Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/10/16/jetpack-maker-doubts-reports-of-jetpack-flyer-near-lax-because-no-one-told-him-they-were-going-to-illegally-fly-one-there.html
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His skepticism seems pretty well-grounded to me.
- As someone who is pretty knowledgeable about the current state of jetpack technology he’d be likely to know if someone had been developing a jet pack that could fly to 6,000 feet
- If someone had developed such technology, testing it near LAX wouldn’t make a lick of sense
So it’s less “nobody told me they were planning to illegally fly a jetpack at LAX” than “nobody I’ve spoken to in the industry thinks this story sounds plausible.”
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I’m thinking some type of human sized and shaped drone.
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On the other hand, he also clearly has incentive to downplay the likelihood of this happening, the same way that we constantly hear how self-driving cars will be safer than human drivers. Someday.
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Getting a drone up to FL60 is also a challenge. That said, the official Jetpack company is probably far more conservative in their engineering than some yahoo that flies through the middle of the glide slope of LAX. It’s entirely possible that their equipment could be pushed up to 6,000 ft if they ignored all safety standards and common sense.
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@Otherbrother pointed out that human-shaped mylar balloons are pretty cheap and plentiful, so it needn’t even be an intentional prank. It would be very easy to mistake one of these birthday-party-escapees for a human in a jetpack if you were flying by at a couple hundred miles per hour. Also, unlike a drone it would be easy for a mylar balloon to reach that altitude.
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If a 767 pilot saw a stormtrooper coming at him he’d evade.
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Listen to the pilots
Believe all airmen
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Which is the stupidest thing to do, given a stormtrooper’s aim…
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Here’s the pilot-to-ground communications for both incidents from VASAviation’s YouTube channel.
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Keep an 
out for reports from boaters…
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That video on the post has a strong “Man In The High Flightpath” vibe to it.
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Yeah we always have to start with belief in the professionals’ account. Then yes if the jetpack makers say “it wasn’t us”, then sure it probably wasn’t them but we can’t discount that it wasn’t a hobbyist or something else.
Did they see a person in a jetpack, or did they see someone flying and assumed a jetpack was involved?
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Believing the pilots’ account doesn’t necessarily mean believing there was a person in a jetpack. It means believing the pilots saw something that looked like a person in a jetpack.
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Agreed (hence the “or something else”) but on the same point one of their core responsibilities is making sure their planes don’t run into something up there and they have experience identifying objects up there.
In the 2nd video it’s the air traffic control that first suggests it’s a jet pack. The plane that spots it calls it a shiny object, the tower says “a UAV or a jetpack?” and they say “like a jetpack…too shiny and too far” sounding like they weren’t 100% sure what she meant by jetpack, or that they just couldn’t tell what it was because it was too far away.
It seems like the jetpack idea is now in LAX’s head and every UFO, Russian spy plane or alien spacecraft they spot will be erroneously called a jetpack.
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No he wouldn’t. Just stay still and you will be safe. If you evade you run the risk of accidentally running into a blaster bolt.
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