So here’s Swiss adventurer/inventor Yves Rossy aloft in his newly redesigned jetpack.
His last, slightly larger jetpack carried him across the English Channel. This one can loop.
Yves Rossy, the Swiss adventurer who has already flown across the English Channel using a winged jet-pack, pulled off another exploit Friday, flying two aerial loops in a new version of his invention.
Rossy, who was testing a new, more aerodynamic model of the jet-pack, jumped from a hot-air balloon at 2,400 metres (7,900 feet) and performed the stunt during an 18-minute flight before making a parachute landing.
Personal jetpacks were not precisely the stuff of my youth— the original Buck Rogers was pretty much before my time— but they’re still very much a part of my imagination, especially when I’m stuck in traffic.
Though the parachute landing would be cumbersome and messy. And come to think of it, we never saw Buck Rogers actually land, now did we?
[via Andrew Miller]
Maybe he could add roller skates so he could take off and land unassisted…
Doesn’t Acme make some?
Somewhere amid the thousands of strips of Buck Rogers there should be at least one panel of him or Wilma landing, and if memory serves, though it’s just as likely it doesn’t, they landed like Superman did, one foot extended, the other ready to take the necessary forward step. (Is this proper landing procedure? How many people have made a controlled landing on their feet? Perhaps Mr. Rossy will be able to enlighten us when he perfects a jet pack he can land with.) And Mr Rogers’ flying pack wasn’t strictly a jetpack, at least in the early days. It was some anti-gravity metal stuffed into a backpack, and if you took the pack off and set it down without anchoring it, it would shoot skyward like a helium-filled balloon. A bit harder to control than a jet-powered pack, I should imagine. (Memory, unfortunately, is hazy on how they managed forward travel. I think they just did it without too much explanation.)
He’s been outdone by a guy dressed in a black Bibindum suit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bJmVJZbmIk&feature=fvwk
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