when you mess up; jetpacks you lose any opportunity for a co-pilot, so you probably need good flight simulators you can log hundreds of hours in before strapping in.
- jabbany 5y ago
  Actually, the high level question in here is quite interesting (and has even been discussed in some sci-fi). Humans evolutionarily think about movement with a 2 dimensional mindset because for much of our history we only needed to think about 2d movement. It's why even modern flight is centered around the idea of stacking multiple 2d environments (via elevation / flight levels) and then just ignoring that 3rd dimension for the most part. This is why something like a car is operationally intuitive -- humans don't need training to quickly pick up the interface for one, even a kid could operate a 2d vehicle. The systems around them mainly manage the risk around _conflict_ introduced by having multiple actors. This is also where a plane (or submarine, or jetpack) is fundamentally different. The systems around those need to manage not only conflict but also our sensory deficiencies. It's very easy to get disoriented in 3d movement (it's very easy to lose the ability to tell up from down) and there have been plenty of plane crashes due to this. That's why pilots need to infer their orientation from instruments rather than just their senses. That's also why flying cars and jetpacks are not widely available -- the amount of training just to operate such devices _alone_ is already very high, let alone having to manage conflict in addition to that.
  - jherdman 5y ago
    > Humans evolutionarily think about movement with a 2 dimensional mindset because for much of our history we only needed to think about 2d movement. Citation required? If you hang out with a child you quickly discover that their world is quite three dimensional. Heck, climbing is a fast growing sport. Again, three dimensional. We're made to run, jump, and climb. Three dimensional.
    - rpdillon 5y ago
      I've worked for several years with children, and have also piloted aircraft. 3D is _tough_, at least for me.
    - jabbany 5y ago
      From NASA: https://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/9-12/features/F_Human_Vestibular_System_in_Space.html https://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/9-12/features/F_Hu... "When there is no visual input as is common in many flight situations, we rely more heavily on our vestibular sense for this information. However, in flight and in space, our vestibular system, _which is designed to work on the ground in a 1g environment_, often provides us with erroneous or disorienting information." We have a system to somewhat understand and orient ourselves in 3d obviously, but it has quirks because evolution tuned it to work best on the ground + assuming 1G of gravity as "down". Orienting in 3d is not intuitive for us. We can do it but we need a _lot_ of help to do it safely.
- nwienert 5y ago
  I think this comment is reasonable and the replies to this comment are filled with bad takes. Currently designed Jetpacks don't have brakes, or any safety features really, but that's just a lack of development. You could easily think of hundreds of safety features that would make Jetpacks in a distant future seem pretty safe, from auto pilot/recovery features, automated object detection and avoidance, body suits with built in airbags, better designed packs that give things like 100x better articulation control, built in parachutes, the list could go on forever really. Meanwhile cars actually have additional dangerous properties: being stuck in very confined tracks where any other user errors affect you, limited visibility, and a massive amount of heavy metal surrounding you. I don't see why Jetpacks couldn't be as safe as a cars given they had an equal amount of investment into safety as we see modern cars. And to answer the article as to why they aren't popular, it's pretty easy to see that they just kind of suck as they are now, they need improvements in nearly every dimension.
  - outworlder 5y ago
    The reason they are not popular is that we don't have a practical power source. Flight times are measured in minutes. And practical ones that could be used by anyone would be much larger (think VTOL hang glider, not Bobba Fett). Even with a practical power source, you know have an immense amount of energy stored right next to your body. You need to be able to direct said energy in a safe way. Good luck. There's only so much airbags can do. Imagine where you would locate those airbags. Cant be pressed against the body either (airbags can cause horrible injuries). Parachutes won't help close to the ground.
  - iainmerrick 5y ago
    I think there are a couple of key differences that you’re underplaying. First, for usage of cars in society, there’s a nice gradual curve where an early slow unreliable car is still somewhat useful, and a faster car is a bit more useful, etc, and that’s what allowed them to get off the ground (as it were). There’s a vastly higher threshold before jetpacks start being usable and useful. Second, cars are relatively fail-safe in that if you take your foot off the accelerator the car will coast to a halt. Lots of cars can easily come to a safe stop together -- traffic jams are bad but not immediately life-threatening. Jetpacks aren’t nearly as failsafe because if you stop flying you need to land (or more likely, crash-land). Planes have the same two advantages over jetpacks, because even a slow or unreliable plane is useful because it can carry cargo; and most planes can glide a bit which helps reduce the risk of crash landings.
- pdonis 5y ago
  > inherently dangerous things can be made relatively safe with enough systems around them: roads, signs, traffic laws, licenses, seatbelts, and so on. While this is true, the issue is that what is required for "enough" can vary very widely. In particular, what would be "enough" for jetpacks (and flying machines more generally) is a lot more than what experience has shown to be "enough" for cars. Some indications of why that is are the frequency of airplane accidents involving experienced pilots, who have had a lot more training on how to fly a plane than anyone gets on how to drive a car, and also the amount of time and effort and the level of continuing human supervision required to keep commercial air travel as safe as it is, even though that also involves experienced pilots and has the support of many complex systems.
- moralestapia 5y ago
  Your engine dies while driving, nothing happens. Your engine dies while flying, good luck, pal.
  - nwienert 5y ago
    If only we had an invention that used air resistance to slow falls...
    - r00fus 5y ago
      Do parachutes help when you lose control 50ft off the ground? Deploy time is probably too short. Also lateral speed may be fatal enough with a jetpack.
      - nwienert 5y ago
        Body airbags or similar would likely work for lower altitude.
      - chipsa 5y ago
        Rocket deployed parachute. Kinda like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirrus_Airframe_Parachute_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirrus_Airframe_Parachute_Syst... Speeds up deploy time by making the deploy happen, instead of waiting for gravity/airflow to deploy it.
        FabHK 5y ago
        Still needs a certain minimum height to be effective, >= 400 ft in straight and level flight, 920 ft in a spin [1]. Don't think it would be much use in a jetpack (apart from the fact that the article states that they haven't found a way yet to attach both a jetpack and a parachute, let alone a ballistic one). [1] https://cirrusaircraft.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/CAPS_Guide.pdf https://cirrusaircraft.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/CAPS_G...
    - notahacker 5y ago
      If only that invention wasn't supposed to be strapped to the same part of the person's anatomy as the jetpack, with the result being that no practically working implementation combining the two exists...
- kiliantics 5y ago
  I think it was a mistake to allow just about anyone behind the wheel of a car. It results in upwards of 1 million deaths per year, that's more than malaria. And that's not including deaths attributed to air pollution.
- drzaiusapelord 5y ago
  This analogy doesn't really work because car are inherently much much safer than jetpacks just by the virtue of the fact that an error or failure or accident is almost not fatal. 0.7 percent of car accidents are fatal. In serious plane accidents, what laypersons would call crashes, the fatality rate is about 55%. Which is actually not bad considering, but not imagine if a plane was instead not this highly regulated bus-like thing that makes set routes and piloted by only experts, but something anyone can buy and fly like a hypothetical consumer jetpack. How many jetpack accidents are something that don't result in dismemberment or death? It must be a low number. From a safety perspective, you're going to be in a little bit of trouble because this hypothetical industry will have profiteers and customers that simply won't let you regular them much. Cars are a special case because nearly everyone rides in them so safety concerns (thank you Ralph Nader) are politically easy and the capital owning class have a hard time pushing back on stories of dead families in terrible accidents. The capital owning class finds it easy to push back against regulations on motorcycles, thus maximizing their profit, because even people into motorcycles don't want crumple-zones, roll-cages, big flashing lights, bumpers, etc because it hurts the aesthetic and experience they buy motorcycles for. Lets remember it took 60-70 years of motorcycle popularity before helmet laws got popular. That's a very slow regulatory burn. So the jetpack is a lot more like a motorcycle. Even on well regulated roads full of safety devices they're still death traps because any vehicle without a "cage" is simply dangerous and impossible to be made safe. The NHTSA: For every mile traveled, motorcyclists have a risk of a fatal accident that is 35 times higher than a car driver. So no, you probably can't car-ize a jetpack because a jetpack isn't a car. Its own unique mode of transportation and one without a cage and something inherently unstable. I imagine your best case scenario is many times the risk of motorcycles. This is why investors, the living arm of capitalism, refuse to mass-fund these deathtraps, but they'll fund any gimmicky crypto or social media thing. I don't think a successful jetpack company wouldn't want to car-ize it anyway. It would take away the appeal and the profit incentive would demand they continue to make them as sexily dangerous and performative as they can get away with to increase that appeal, thus sales. You also have the larger regulatory and public safety issues drones have. They can't stay aloft without power and come crashing down without wings or autogyration to helps them down. So in populated areas it would be irresponsible to have these flying over the heads of people. If you have free time, go ahead and visit /r/weirdwings or /r/weirdwheels. There's no shortage of "innovative" death-traps out there that failed to penetrate the market because they're just too dangerous. Last but not least, single-person transportation tends to be the kiss of death anyway from both a practicality and cost perspective. People are social, have significant others, children, elderly to take care of, etc so the single-person vehicle has to be something you own ON TOP of owning a car or two. It doesn't replace cars, so a prospective buyer is someone who has to make car payments as well as jetpack payments. What percent of Americans can afford this vs people who can afford cars and the occasional airline ticket? Currently, an affordable jetpack is $200,000. If through the miracle of mass production you get that down to 1/2 or 1/3rd that, its still the cost of an expensive luxury car. What market are you appealing to even if you iron out some of the safety issues? Who is this unicorn who can afford this and would want it, especially considering the wealthy tend to be old men unfit to pilot something like this safely and with comfort, the same way the average Corvette driver isn't hot 20 something guys like in the movies, but older men close to retirement. Google says the average age of a corvette owner is 61. Do you really want 61 year olds flying over your head in Iron Man cosplay that actually flies? Knowing full well if their arm muscles give out then their vector radically changes and more or less turns them into 70+mph human missiles aiming for the ground? In a country that has traded efficient public transportation like intra-city light rail, trollies, and fast regional links for car culture, well, you're kinda stuck making car payments then. Not enough people can spend $100,000 on a jetpack the same way we all don't have a Cessna waiting for us as the local regional airport. The money ain't here even if you can fix safety and the absurdly low flight time of just a few minutes. The sci-fi fantasy of flying alone above a city is not only technically difficult, ridiculously dangerous, but economically impossible for all put the wealthiest.
- hackermeows 5y ago
  Hhgccxxcfgghkl
jvanderbot 5y ago
Someday, helicopters will operate like video games, due to complete flight software stabilization and abstraction of the horrifically complicated control surfaces. This is already starting. But uptake is slow[1] At that time, we can revisit jetpacks and use onboard software to completely abstract the horrifically complicated control problem. 1. https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/23977/why-arent-there-simplified-fly-by-wire-helicopter-controls https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/23977/why-arent...
- ehnto 5y ago
  I agree and it's pretty incredible, but I think to enable popularization of it as personal transport you'd need to abstract the pilot away entirely. Automate the whole journey, from a system that's aware of all other journeys. That still can't account for all dangers, but at least people wouldn't be flying into each other at 100mph
- outworlder 5y ago
  At 25k USD for the cheapest helicoper blade, I don't see them getting more popular even if they become trivial to fly. Tiny jet turbines are expensive too.
  - BlueTemplar 5y ago
    Wouldn't mass manufacturing significantly drive these costs down ? Fuel costs however...
- closetohome 5y ago
  There are at least a couple of rotary wing UAVs like the K-Max and Fire Scout that are just retrofitted conventional airframes. So in a way it's almost like the technology skipped manned flight and was put directly into unmanned aircraft first. Perhaps we'll see some of it trickle back down as it becomes a more proven technology. Personally I think the form that "jet packs" will eventually take is just an electric multicopter that you strap into somehow.
tshaddox 5y ago
> They're still aircraft after all, at the very least you're going to need pilots license. I think a reasonable interpretation of the promise of jetpacks would be more like the "ultralight vehicles" category (as it's called in the United States). These vehicles require no registration or pilot certification. Some are fairly traditional rigid airplane designs (just very small and lightweight), but the category also includes powered paragliders (AKA paramotors) and some of the smaller powered parachutes. Where I grew up in the US these were fairly common to see in the air, and no one thought it was odd that they didn't require a pilots license. Perhaps for many people in many areas the regulations or different, and it strikes them as absurd to fly aircraft without a license?
- Grimburger 5y ago
  Ironically where I live, it's far simpler to get a private pilot's license than a provisional car license. It takes 25 hour in a plane to get a recreational license, and 120 supervised hours logged in a car, for people who don't have a relative to do the supervision and need to pay and instructor, the cost comes out more than getting a pilots license. Once that's done to be allowed on the road alone, they need to get their 2nd provisional license a year later, then full car license a year again after that, with additional tests along the way.
sandworm101 5y ago
>> There's no "bicycle" of jetpacks Grab any drone with a 200kg capacity (they do exist), hang a lawn chair under it, and take to the sky. That's probably safer. Jetpacks as a concept might get overtaken by the small helicopters we today call drones.
- NeuNeurosis 5y ago
  Funny you mention that. I just saw the below on reddit the other day. https://explorersweb.com/jetson-one-giant-passenger-drone/ https://explorersweb.com/jetson-one-giant-passenger-drone/
  - echelon 5y ago
    Put a giant pre-inflated airbag around it and that might not be unreasonable.
  - Animats 5y ago
    That's a nice piece of hardware. There are other big, people-carrying drones. eHang was probably the first, in 2016. They've actually sold a few. Price is above US$300K. They routinely fly above cities. Like everybody else, they're battery-limited. Their limit is about 30 minutes. All those un-shrouded spinning blades at low height are worrisome.
    - FabHK 5y ago
      eHang was not the first, but they do seem to have good marketing. German company Volocopter flew a manned demonstration rig in 2011 (the famous pilates ball [1]), and had the first manned flight of the Volocopter multicopter (certified, 18 rotors) in February 2016, with the CEO himself flying [2]. I don't know when the eHang 184 flew first (a video on youtube says Feb 2018 [3]). Personally, I find the design (with 8 rotors in a quadratic arrangement at knee-height, perfect for decapitating pedestrians) atrocious. (The Volocopter blades are above the cabin, as in a helicopter.) And where do you get the 30 minutes endurance for the eHang from? When I divide the range by the cruise speed from Wikipedia, I get about 8 minutes endurance. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L75ESD9PBOw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L75ESD9PBOw [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OazFiIhwAEs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OazFiIhwAEs [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mr1V-r2YxME https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mr1V-r2YxME
mountainriver 5y ago
I donno the mandolorian maybe?!
jayd16 5y ago
I think we probably expected something closer to a motorcycle as far as danger and accessibility.
andrei_says_ 5y ago
To be completely honest my expectations of jet packs were modeled by cartoons. I am admitting this publicly as a reminder to myself and others for the fact that for the public, the process of writing software is modeled by scenes of hackers in Hollywood movies.
thereddaikon 5y ago
I feel that improved control systems could go a long way to making them more controllable. Look at RC aircraft, they used to take a lot of practice to fly and even when mastered required so much focus that they weren't useful for anything. But now drones practically fly themselves and instead of "flying" the drone, the pilot really just tells it where to go. The flight software figures out the rest. There's no reason the same principles can't be applied to jet packs. Add a gyro or two, gps etc to give it the data it needs and the pilot should have a much easier time. The more difficult to solve problem is with endurance. They are only good for 10s of seconds of powered flight.
outworlder 5y ago
> What were we expecting from jetpacks though, really? Is it not more fair to suggest that the past was a little bit naïve about what it would take to operate a jetpack? They're still aircraft after all, at the very least you're going to need pilots license. You need a pilots license, but you don't need fine motor coordination skills across your entire body PLUS a lot of core strength, in addition to all the problems with moving in 3d. For this 'jetpack' you are essentially balancing your weight between your back and arms. If you get it wrong for a split second, you'll kiss the ground. It's inherently unstable and tiring since you have jet turbines strapped to your arms. An aircraft is stable. Let go of the controls and it will keep flying. The closest aircraft comparison would possibly be with a hang glider, except even there your weight is supported and you are essentially just shifting it around. Many jetpacks in fiction were envisioned to work more like drones. Tell it where to go and it would do the rest. Iron Man would be similar to this thing, except it is described as a fully mechanized suit (plus artificial intelligence), which magically takes care of some of these problems. Ultimately, 'jetpacks' will probably never exist. There's an inherent physics limitation when trying to strap a whole human body to the side of something small (and generally depicted as being strapped on your back, Bobba Fett style). The center of mass is off.
- rictic 5y ago
  If battery tech continues to improve at current rates then certainly electric jetpacks will be possible and practical, if there's still demand (and we don't destroy ourselves one way or another). Without doing the math though it might be many decades.
  - alisonkisk 5y ago
  - mdavidn 5y ago
    Unlikely. The specific energy of jet fuel is more than 40 times that of batteries, and I don't see batteries improving by an order of magnitude. A jetpack would need 40 times more battery mass than fuel to produce the same thrust for the same duration. Of course, the additional weight of the batteries necessitate even more thrust...
scythe 5y ago
>There's no "bicycle" of jetpacks, you've got three axis of movement and certain death in every direction but up, it's just not a tool that belongs in the every-man's garage. There is a perfectly good flying vehicle that can be flown by an ordinary person with a reasonable amount of training; it's called a powered paraglider. However, it has the disadvantage that it is very large, and if the weather is not favorable, you can't fly. The analogy with a car would be "road sometimes spontaneously turns into scree", and it would be very hard to design a car that can cope with that.
falcolas 5y ago
> What were we expecting from jetpacks though, really? Drones, in the form of a jetpack. A little joystick in each hand with DJI levels of KISS, and with the same DJI "Help I'm out of control!" button too. Probably "return to home" too. We don't/can't have that, because there's no servo-mechanical joints to be controlled in the referenced rocket pack system.
ThrustVectoring 5y ago
> They're still aircraft after all, at the very least you're going to need pilots license. The FAA is amenable to allowing people to operate small personal for non-commercial purposes without a license. If you do not take passengers and do not operate it in time, place, and manner that creates a hazard for others, there's a very real "if you kill your own damn self that's your problem" regulatory mentality. What you actually need a license for is to exceed speed/weight/fuel limitations designed to ensure these conditions. If you're going for a part 103 ultralight craft, that's 55 knots / 254 pounds / 5 gallons of fuel. Might be hard to design a usable jetpack under these constraints.
everdrive 5y ago
> There's no "bicycle" of jetpacks, you've got three axis of movement and certain death in every direction but up, Arguably, this could exist, and is a self-stabilizing battery powered drone.
sbierwagen 5y ago
>certain death in every direction but up Up is also certain death, if you're not carrying bottled oxygen.
funkaster 5y ago
I think the part that's missing (besides the knowledge and understanding of the operation in the airspace) is enough (automatic) assistance that its manipulation can be done by someone with the sake skills that any GA pilot could have.
dclowd9901 5y ago
And yet, it’s quite easy to fly a drone in simple mannerisms. The UX failure of the jet pack is refinement in software, which drone makers have already figured out. The real issue is, with an 8 minute flight time, it’s good for demonstrations and that’s it.
sfifs 5y ago
Actually what's needed was outlined very nicely in Starship Troopers by Heinlein many decades ago. We're not there yet of course but with faster and faster edge compute, it will get there. > Jump really hard and the suit’s jets cut in, amplifying what the suit’s leg “muscles” did, giving you a three-jet shove, the axis of pressure of which passes through your center of mass. So you jump over that house next door. Which makes you come down as fast as you went up . . . which the suit notes through your proximity & closing gear (a sort of simple-minded radar resembling a proximity fuse) and therefore cuts in the jets again just the right amount to cushion your landing without your having to think about it. And that is the beauty of a powered suit: you don’t have to think about it. You don’t have to drive it, fly it, conn it, operate it; you just wear it and it takes orders directly from your muscles and does for you what your muscles are trying to do. This leaves you with your whole mind free to handle your weapons and notice what is going on around you . . . which is supremely important to an infantryman who wants to die in bed. If you load a mud foot down with a lot of gadgets that he has to watch, somebody a lot more simply equipped—say with a stone ax—will sneak up and bash his head in while he is trying to read a vernier.
- richardfey 5y ago
  Now you're making me want read the book!
  - crooked-v 5y ago
    The book is good, but there's a certain amount of black comedy when you look at the context of how it was written and how, among other things, the military strategies it argues for (de facto universal conscription, terrorizing enemy civilians into submission, using shock-and-awe campaigns and targeted strikes instead of needing to occupy territory in depth, etc) have been repeatedly discredited since its release, and even at the time of release had obvious failures in the Korean War just a few years before.
    - ianmcgowan 5y ago
      It can still be a good book with terrible politics. If you need a palate cleanser when finished, The Forever War by Haldeman is a direct rebuttal..
demadog 5y ago
The DJI drones have really good stabilization and crash prevention. Of course it’s different with a human involved, but scale up the mavic pro to hold 200 lbs, do a few more iterations, load in a Tesla battery and we’re there.
TulliusCicero 5y ago
> What were we expecting from jetpacks though, really? Something easy-ish to use and safe. Yeah, probably unrealistic, but nevertheless.
scotty79 5y ago
I think we expect of them full self driving from the get go.
hiptobecubic 5y ago
You could say the same of regular cars, I would argue.
Aardwolf 5y ago
> What were we expecting from jetpacks though, really? The reality turns out to be different, but, I'd say we were expecting practical personal flight, as seen in video games with jetpacks.

by ehnto 5y ago

dioxide 5y ago

rocket man.

fishtoaster 5y ago

I feel like you could describe cars the same way: You've got two axis of movement at 60mph. Stray a couple feet left or right and you die in fiery inferno. Stop too fast or too slow, same deal. Maybe appropriate for highly-trained specialists, not for every-man's garage. My point is not that "cars are death machines no one should own," although there are certainly those who hold that opinion. Rather that inherently dangerous things can be made relatively safe with enough systems around them: roads, signs, traffic laws, licenses, seatbelts, and so on.

silvestrov 5y ago
The big difference is that cars have brakes and that coming to a full stop will avoid most crashes. There is no good "emergency braking" for jetpacks, there is not even "autorotation" as there is for helicopters.
ehnto 5y ago
It's not really a "new frontier being misunderstood" though, it's very clear what it's value proposition is, and it's also clear from our history with aviation so far, what the challenges are. As I said in another comment, we don't even trust people to fly small drones without certification and FAA regulation, there's good reason for that, being in the air is nothing like being on a road.
- InitialLastName 5y ago
  > we don't even trust people to fly small drones without certification and FAA regulation, there's good reason for that, being in the air is nothing like being on a road. We don't trust people to operate cars on a road without DMV certification, FMVSS regulations, and a substantial amount of liability insurance.
- jancsika 5y ago
  To answer your question-- people in the past were expecting what has happened with small drones. Namely, that there'd be a metric fuckton of them, and that regulators would have to scramble to keep order before angry townsfolk began firing their rifles up at in the sky at them.
  - marcosdumay 5y ago
    Yeah, people in the past overestimate how eager people are to take obvious risks. To be fair, the eagerness of people to do activities that feel risky but actually aren't makes that prediction harder than it looks at first.
hunterb123 5y ago
I feel somewhat in the middle between both of your opinions. The "average joe" in some regions may not fly regularly, but around here there's many farmers with Cessnas that do routine work. Currently, if you have a use for it and are somewhat competent, it's practical to fly and not out of reach for the common man. But in no near future do I see them reducing the restrictions, flight hours, air traffic protocols, etc. That being said, I don't see much practicality for a jetpack other than sport or rescue.
- ehnto 5y ago
  That's a big part of my reasoning, there are some fundamental impracticalities to personal aviation that limit it to particularly niche use cases. Those don't really change just because it's a flying car or jetpack. I can of course picture a world where there are automated skyways, and electric AVs guide themeselves from abode to shopping mall airport, I'm not without imagination. But I'm not hopeful.
somehnacct3757 5y ago
The third axis adds the risk of a gravity impact to every accident. Maybe it's solvable with some kind of failproof parachute system, I dunno. I wouldn't invest in it. Showing that cars are scary doesn't disprove that flying cars are more scary
nerdponx 5y ago
I think maybe the problems are: 1) the extra axis of movement means more operating complexity, and 2) there is no equivalent of "5 mph in a parking lot" on a jetpack, either you're flying or you're not.
bryanrasmussen 5y ago
yes but the way to make cars safe is to - seriously constrain their movements (all cars here move in this direction, you can get off here, you can get on here etc. ), have different types of licenses for different kinds of cars, and limit their speeds based on location. Jetpacks, and the flying car, have more possible ways to move. The Jetsons used to show the flying car working the way the normal car did - highways in the sky - that's basically the way it would have to work to be made safe, as long as there are any sizable amount of users of the jetpack or flying car. The jetpack has of course other hazards associated with it such as the engine being really close to the human operating it with significantly less shielding than one has on the car. on edit: I think there might have been problems with the car in some Jetsons and George had to parachute to safety, arms crossed and a seriously miffed expression on his face.
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  So all that said - what would be required of the flying car for it to work well enough to supplant the car? (not the jetpack, that will at best be the skateboard of the sky) 1. It would have to be significantly faster, able to go longer (makes sense this would be the case because obviously you can fly quicker than you can drive so I assume this benefit will be a gimme, but it has to be significant for people to care. If you can make the flight to grandma's house in 3 hours instead of 8 there would be interest) 2. It would have to not cost very much more to own or to run. 3. It would have to not be any less safe for drivers than it currently is to drive - at the beginning this might be the case because less drivers means more safe maybe. 4. there would probably have to be significant safety features built in to keep flying cars from causing catastrophic damage if they failed - this seems to right there make it impossible because it has to not cost much more than a normal car. 5. There would probably have to increase in automation of cars to be able to detect when something wrong, when someone breaking flight rules etc. 6. no internal combustion engine flying cars, because a falling car with internal combustion engine is also a potential bomb. so what are the benefits - we've already mentioned 1 but are there others? Conceivably with a mass movement to flying cars instead of cars the infrastructure of cars would no longer be needed or need to be maintained. A utopian vision would then be that all that land that is currently big packed freeways get converted to parks etc. although a cynical vision would say oh nobody would want to pay for that and they turn into dystopian hellholes and kids go there to get eaten by coyotes. Possible benefit #3 - to make safe have to have much routes for everything but given that we have all the sky conceivably there could be more routes, including emergency routes that would be left to emergency services or people registered for a possible quick route (quick routes to hospital for birth etc.) All of this of course implies flying cars with effective computer surveillance of drivers. So I see these benefits to flying car - 1. quicker longer trips enabled. 2. No longer need driving car infrastructure 3. possible solutions to congestion are still available with flying car. But does that mean it is doable. I think the needed functionality points basically cancels out it ever working but maybe I am pessimistic, although I do think that now we are actually getting to the point where the necessary prerequisites for flying cars are starting to be built - specifically good electric cars and driving automation and services (but way early for that, flying cars in 100 years at this rate)
edaemon 5y ago
Jetpacks don't have brakes. Once you start moving, coming to a stop is very difficult or very harmful. You have to be a highly trained specialist to operate a jetpack at all, while you can gently learn to operate a car.
- saalweachter 5y ago
  Flight in general is unforgiving this way. There's only so much practicing you can do under 20 ft and 20 mph. Airplanes you can at least use simulators and flight instructors who can take control when you mess up; jetpacks you lose any opportunity for a co-pilot, so you probably need good flight simulators you can log hundreds of hours in before strapping in.
jabbany 5y ago
Actually, the high level question in here is quite interesting (and has even been discussed in some sci-fi). Humans evolutionarily think about movement with a 2 dimensional mindset because for much of our history we only needed to think about 2d movement. It's why even modern flight is centered around the idea of stacking multiple 2d environments (via elevation / flight levels) and then just ignoring that 3rd dimension for the most part. This is why something like a car is operationally intuitive -- humans don't need training to quickly pick up the interface for one, even a kid could operate a 2d vehicle. The systems around them mainly manage the risk around _conflict_ introduced by having multiple actors. This is also where a plane (or submarine, or jetpack) is fundamentally different. The systems around those need to manage not only conflict but also our sensory deficiencies. It's very easy to get disoriented in 3d movement (it's very easy to lose the ability to tell up from down) and there have been plenty of plane crashes due to this. That's why pilots need to infer their orientation from instruments rather than just their senses. That's also why flying cars and jetpacks are not widely available -- the amount of training just to operate such devices _alone_ is already very high, let alone having to manage conflict in addition to that.
- jherdman 5y ago
  > Humans evolutionarily think about movement with a 2 dimensional mindset because for much of our history we only needed to think about 2d movement. Citation required? If you hang out with a child you quickly discover that their world is quite three dimensional. Heck, climbing is a fast growing sport. Again, three dimensional. We're made to run, jump, and climb. Three dimensional.
  - rpdillon 5y ago
    I've worked for several years with children, and have also piloted aircraft. 3D is _tough_, at least for me.
  - jabbany 5y ago
    From NASA: https://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/9-12/features/F_Human_Vestibular_System_in_Space.html https://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/9-12/features/F_Hu... "When there is no visual input as is common in many flight situations, we rely more heavily on our vestibular sense for this information. However, in flight and in space, our vestibular system, _which is designed to work on the ground in a 1g environment_, often provides us with erroneous or disorienting information." We have a system to somewhat understand and orient ourselves in 3d obviously, but it has quirks because evolution tuned it to work best on the ground + assuming 1G of gravity as "down". Orienting in 3d is not intuitive for us. We can do it but we need a _lot_ of help to do it safely.
nwienert 5y ago
I think this comment is reasonable and the replies to this comment are filled with bad takes. Currently designed Jetpacks don't have brakes, or any safety features really, but that's just a lack of development. You could easily think of hundreds of safety features that would make Jetpacks in a distant future seem pretty safe, from auto pilot/recovery features, automated object detection and avoidance, body suits with built in airbags, better designed packs that give things like 100x better articulation control, built in parachutes, the list could go on forever really. Meanwhile cars actually have additional dangerous properties: being stuck in very confined tracks where any other user errors affect you, limited visibility, and a massive amount of heavy metal surrounding you. I don't see why Jetpacks couldn't be as safe as a cars given they had an equal amount of investment into safety as we see modern cars. And to answer the article as to why they aren't popular, it's pretty easy to see that they just kind of suck as they are now, they need improvements in nearly every dimension.
- outworlder 5y ago
  The reason they are not popular is that we don't have a practical power source. Flight times are measured in minutes. And practical ones that could be used by anyone would be much larger (think VTOL hang glider, not Bobba Fett). Even with a practical power source, you know have an immense amount of energy stored right next to your body. You need to be able to direct said energy in a safe way. Good luck. There's only so much airbags can do. Imagine where you would locate those airbags. Cant be pressed against the body either (airbags can cause horrible injuries). Parachutes won't help close to the ground.
- iainmerrick 5y ago
  I think there are a couple of key differences that you’re underplaying. First, for usage of cars in society, there’s a nice gradual curve where an early slow unreliable car is still somewhat useful, and a faster car is a bit more useful, etc, and that’s what allowed them to get off the ground (as it were). There’s a vastly higher threshold before jetpacks start being usable and useful. Second, cars are relatively fail-safe in that if you take your foot off the accelerator the car will coast to a halt. Lots of cars can easily come to a safe stop together -- traffic jams are bad but not immediately life-threatening. Jetpacks aren’t nearly as failsafe because if you stop flying you need to land (or more likely, crash-land). Planes have the same two advantages over jetpacks, because even a slow or unreliable plane is useful because it can carry cargo; and most planes can glide a bit which helps reduce the risk of crash landings.
pdonis 5y ago
> inherently dangerous things can be made relatively safe with enough systems around them: roads, signs, traffic laws, licenses, seatbelts, and so on. While this is true, the issue is that what is required for "enough" can vary very widely. In particular, what would be "enough" for jetpacks (and flying machines more generally) is a lot more than what experience has shown to be "enough" for cars. Some indications of why that is are the frequency of airplane accidents involving experienced pilots, who have had a lot more training on how to fly a plane than anyone gets on how to drive a car, and also the amount of time and effort and the level of continuing human supervision required to keep commercial air travel as safe as it is, even though that also involves experienced pilots and has the support of many complex systems.
moralestapia 5y ago
Your engine dies while driving, nothing happens. Your engine dies while flying, good luck, pal.
- nwienert 5y ago
  If only we had an invention that used air resistance to slow falls...
  - r00fus 5y ago
    Do parachutes help when you lose control 50ft off the ground? Deploy time is probably too short. Also lateral speed may be fatal enough with a jetpack.
    - nwienert 5y ago
      Body airbags or similar would likely work for lower altitude.
    - chipsa 5y ago
      Rocket deployed parachute. Kinda like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirrus_Airframe_Parachute_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirrus_Airframe_Parachute_Syst... Speeds up deploy time by making the deploy happen, instead of waiting for gravity/airflow to deploy it.
      - FabHK 5y ago
        Still needs a certain minimum height to be effective, >= 400 ft in straight and level flight, 920 ft in a spin [1]. Don't think it would be much use in a jetpack (apart from the fact that the article states that they haven't found a way yet to attach both a jetpack and a parachute, let alone a ballistic one). [1] https://cirrusaircraft.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/CAPS_Guide.pdf https://cirrusaircraft.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/CAPS_G...
  - notahacker 5y ago
    If only that invention wasn't supposed to be strapped to the same part of the person's anatomy as the jetpack, with the result being that no practically working implementation combining the two exists...
kiliantics 5y ago
I think it was a mistake to allow just about anyone behind the wheel of a car. It results in upwards of 1 million deaths per year, that's more than malaria. And that's not including deaths attributed to air pollution.
drzaiusapelord 5y ago
This analogy doesn't really work because car are inherently much much safer than jetpacks just by the virtue of the fact that an error or failure or accident is almost not fatal. 0.7 percent of car accidents are fatal. In serious plane accidents, what laypersons would call crashes, the fatality rate is about 55%. Which is actually not bad considering, but not imagine if a plane was instead not this highly regulated bus-like thing that makes set routes and piloted by only experts, but something anyone can buy and fly like a hypothetical consumer jetpack. How many jetpack accidents are something that don't result in dismemberment or death? It must be a low number. From a safety perspective, you're going to be in a little bit of trouble because this hypothetical industry will have profiteers and customers that simply won't let you regular them much. Cars are a special case because nearly everyone rides in them so safety concerns (thank you Ralph Nader) are politically easy and the capital owning class have a hard time pushing back on stories of dead families in terrible accidents. The capital owning class finds it easy to push back against regulations on motorcycles, thus maximizing their profit, because even people into motorcycles don't want crumple-zones, roll-cages, big flashing lights, bumpers, etc because it hurts the aesthetic and experience they buy motorcycles for. Lets remember it took 60-70 years of motorcycle popularity before helmet laws got popular. That's a very slow regulatory burn. So the jetpack is a lot more like a motorcycle. Even on well regulated roads full of safety devices they're still death traps because any vehicle without a "cage" is simply dangerous and impossible to be made safe. The NHTSA: For every mile traveled, motorcyclists have a risk of a fatal accident that is 35 times higher than a car driver. So no, you probably can't car-ize a jetpack because a jetpack isn't a car. Its own unique mode of transportation and one without a cage and something inherently unstable. I imagine your best case scenario is many times the risk of motorcycles. This is why investors, the living arm of capitalism, refuse to mass-fund these deathtraps, but they'll fund any gimmicky crypto or social media thing. I don't think a successful jetpack company wouldn't want to car-ize it anyway. It would take away the appeal and the profit incentive would demand they continue to make them as sexily dangerous and performative as they can get away with to increase that appeal, thus sales. You also have the larger regulatory and public safety issues drones have. They can't stay aloft without power and come crashing down without wings or autogyration to helps them down. So in populated areas it would be irresponsible to have these flying over the heads of people. If you have free time, go ahead and visit /r/weirdwings or /r/weirdwheels. There's no shortage of "innovative" death-traps out there that failed to penetrate the market because they're just too dangerous. Last but not least, single-person transportation tends to be the kiss of death anyway from both a practicality and cost perspective. People are social, have significant others, children, elderly to take care of, etc so the single-person vehicle has to be something you own ON TOP of owning a car or two. It doesn't replace cars, so a prospective buyer is someone who has to make car payments as well as jetpack payments. What percent of Americans can afford this vs people who can afford cars and the occasional airline ticket? Currently, an affordable jetpack is $200,000. If through the miracle of mass production you get that down to 1/2 or 1/3rd that, its still the cost of an expensive luxury car. What market are you appealing to even if you iron out some of the safety issues? Who is this unicorn who can afford this and would want it, especially considering the wealthy tend to be old men unfit to pilot something like this safely and with comfort, the same way the average Corvette driver isn't hot 20 something guys like in the movies, but older men close to retirement. Google says the average age of a corvette owner is 61. Do you really want 61 year olds flying over your head in Iron Man cosplay that actually flies? Knowing full well if their arm muscles give out then their vector radically changes and more or less turns them into 70+mph human missiles aiming for the ground? In a country that has traded efficient public transportation like intra-city light rail, trollies, and fast regional links for car culture, well, you're kinda stuck making car payments then. Not enough people can spend $100,000 on a jetpack the same way we all don't have a Cessna waiting for us as the local regional airport. The money ain't here even if you can fix safety and the absurdly low flight time of just a few minutes. The sci-fi fantasy of flying alone above a city is not only technically difficult, ridiculously dangerous, but economically impossible for all put the wealthiest.
hackermeows 5y ago
Hhgccxxcfgghkl

jvanderbot 5y ago

Someday, helicopters will operate like video games, due to complete flight software stabilization and abstraction of the horrifically complicated control surfaces. This is already starting. But uptake is slow[1] At that time, we can revisit jetpacks and use onboard software to completely abstract the horrifically complicated control problem. 1. https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/23977/why-arent-there-simplified-fly-by-wire-helicopter-controls https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/23977/why-arent...

ehnto 5y ago
I agree and it's pretty incredible, but I think to enable popularization of it as personal transport you'd need to abstract the pilot away entirely. Automate the whole journey, from a system that's aware of all other journeys. That still can't account for all dangers, but at least people wouldn't be flying into each other at 100mph
outworlder 5y ago
At 25k USD for the cheapest helicoper blade, I don't see them getting more popular even if they become trivial to fly. Tiny jet turbines are expensive too.
- BlueTemplar 5y ago
  Wouldn't mass manufacturing significantly drive these costs down ? Fuel costs however...
closetohome 5y ago
There are at least a couple of rotary wing UAVs like the K-Max and Fire Scout that are just retrofitted conventional airframes. So in a way it's almost like the technology skipped manned flight and was put directly into unmanned aircraft first. Perhaps we'll see some of it trickle back down as it becomes a more proven technology. Personally I think the form that "jet packs" will eventually take is just an electric multicopter that you strap into somehow.

tshaddox 5y ago

> They're still aircraft after all, at the very least you're going to need pilots license. I think a reasonable interpretation of the promise of jetpacks would be more like the "ultralight vehicles" category (as it's called in the United States). These vehicles require no registration or pilot certification. Some are fairly traditional rigid airplane designs (just very small and lightweight), but the category also includes powered paragliders (AKA paramotors) and some of the smaller powered parachutes. Where I grew up in the US these were fairly common to see in the air, and no one thought it was odd that they didn't require a pilots license. Perhaps for many people in many areas the regulations or different, and it strikes them as absurd to fly aircraft without a license?

Grimburger 5y ago
Ironically where I live, it's far simpler to get a private pilot's license than a provisional car license. It takes 25 hour in a plane to get a recreational license, and 120 supervised hours logged in a car, for people who don't have a relative to do the supervision and need to pay and instructor, the cost comes out more than getting a pilots license. Once that's done to be allowed on the road alone, they need to get their 2nd provisional license a year later, then full car license a year again after that, with additional tests along the way.

sandworm101 5y ago

>> There's no "bicycle" of jetpacks Grab any drone with a 200kg capacity (they do exist), hang a lawn chair under it, and take to the sky. That's probably safer. Jetpacks as a concept might get overtaken by the small helicopters we today call drones.

NeuNeurosis 5y ago
Funny you mention that. I just saw the below on reddit the other day. https://explorersweb.com/jetson-one-giant-passenger-drone/ https://explorersweb.com/jetson-one-giant-passenger-drone/
- echelon 5y ago
  Put a giant pre-inflated airbag around it and that might not be unreasonable.
- Animats 5y ago
  That's a nice piece of hardware. There are other big, people-carrying drones. eHang was probably the first, in 2016. They've actually sold a few. Price is above US$300K. They routinely fly above cities. Like everybody else, they're battery-limited. Their limit is about 30 minutes. All those un-shrouded spinning blades at low height are worrisome.
  - FabHK 5y ago
    eHang was not the first, but they do seem to have good marketing. German company Volocopter flew a manned demonstration rig in 2011 (the famous pilates ball [1]), and had the first manned flight of the Volocopter multicopter (certified, 18 rotors) in February 2016, with the CEO himself flying [2]. I don't know when the eHang 184 flew first (a video on youtube says Feb 2018 [3]). Personally, I find the design (with 8 rotors in a quadratic arrangement at knee-height, perfect for decapitating pedestrians) atrocious. (The Volocopter blades are above the cabin, as in a helicopter.) And where do you get the 30 minutes endurance for the eHang from? When I divide the range by the cruise speed from Wikipedia, I get about 8 minutes endurance. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L75ESD9PBOw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L75ESD9PBOw [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OazFiIhwAEs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OazFiIhwAEs [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mr1V-r2YxME https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mr1V-r2YxME

mountainriver 5y ago

I donno the mandolorian maybe?!

jayd16 5y ago

I think we probably expected something closer to a motorcycle as far as danger and accessibility.

andrei_says_ 5y ago

To be completely honest my expectations of jet packs were modeled by cartoons. I am admitting this publicly as a reminder to myself and others for the fact that for the public, the process of writing software is modeled by scenes of hackers in Hollywood movies.

thereddaikon 5y ago

I feel that improved control systems could go a long way to making them more controllable. Look at RC aircraft, they used to take a lot of practice to fly and even when mastered required so much focus that they weren't useful for anything. But now drones practically fly themselves and instead of "flying" the drone, the pilot really just tells it where to go. The flight software figures out the rest. There's no reason the same principles can't be applied to jet packs. Add a gyro or two, gps etc to give it the data it needs and the pilot should have a much easier time. The more difficult to solve problem is with endurance. They are only good for 10s of seconds of powered flight.

outworlder 5y ago

> What were we expecting from jetpacks though, really? Is it not more fair to suggest that the past was a little bit naïve about what it would take to operate a jetpack? They're still aircraft after all, at the very least you're going to need pilots license. You need a pilots license, but you don't need fine motor coordination skills across your entire body PLUS a lot of core strength, in addition to all the problems with moving in 3d. For this 'jetpack' you are essentially balancing your weight between your back and arms. If you get it wrong for a split second, you'll kiss the ground. It's inherently unstable and tiring since you have jet turbines strapped to your arms. An aircraft is stable. Let go of the controls and it will keep flying. The closest aircraft comparison would possibly be with a hang glider, except even there your weight is supported and you are essentially just shifting it around. Many jetpacks in fiction were envisioned to work more like drones. Tell it where to go and it would do the rest. Iron Man would be similar to this thing, except it is described as a fully mechanized suit (plus artificial intelligence), which magically takes care of some of these problems. Ultimately, 'jetpacks' will probably never exist. There's an inherent physics limitation when trying to strap a whole human body to the side of something small (and generally depicted as being strapped on your back, Bobba Fett style). The center of mass is off.

rictic 5y ago
If battery tech continues to improve at current rates then certainly electric jetpacks will be possible and practical, if there's still demand (and we don't destroy ourselves one way or another). Without doing the math though it might be many decades.
- alisonkisk 5y ago
- mdavidn 5y ago
  Unlikely. The specific energy of jet fuel is more than 40 times that of batteries, and I don't see batteries improving by an order of magnitude. A jetpack would need 40 times more battery mass than fuel to produce the same thrust for the same duration. Of course, the additional weight of the batteries necessitate even more thrust...

scythe 5y ago

>There's no "bicycle" of jetpacks, you've got three axis of movement and certain death in every direction but up, it's just not a tool that belongs in the every-man's garage. There is a perfectly good flying vehicle that can be flown by an ordinary person with a reasonable amount of training; it's called a powered paraglider. However, it has the disadvantage that it is very large, and if the weather is not favorable, you can't fly. The analogy with a car would be "road sometimes spontaneously turns into scree", and it would be very hard to design a car that can cope with that.

falcolas 5y ago

> What were we expecting from jetpacks though, really? Drones, in the form of a jetpack. A little joystick in each hand with DJI levels of KISS, and with the same DJI "Help I'm out of control!" button too. Probably "return to home" too. We don't/can't have that, because there's no servo-mechanical joints to be controlled in the referenced rocket pack system.

ThrustVectoring 5y ago

> They're still aircraft after all, at the very least you're going to need pilots license. The FAA is amenable to allowing people to operate small personal for non-commercial purposes without a license. If you do not take passengers and do not operate it in time, place, and manner that creates a hazard for others, there's a very real "if you kill your own damn self that's your problem" regulatory mentality. What you actually need a license for is to exceed speed/weight/fuel limitations designed to ensure these conditions. If you're going for a part 103 ultralight craft, that's 55 knots / 254 pounds / 5 gallons of fuel. Might be hard to design a usable jetpack under these constraints.

everdrive 5y ago

> There's no "bicycle" of jetpacks, you've got three axis of movement and certain death in every direction but up, Arguably, this could exist, and is a self-stabilizing battery powered drone.

sbierwagen 5y ago

>certain death in every direction but up Up is also certain death, if you're not carrying bottled oxygen.

funkaster 5y ago

I think the part that's missing (besides the knowledge and understanding of the operation in the airspace) is enough (automatic) assistance that its manipulation can be done by someone with the sake skills that any GA pilot could have.

dclowd9901 5y ago

And yet, it’s quite easy to fly a drone in simple mannerisms. The UX failure of the jet pack is refinement in software, which drone makers have already figured out. The real issue is, with an 8 minute flight time, it’s good for demonstrations and that’s it.

sfifs 5y ago

Actually what's needed was outlined very nicely in Starship Troopers by Heinlein many decades ago. We're not there yet of course but with faster and faster edge compute, it will get there. > Jump really hard and the suit’s jets cut in, amplifying what the suit’s leg “muscles” did, giving you a three-jet shove, the axis of pressure of which passes through your center of mass. So you jump over that house next door. Which makes you come down as fast as you went up . . . which the suit notes through your proximity & closing gear (a sort of simple-minded radar resembling a proximity fuse) and therefore cuts in the jets again just the right amount to cushion your landing without your having to think about it. And that is the beauty of a powered suit: you don’t have to think about it. You don’t have to drive it, fly it, conn it, operate it; you just wear it and it takes orders directly from your muscles and does for you what your muscles are trying to do. This leaves you with your whole mind free to handle your weapons and notice what is going on around you . . . which is supremely important to an infantryman who wants to die in bed. If you load a mud foot down with a lot of gadgets that he has to watch, somebody a lot more simply equipped—say with a stone ax—will sneak up and bash his head in while he is trying to read a vernier.

richardfey 5y ago
Now you're making me want read the book!
- crooked-v 5y ago
  The book is good, but there's a certain amount of black comedy when you look at the context of how it was written and how, among other things, the military strategies it argues for (de facto universal conscription, terrorizing enemy civilians into submission, using shock-and-awe campaigns and targeted strikes instead of needing to occupy territory in depth, etc) have been repeatedly discredited since its release, and even at the time of release had obvious failures in the Korean War just a few years before.
  - ianmcgowan 5y ago
    It can still be a good book with terrible politics. If you need a palate cleanser when finished, The Forever War by Haldeman is a direct rebuttal..

demadog 5y ago

The DJI drones have really good stabilization and crash prevention. Of course it’s different with a human involved, but scale up the mavic pro to hold 200 lbs, do a few more iterations, load in a Tesla battery and we’re there.

TulliusCicero 5y ago

> What were we expecting from jetpacks though, really? Something easy-ish to use and safe. Yeah, probably unrealistic, but nevertheless.

scotty79 5y ago

I think we expect of them full self driving from the get go.

hiptobecubic 5y ago

You could say the same of regular cars, I would argue.

Aardwolf 5y ago

> What were we expecting from jetpacks though, really? The reality turns out to be different, but, I'd say we were expecting practical personal flight, as seen in video games with jetpacks.