To Infinity...And Beyond

Jetpacks, along with flying cars, were once routinely touted as the future of transport. Visions of people shooting about the skies with rocket packs strapped to their backs were a sci-fi mainstay for decades, but unlike most fantasies of this ilk, the idea made it off the page and into the air.

Russian inventor Aleksandr Fyodorovich Andreyev was the first to patent a jetpack design in 1919, powered by a mixture of oxygen and methane, with wings for controlled steering. Several other maverick designs followed in later years, including a “flying rucksack” in 1956 by Romanian inventor Justin Capră and the “jump belt”, created in 1958 by Garry Burdett and Alexander Bohr, which propelled the wearer 23ft into the air courtesy of nitrogen gas canisters.

The following year, the US Army contracted aircraft manufacturer Bell Aerosystems to create a “Small Rocket Lift Device” to enable soldiers to leap higher, run faster and swiftly cross water. Unfortunately, its pressured nitrogen and hydrogen peroxide-powered Rocketbelt could only fly for 21 seconds at a time, and despite an impressive demonstration to President John F Kennedy in 1961, the military eventually lost interest.

All major developments in the jetpack field in recent years have come from dedicated enthusiasts and specialised firms, with major players like Google admitting they found the devices’ fuel consumption and generated noise too excessive. Astronomical cost and safety concerns have also acted as major stumbling blocks to wider adoption.

Yet in spite of the challenges, innovation is alive and well in the niche fringes. Eccentric golfer Bubba Watson made headlines in the summer of 2016 when he revealed his own jetpack, built by New Zealand-based research and development company Martin Aircraft, which he used to zip around the golf course. The Martin Jetpack, with its top speed of just under 50mph and maximum altitude of 3,000ft, has the potential to solve one of golf’s most persistent problems – navigating huge courses in low-powered carts. It also offers players what Bubba claims is “almost an unfair advantage”, thanks to the birds-eye view of the course it provides. The company claims to have created an “extremely stable aircraft that is safe for the pilot to fly” – with a $200,000 price tag.

In the UK, meanwhile, US firm JetPack Aviation flew the turbine jet engine-powered JB-10 pack around London in October 2016 as the UK’s first ever jetpack flight, and recently showcased its latest prototype model, the JB-11, at the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. The UK has yet to formalise jetpack flying guidelines within aviation regulations, having turned its focus to drones in recent years, but for believers like JetPack Aviation co-founder and pilot David Mayman, the sky really is the limit.