io9 Has Five Reasons You Don’t Have a Personal Jet Pack Yet
The excellent Ed Grabianowski at io9 has the five reasons you don’t have a personal jet pack yet: Mad Engineering: Five Reasons You Don’t Have a Personal Jet Pack Yet
Humans are not designed to fly
Thrust burns a lot of fuel
They are dangerous
Rockets and jets are really, really loud
For me, the most important one was the last one:
- Inefficiency: There’s really no point in flying one person around. Pretty much any practical use you can come up with for a jet pack can be done with a lower tech, cheaper and more efficient solution. This is the main reason the other problems haven’t been overcome by awesome engineers yet — beyond looking cool and flying around, we don’t really need jet packs.
Here is a video from The History Channel about the Bell Rocket Belt and its place in history:
In the end, I realize that I won’t ever have that flying car I always wanted (and was PROMISED) since childhood. I have the option of taking all my nourishment from a dehydrated food tablet like George Jetson did, but his flying car is still out of my reach.