Flying firefighters: the jetpack is quickly becoming a reality

2015-11-11T22:18:00-05:00

In the near-future, Dubai Civil Defence officers may be zooming in on to the scene of building fires using futuristic personal jetpacks. Designed by New Zealand-based Martin Aircraft Company, the jet-packs can be operated by a single pilot for 30 minutes at ranges of between 30 and 50 kilometres at altitudes of up to 3,000 feet. The pilot stands on a platform in a 'pilot module' between two propeller engines, which look like large versions of those commonly found on civilian drones.

I'm not sure when or how it happened, but apparently jet packs are a real thing now. On Tuesday, the Dubai Civil Defense service signed a deal with Martin Aircraft for the future delivery of jetpacks, training material, and spare parts. Dubai's towering skyline necessitates a degree of vertical mobility in its emergency respondents. Equipped with jetpacks, firefighters can rapidly rescue people stranded near the top of a building if an emergency renders the elevators inoperable (as they tend to do).

And then last week, the US Coast Guard and Federal Aviation Administration let an Australian named David Mayman fly around the Statue of Liberty with a jetpack made by Jetpack Aviation. According to a report, this satisfied Mayman's dream to become a "real life Ironman" (which is a bit odd, because I'm pretty sure Elon Musk already called dibs on that).

In any case, the videos are really fun and the technology is obviously quite interesting, with a lot of possible applications. The articl...

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Flying firefighters: the jetpack is quickly becoming a reality