Man flies new jetpack around the Statue of Liberty

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How can you have a jet pack and NOT dress up like Boba Fett! It is like having sex with your clothes still on. I just don’t get it…

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I assume this was a permitted flight because he wasn’t shot out of the sky.

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I like him, very much.

A bit disappointed that the “over Manhattan” bit apparently meant “over water, at about the same height of those novelty water jetpacks with a hose attached”, but still pretty cool.

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That’s rather tempting, when one is testing a flight system which probably has five minutes or less of fuel!

They look incredibly fun, but they are awfully impractical for anything beyond a brief display.

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Because he didn’t want to screw it up and crash.

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Having sex with your Boba Fett costume on is okay, right?

Maybe not while flying.

Just use that grapple-thingie across the bedroom this time, okay sweetie?

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If shes into that, yeah, sure…

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My assumption is that it needs a certain amount of pushback from whatever surface you’re hovering over. I could be wrong, but…

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Not sure if that’s really at play here though. He seemed at least 30 feet up, and that would seem well out of ground effect range.

Also, I think he flew over water so that if he fell out of the sky he wouldn’t die.

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Seems to me he would still stand a pretty good chance of dying even if he landed in the river strapped to that jet pack. It doesn’t look too floaty to me, if you know what I mean.

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Ground Effect (as I recall) wouldn’t play in here, as it requires forward motion (as well as lift-generating structures). This flight displays neither.
It looks to be a “simple” matter of thrust vs weight (with the thrust, here, winning).

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Here comes the coast guard, He’s not wearing his PFD for gods sake!

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No, it’s using two vectored jet engines, and it claims to be able to go up to 10,000 feet, although this doesn’t seem to have been tested yet…

A much more in-depth article here.

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uh. Icarus anyone?

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Nonsense. He must have hit a shallow reef or something.

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Well, technically, Liberty Island is in the borough of Manhattan. But actually, most of the time he was flying over what is jurisdictionally New Jersey.

Handy to get to work, but not sure about getting back. There’s nowhere to buy kerosene around there.

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