Great Scott!: Pilot Sets New Jetpack Record
Yesterday was a big day for jetpack fans, of course, and also for any and all enthusiasts of the air arts. You may 
have heard about this guy who flew across Colorado’s Royal Gorge—all 1, 500 feet—traveling close to 80 MPH and over 1, 000 feet above the Arkansas River. The video of Go Fast! jetpacker and former Air Force pilot, Eric Scott, zipping over the treacherous chasm has gotten heavy rotation on the world wide web, and for good reason. It is a breathtaking and ballsy stunt. ‘Pack purists will say that Scott was not actually flying a jetpack but a rocket belt, very much like the one Bell engineer Wendell Moore put together in the late 1950s and early 60s. And they are right: Scott’s machine runs on highly concentrated hydrogen peroxide that has been converted into superheated steam and shot out of nozzles with enough force to generate 300 pounds of thrust. No matter how you look at it, though, this was clearly a big moment, a record-setting event even in terms of distance covered, in the ongoing and continually fascinating history of the greatest invention that one day might actually be ours.
Posted by admin on November 24, 2008 at 4:10 pm
