The Future Is Now-ish
Oh, hello there. Welcome to Jetpack Dreams.
Eighty years ago, in a once widely read pulp science fiction magazine called Amazing Stories, a character named Anthony Rogers made his debut. You probably know him better as Buck and you may even know that it was Buck Rogers who introduced the world to the compelling fantasy of the jetpack. Ever since 1928, space nuts, tech-heads, futurists, flying freaks, Star Wars fans and pretty much any one else hoping for a better commute has dreamed that one day in the not-too-distant future, Buck’s preferred mode of transportation would replace cars as the way to get from here to there a little quicker—and much cooler. Over the past eight decades there have been several dedicated efforts to realize that dream. The most recent attempt just launched not that long ago.
The biggest and best push to bring jetpacks to the masses came in the late ’50s and early ’60s in the labs of Bell Aerosystems at the company’s Niagara, New York, headquarters. But a 20 or so second flight time—a product of the amount of fuel that could be comfortably held on one’s back and the fierceness of physics—ultimately doomed the project. And yet, nostalgia junkies and garage tinkerers literally all over the world—from Mexico to Ireland, Germany, Japan and New Jersey—have kept the dream alive. Every now and then a new attempt to fly free of the apparatus of an airplane, to fly if not like a bird than as close to a bird as we can imagine, flickers to life.
Jetpack Dreams, as the book’s subtitle notes, is one man’s up and down (but mostly down) search for the greatest invention that never was. That man is me (that’s me up there, too, trying on Juan Lozano’s machine in Cuernavaca, Mexico; more on him later) and the book is about my time on the trail of a most mysterious and iconic piece of space-age hardware, the jetpack. It’s also about our collective and enduring fascination with the air and efforts to be aloft in it; it’s a story of hopes, passions, desires, obsessions, romance, physics, the seductiveness of soaring, and protective eyewear. If for some reason you don’t already know what a jetpack is, take a peek at the photos section of the site, or better yet, watch this. I can wait. Pretty sweet, huh?
As I say in the trailer, I came of age in the Star Wars era, and am part of the post-moon-landing, post-World’s Fairs generation. Like many people, I was once very certain that by no later than the year 2000 we would most definitely be living the futuristic dream. Apparently I am far from alone in that—to wit. And in that glorious, imagined future we would have long ago traded our dirt-streaked Hyundais, our battered Gia Sportages, and especially our rinky-dink Segways for shiny metal backpacks with exhaust-spewing jet engines welded to them, the better to launch ourselves like urban angels over bumper-to-bumper rush hour traffic.
In Jetpack Dreams I went to find out when we can reasonably expect to fly. I left my wife and two young daughters behind and wasn’t sure I’d return in one piece. But there wasn’t time to dwell on such serious concerns. I was going jetpack hunting—who could say what I might find?
In this space I’ll give you regular updates on the progress of both the book and the ongoing work being done in garages, backyards and even on corporate campuses around the world to build the perfect ‘pack. I’ll also throw in an occasional report on related matters: flying cars, hovercrafts, teleportation, an aversion to bodily harm (particularly my own). Let’s hope this isn’t the case but if we never get our rightful jetpacks, at least we’ll always have Jetpack Dreams.
Posted by admin on June 17, 2009 at 3:15 pm
