Jet packs getting closer to viability

[Fat Tone]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/newzealand/2472991/Jet-pack-unveiled-by-New-Zealand-inventor.html

[Dr Mordrid]

It's not really a jet pack but dual ducted fans driven by a 2-stroke gas engine. More related to a helicopter.

[Fat Tone]

Agreed and obvious, pedant

The point is that not actually have flames toasting your ass and the possibility of a 30 minute ride brings this closer to being useful.

[Nowhere]

Doc, what does that make jet ski or jet stream? ;P

[Dr Mordrid]

"Jet Ski" is a brand name owned by Kawasaki, not an accurate description of the device or its workings. The actual drive unit is called a "pump jet", another misnomer which in reality is just a centrifugal pump or ducted propeller that drives water through a nozzle.

Jet stream is a high speed air current at the tropopause. It was originally named strahlströmmung by German meteorologist H. Seilkopf in a 1939 paper.

[cjolley]

Those are perfectly fine uses of the word jet describing water jetting out of the drives.
The word jet predates the jet engine by hundreds of years including uses by Shakespeare, Chaucer, and Tennyson.

see for example:http://www.dictionary.net/jet

Jet \Jet\, n. [F. jet, OF. get, giet, L. jactus a throwing, a throw, fr. jacere to throw. Cf. Abject, Ejaculate, Gist, Jess, Jut.]

1. A shooting forth; a spouting; a spurt; a sudden rush or gush, as of water from a pipe, or of flame from an orifice; also, that which issues in a jet.
2. Drift; scope; range, as of an argument. [Obs.]


3. The sprue of a type, which is broken from it when the type is cold. --Knight.
Jet propeller (Naut.), a device for propelling vessels by means of a forcible jet of water ejected from the vessel, as by a centrifugal pump.
Jet pump, a device in which a small jet of steam, air, water, or other fluid, in rapid motion, lifts or otherwise moves, by its impulse, a larger quantity of the fluid with which it mingles.
Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)

[VJ]

Agreed and obvious, pedant

The point is that not actually have flames toasting your ass and the possibility of a 30 minute ride brings this closer to being useful.

I actually saw a documentary on jetpacks. The first concept used rocket engines, but those don't allow for a long flight (it burns up its fuel quickly). The second concept used a jet-engine, and while it allowed for a longer flight (still not very long though), it had numerous downsides (noise, heat, ...).


Jörg