Jet Pack for the Year 2000!

Great Debates
1

Remember all those predictions made in the middle of the century about what life would be like in the Year 2000? We were gonna have bubble-domed Jetsons aircars and robot housemaids and personal jet packs?

Well, at least one of those 3 predictions might be close to coming true. Sort of.

http://www.solotrek.com makes the sales pitch for a one-person vertical lift harness that’s already in the prototype testing phase. True, it uses ducted fans driven by a 2-stroke piston engine, not jets, and its estimated gasoline consumption rate of 5-6 gallons per hour seems at least a tad optimistic – but hey, it looks pretty darn close to the idea of a jet pack!

So … in the optimistic case that they’ll be able to pull off mass-producing and selling these contraptions in 2001 (the real first year of the 21st century :wink: ) … would you wanna fly in one? (With a parachute pack strapped on, in case the engine fails, of course.)

The truth, as always, is more complicated than that.

2

Hell yes I want one of those! There’s a bloody great big hill in between me and my classes. Anything that would keep me from having to walk up it would be a gift straight from a benevolent god (or Sears via mom and dad). Even a car would be nice.

3

Unless the hill were really really steep, you’d probably be better off with the car. Most schools wouldn’t appreciate the noise of a 130 horespower 2-stroke engine (imagine a really really BIG lawnmower), or the hard downblast of air from those ducted fans. Plus, they probably don’t have a personal powered lift aircraft parking lot.

4

Jet packs have been around for decades.

“What contemptible scoundrel has stolen the cork to my lunch?” --W.C. Fields

5

ROCKET packs have been around for decades. They typically carry less than a 30-second fuel supply.

This new gizmo is supposed to be able to stay airborne for 2 hours. (But I still wouldn’t wanna hover higher than 6 or 7 feet off the ground without a parachute.)

6

I forget what Bond movie it was in, I think Thunderball, but real rocket packs were used.

“What contemptible scoundrel has stolen the cork to my lunch?” --W.C. Fields

7

Well, here are those flying cars: http://www.moller.com/skycar/

We’re getting there. I don’t think I want a bubble domed city anyway.

8

Don’t hold your breath. The Solotrek has enough problems to prevent it from ever being certified. It’s also got a whole bunch of ‘features’ which sound to me like the thing was designed to be as futuristic as possible so that the company can sell lots of stuff on their web site.

The guy responsible for this, named Moshier, has been producing wonderful designs for ‘fantastic’ aircraft for a decade or two now. And then he advertises ‘info-kits’ for $20 or $30 each, which are the real product (the aircraft never seem to exist). After a year or two when the hype dies down and sales of the info-kits wane, he vanishes for a while and then re-appears with a new design. I don’t think a single thing he’s ever ‘designed’ has flown.

As for the Moller aircar, at least it is being promoted by an honest-to-god aeronautical engineer who has some decent credentials. However, the thing has so many problems and outright unbelievable numbers that it doesn’t have a hope in hell of ever being certified. I have here a copy of ‘Flying’ magazine that has an article about it, published because Moller announced that it would begin flight tests in a couple of months. Unfortunately, that issue is dated 1992. And now Moller is announcing that it will begin flight tests ‘in a couple of months’.

Anyone familiar with the incredible difficulty of getting any new aircraft certified would know that this thing will never make it. Hell, it took Cessna a couple of years to re-certify the 172 when it went back into production, and all they did was change engine manufacturers and some trivial design details. The Beech Starship went way over budget and took several extra years to certify, even though it used already-certified engines and avionics. The Moller uses 8 uncertified engines, driving 8 uncertified fans by computer control through an uncertified avionics system, hung together with a hard-to-certify composite airframe. Good luck.

And, Moller’s numbers are highly suspect, and most aero engineers I know don’t think it can come anywhere close to them, assuming it ever does fly.

9

You probably have a few years on me, tracer, but I can remember those predictions dating back to the early '60s. This morning at work, the first thing I asked my colleagues was, “Where’s the jet car? Where’s the robot maid? I thought we were in The Future now!” I tell you, it’s a big letdown! :wink:

10

And don’t forget the silver jumpsuits!

11

Jet packs would be keen for the first couple of people who bought them, but imagine the chaos of thousands or millions of swiftly propelled individuals flying around willy-nilly! It would also give air sickness a new, disgusting facet. I think i’d invest in a good, sturdy umbrella.

I’m holding out for the the human vacuum tube transport network of cool pastel glass I was promised to take me from point A to point B with the utmost in style and air-cushioned comfort.

Hell is Other People.

12

I’ll agree with dhanson on this one. This is just the sort of thing that used to fill several pages in the back of magazines like Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, etc. , although these ads have diminished somewhat in recent years. Who can forget ads for “Rocket Motor Plans”, “Home Built Laser Beam”, or even “Anti-Gravity Flying Saucer Blueprints”. As a sci-fi obsessed teen, I admit shelling out more than a few bucks for these pipe dreams (but what fun it was imagining the possibilities…)

TT

“Believe those who seek the truth.
Doubt those who find it.” --Andre Gide

13

dhanson wrote, re www.solotrek.com :

Yeah, unfortunately, you’re probably right. I just checked with my aviation-enthusiast co-worker. He says the claim Solotrek made about their prototype actially flying is bogus. The farthest they’ve gotten is trying to start the engine – and failing because the ducted fans put too much of a load on the starter motor (they’re re-designing the drive train to put a clutch in it now).

The only positive things he had to say about the Solotrek were (A) NASA Ames is taking an interest in it, and (B) some famous test pilot (Dave Moss?) has agreed to do the test flying if Solotrek can ever get their prototype to leave the ground.

I thought their estimate of 5 gallons of fuel per hour sounded a bit optimistic. :slight_smile:

14

ThufferinThucotash wrote:

Well, don’t keep us in suspense, Thufferin! How does flying suacer anti-gravity work?

15

I once saw an ad for plans for something that was basically similar to the Solotrek machine, except it was closer to a true wearable aircraft and qualified as an ultralight.

Life is a tragedy for those who feel and a comedy for those who think.

16

Ok, I agree that the Solotrek thing looks a bit fishy…the moller skycar thing, I remember myself from a few years ago. Although it doesn’t seem to be anywhere close to being actually made and sold yet. But do you think something like this will be available soon?..I mean the automobile was invented around 1893 give or take a year. a little over 100 years later, almost everyone owns a car. I myself own 2. In 1903, the Wright’s made their first significant flight. Today however, most aircraft are used my comercial companies or the military…( I know I know…you can get a license and buy your own plane, but they are extreamly expensive). Even if you have your own plane, you are more limited in the places you can land/access it. I know safty is also a factor, but let’s face it, if I buy a 1975 pinto, is it as safe as a 2000 BWM?..probably not. So do you believe that we will see some type of personal “flying” system in the next 10 years or so?

17

Well, TT did post the mechanism behind flying saucer anti-gravity, but FormerAgent impounded it! :wink:

18

You won’t see widespread personal ‘aircars’ in our lifetime. The technical problems are tremendous, the airspace problems are worse.

How many cars would be on the road if something as simple as forgetting to put gas in caused the thing to destroy itself, the occupants, and anyone within 50 feet?

I’ve been involved in aviation and aircraft design/construction for 20 years. I know how hard it is to be a pilot and to build an airworthy machine and keep it that way. And I know how many people don’t change the oil in their cars, rotate their tires, etc. Put a hundred million personal aircraft in the skies over the U.S., and it’ll be raining metal.

Seriously, the technical problems are not just evolutionary. There are some pretty serious fundamental reasons why it won’t happen. For example, you could never pack 1/10 the number of aircraft into the sky as you can cars on a freeway, for the simple reason that aircraft get buffeted around by the atmosphere and have to be kept far apart from each other.

Private aircraft will never be used for general commuting, because there are too many days in the year when the weather just wouldn’t cooperate. So we’d have to maintain the current transportation infrastructure anyway, and you’d still have to own a car. If everyone got rid of their cars and took the bus on bad-weather days, the public transportation system would crash to a halt on every snowy day.

Here’s a surprising fact for a lot of you: Flying airplanes currently is not that hard, nor does it have to be very expensive. I bought an aircraft for $11,000, flew it for six years, and sold it for the same amount of money. It cost me about $500/yr to maintain.

A person today who buys a new car will lose somewhere between $4,000 and $10,000 in depreciation in the first year. Add in maintenance, insurance, and gas. Now divide by the 10,000 km/yr on average that people drive, and you have a cost of close to $1.00 per kilometer to drive a new car.

In contrast, you can rent a nice airplane for about $70/hr, and will go about 200 km in that hour. That’s 35 cents per kilometer, or 1/3 of what it costs to drive a new car the same distance. If you own an airplane and fly it a lot, the cost is even lower.

If the convenience factor bothers you, buy two beat-up cars for $500 and leave one at each airport. Now you can commute between two airports by airplane for roughly the same cost as driving a new car.

So if you want to start scooting around the skies now, get busy! Go get your pilot’s license and have a ball.

19

dhanson–

I actually didn’t know that they were that inexpensive. Thank you. After reading the Moller site more, I saw a few facts that I thought interesting…in order to fly this thing, you still have to have a pilot’s license, they can only take off and land at airports right now, and they cost about $1 million each…now what the hell is the advantage in this?..How long does it take/how difficult is it to get your license?..

20

My brother brought up an interesting point. Do you really WANT people driving flying cars? I mean, cars as they are are bad enough, with people getting into accidents. How the hell do you expect people to follow flight plans or think 3-dimensionally?