I have acrophobia (a fear of heights). My testicles shrivelled up into my body at the first five seconds. I managed to watch to the end, but my anguished whines attracted the dog, who came to see if I was okay. I may survive, with care, quiet and alcohol.
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My mouse is damp from how much my palms sweated. Standing water.
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It’s also outrageously fake - you can’t see Fujisan like that behind the metropolitan government towers! (these kinds of fake photos always enrage the wonderful Lisa Knight - @lisainjapan on Instagram)
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Oh, I don’t know about that: the angle is almost exactly right, so this could just be a very long lens and not fake at all. You certainly don’t see this with the naked eye or your phone camera when you’re at the top of the TMG building, but a long lens does cool things.
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the narration understates things
no narration, but casually embracing the possibilities.
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I don’t like heights, but that one wasn’t as bad for me as some, as thanks to the camera angle it was sorta hard to see the ground.
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My bad here - I’ve seen so many fake ones that I clearly don’t know what’s real any more 
Tracked down another shot, almost identical, and now know where it was probably taken:
image was taken from the observation area at the Tokyo Bunkyo Civic Center. At around 105 metres high, this spot gives you a great view past the highrise Shinjuku skyline all the way to Mt. Fuji. Even better, it’s free for the public to visit! Just make sure to bring along a good zoom lens if you want to take the same kind of shot.
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I agree with Karyudo. True a long lens is being used but that is how you see Mt. Fuji from Tokyo in the winter.
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To be fair, I started my research thinking you were right, and I was going to find corroborating evidence. I was sort of shocked to find that, hey, no, wait a second: this is actually plausibly real!
I appreciate the additional deep dive to sort out exactly where it was taken. I’d actually guessed (using Google Maps/Earth) that the location was “just north of Tokyo Dome,” and what do you know? That’s just about exactly where the TBCC is!
[welded metal plate with CONFIRMED on it]
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I don’t quite understand how you can die just from being on top of a building.
Also, don’t they/you have this person nearby? That useless technology could have been useful in this one particular instance if it were actually operational already…
ETA: 2019! I see…
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Hypothermia and head injuries – a very sad story.
I think it needs a surface to fire the jets at.
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No, they’re model jet engines. They totally work at altitude, just like any jet engine. The reason you don’t usually see them at higher altitudes is that these media stunts usually want to minimise the chance of catching on camera someone tumbling from a high altitude. But skyscraper rescue is actually one of the applications that the technology is touted for. It’s of very limited use for that, of course, as it is for any application, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be hawked to the Saudis for that, or that it isn’t cool technology on its own merits. Just not especially useful.
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Yes, now, I remember this
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It’s genius isn’t it? Pretty much the absolute direct opposite of stealth - come in slowly, with screaming tiny jet turbines, and wait to be turned into swiss cheese by the bad guys before you can land 
I’d love to hear just how loud they are over the sound of the ocean - the soundtrack on that clip definitely doesn’t make it obvious.
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That headline reminds me of a shallow dive i did in to the history of the jetpack when Cory talked about it on his blog - You were promised a jetpack by liars
Interesting links between the promise of that and tech grifters today making the same promises with self-driving cars and AI.
Maybe this should go in follow-up… 
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Firstly most Royal Navy boarding has traditionally involved making as much noise as possible!
Though you would be mad to bring explosive weapons on those things so maybe medics are the best use.
Actually the scariest thing to me was where they put the rope lasers from on that slab sided vessel: the highest place they could. It had a nice low flight deck there to get on, but no, you had to make them climb all the way up on a tiny ladder!
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I liked the part where the Gravity Industries employee cosplaying as a Royal Marine amateurishly secured the rope ladder and a sailor from the “enemy” vessel had to run over to make sure it was safe for the actual marines.
It seems moderately useful in transferring specific (highly trained) personnel to a (friendly!) ship in very specific circumstances and clement weather, and nothing else. In almost all cases a helicopter winch or a pilot ladder seem to be preferable, though
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That was funny.
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Per Gravity Industries 2023 press fact sheet:
Jet Suit Spec
- Launched 1st April 2017
- Started with as a Jet Suit with one engine
- Turbines: Five to Seven
- Fuel: Jet A1, Diesel or Biofuels
- Engine: 1500bhp / 175kg [thrust, combined]
- Fight [sic] Time: typically around 3 minutes, but have flown over 7 before
depending on conditions. - Speed: Max forward speed is typically in excess of 50mph
- Typical pilot weight not more than 85kg with current Jet Suit
- RPM = 120,000 [microturbines do that]
- Altitude limit = Technically 12,000ft but limited to lower heights for safety
reasons
The Jet Suit itself weighs around 27kg, we typically fly it with an additional 10kg of fuel. Combined weight of the pilot plus the Jet Suit is 115kg. The Jet Suit produces up to 175kg of thrust; the thrust to weight ratio works out to be greater than any known Jet Fighter we are aware of.
Stave them off for a couple of minutes with a high pressure water hose and they’ll have to fly back if they don’t want to swim back. If the turbines don’t flame out first, that is. I couldn’t find anything right now about how microturbines handle water intake, maybe I’ll look into it later.
They also have a prototype for an electric version “Made from carbon fibre, aluminium and 3D printed polypropylene – to achieve great strength and minimal weight – and delivering 150 kg of thrust, which consumes 105kW when at full throttle, the eSuit uses high discharge LiPo batteries capable of outputting immense power at a moment’s notice.”, and that’s about it regarding technical information.
Pretty pictures on the website, media events, optimistic blurb about what the jet suit potentially could do, but very little technical information or anything on how they are developing the system further.
They’ve been promoting the “flying paramedic” application for a while now, but so far “In September 2020, it was reported that the Great North Air Ambulance service was considering using this jet suit to enable paramedics to reach casualties in the mountainous Lake District. By March 2022 the operational director of the GNAA, Andy Mawson, had been trained to fly and the service hoped to start using jet suits in summer 2022.” (source) is all I could find. The GNAA website has one post from October 2022 about it in their news archive.
They also stopped calling it Daedalus for some reason.
Right now this is something for joyrides, Red Bull events and so on. And it looks like this is the main source of revenue for Gravity Industries right now. Plus the requisite Webshop with branded merch.
They do have, per their website, some sponsors. Very little information about their actual level of involvement, though.
I mean, UPS, come on. I can see them renting a suit and a pilot for a week or so to shoot a commercial. But anything beyond that?
Yes, you can order your own bespoke jet suit, starting at £380,000 + VAT.
No pictures or testimonials of satisfied customers; they must be a very discrete lot.
My guess is that they’re treading water, hoping to get bought by some megalomaniac techbro or get some funding from the military-industrial-political complex after all.
Either way, I can’t really see this going anywhere. Maybe the odd niche application, but at the end of the day this is a very neat idea with very few applications that work (in a sustainable way) in real life.
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Did you see the Cory Doctorow thing above? Essentially every jet pack in the media for 30 years was the same people and they never got beyond the same stunts.
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