Martin Aircraft Company - Personal Jet Pack

[TomJoad]

I posted this across on JB but wondered if it may be of interest here. If it has been discussed before or considered not relevant then I'll happily delete. Apart from the personal interest, should it ever become commercially available does anybody envisage a military use, SAR possibly?

The Martin Jetpack



Tom

[Typhoon93]

I'm not sure about military use - I'm not a military person so won't answer.

However, for civilian and commercial use. What use does it have outside of entertaining wealthy people?

At least 'light' aircraft can be used to train pilots.

How much is it likely to cost? As if it's in six figures then personally, I'd rather buy a helicopter.

[Danny42C]

Not this child !

[GreenKnight121]

With an endurance of ~30 minutes, its not really useful for anything other than stunts or perhaps police/special ops missions.

[MAINJAFAD]

The US Army (and Navy) spent quite a few dollars and a number of years trying to develop this type of system in the 1950 and 60s, though a jet turbine powered 'Jet pack' came out of it with a reasonable endurance (not much less than this thing), the issues of weight and operator safety made it a non starter as a practical military system. I see this system has some form of parachute safety decent system, but can it deal with an engine failure at very low level (say 10m off the deck?). The main practical issue with this is you have only one man on board who has to fly the thing and do whatever military duties are part of the mission at the same time. The US Army came to the conclusion that if soldiers have to fly around in the battle space, a helicopter is the way to do it, being that it is faster and has the people on board that can concentrate on their single function (i.e. fly the thing or do other things required to allow the military mission to be successful (i.e. gunner, medic, PJ, etc).

[Trim Stab]

That looks like a scary parachute descent with a small non-controllable chute and that thing still strapped on.

[Martin the Martian]

Noisier than a helicopter, almost as big as a helicopter and a rather more frightening landing than a helicopter.

[Tashengurt]

Doesn't this get re-invented once a decade or so?
This incarnation seems like a retrograde step though. That can't be a good way to land?!


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[RedhillPhil]

Wasn't it done some years ago?






James Bond Rocketbelt Clip - YouTube

[Martin the Martian]

It is one of those concepts that gets regularly recycled. I quite like this one, though the comment about the military considering that 30-45 minutes' flight time not being suitable for anything useful obviously means that former Lightning pilots were never consulted.

One-manned flying machine that never caught on for some reason. [VIDEO]

[sandiego89]

I too like this one. Ducted fans might be the way to go, athough the solo trek never quite worked. Although the backpack has long been a dream, putting one into service remains ellusive. The hydrogen peroxide powered belts were good for only about 25 seconds, and the jet powered ones were barely man portable. I think giving up on the man-portable backpack concept is more practical.

[Darren_P]

There was an interesting related article in the Guardian last week;

Jetpacks: here?s why you don?t have one | Dean Burnett | Science | theguardian.com

[Martin the Martian]

Good article.

(I can't believe I actually said that about something in the Guardian?!)

[Mechta]

This GEN H-4 one-man helicopter was on static display at Farnborough a few years back. The four flat-twin two stroke engines seemed a good way of acheiving some level of redundancy and a gentle(ish) letdown.

Not a jet pack, but not a lot bigger than one.



More here: Ace Craft USA - GEN H-4 - One Man Helicopter

[Rocket2]

What's the last thing to go through the mind of a jet pack pilot when the engine fails? - His feet!