Juan de la Cruz
Good Lord! Can you imagine having four of those ear-bursting fire brands surrounding your body? Not only unpleasant, downright nuts.
sk8dad
Lovely, let's position the engines such that their planes of rotation lines up with the operator's skull. That way, in the event of catastrophic failure of one or more of the spinning grenades, there wouldn't be any need to secondary safety features like parachutes. Even if the operator were to survive the exploding engine(s), the 170 lbs of jet A is sure to make landing highly exciting.
Vanilla Cat
Strap on this contraption and you are guaranteed to fly. Only problem is you will be using angel wings and not be able to get back down. The picture of Bobby Joe and his cousin Bobby Jack tinkering with their "craft" while next to pressurized tanks containing highly combustible material, with lit cigarettes dangling out of their mouths, tells me this is not JPL at work.
snowmaker55
Well after reading the indepth Kickstarter project summary, it appears that these guys are not amateurs when it comes to micro jet turbine design and construction. They have worked on projects for the US Navy Weapons Systems and with NASA. Not your guys out in the garage welding together some muffler pipes and strapping a tank of propane on their backs. I applaud them as Inventors and will contribe to their kickstarter program. We need more guys like seen on GizMag to keep the creative projects rolling.... good luck guys!
Gadgeteer
Why would anybody want this? The Solotrek and Martin Jetpack have much longer flight durations but still haven't proven to be practical.
Oztechi
The video they put out makes them look like complete amateurs!
The Martin Jetpack is a much better product and the only reason they are not in production is a shortage of money to finish safety testing etc. Their product would not burn the hairs off your leg either or glow red hot!!! (like the turbine in the video).
If a turbine was to be used for this kind of thing, maybe a small geared turbo fan like the ones under development currently would be more fuel efficient and therefore give you a longer flight time.
Onihikage
"In the late 1960s, Bell Aerosystems attempted to overcome the short flight times of their rocket belt by developing a turbojet-powered version that could fly for half an hour instead of half a minute."
You mean this? http://www.wimp.com/flyingmachine/
According to Wikipedia, it was a military project that was cancelled because it wasn't deemed useful, not because of anyone having a heart attack.
swissrocketman
Your project is not serious! What do you do if a reactor loses power? Well this is the immediate fall! Remember there have been two similar projects that have not flying! Swiss Rocketman
tkj
"Their product would not burn the hairs off your leg either or glow red hot!!! (like the turbine in the video)"
Actually, it was white-hot .. i was waiting for liquid metal to come flying out .. pointing out the sheer stupidity of these less-than-safety-conscious jerks! .. Smoking cigarettes ??? standing directly in front of the running engine?? another idiot standing so close to the turbulant outflow ??? Did they not even consider that the entire device coul have exploded , disintegrating into thousands of pieces of shrapnel ??? I dont care what their 'professional resume's ' say : these guys are nut-cases!!
jerryd
Jets just won't work well no matter what you do because at low speeds they are extremely ineff.
To do a personal flying pack you are going to need 2 couterrotating props of about 10' or 3m in dia to get the lift needed for any kind of range. A 50hp or so motor would then do.
Plus using 4 jets increase the chance of dying 12-16x's? vs 1
Add the ear destroying noise and I'm happy it died.