NYT writer and BB pal John Schwartz test-flew a jetpack with its inventor Glenn Martin, at a Wisconsin air show today. It looks really fun.
To rise off the ground wearing a jetpack is to feel the force of dreams. Very, very noisy dreams.
On Tuesday, an inventor from New Zealand unveiled what he calls “the world’s first practical jetpack” at the EAA AirVenture, the gigantic annual air show here. The inventor, Glenn Martin, 48, who has spent 27 years developing the devices, said he hoped to begin selling them next year for $100,000 apiece.
“There is nothing that even comes close to the dream that the jetpack allows you to achieve,” said Robert J. Thompson, the director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University. He called it “about the coolest desire left to mankind.”
The Jetpack: From Comics to a Liftoff in the Yard (NYT; image: Andy Manis)
Previously on Boing Boing:
