How soon could we be jetting off to the office like Iron Man?

All of a sudden, jet packs have become a reality. A concept that seemed to be little more than fantasy has entered on to the world stage and the speed of progress is startling.  A Russian inventor by the name of Alexander Fedorovich was probably the first man to propose a rocket-fuelled device that might enable a pilot to take to the sky and fly under his own thrust. 

Decades ahead of his time, Fedorovich never saw his concept get off the ground and it would be another 50 years before the first real jet packs began to appear.

The American company, Bell Aero Systems, patented the so called “bell rocket belt” in 1962. Early rocket-propelled jet packs used hydrogen peroxide as a mono-propellant. This very unusual fluid could then be persuaded to break down into steam and oxygen purely by running it past a catalyst and the thrust provided was enough to keep a grown man in the air for just over 30 seconds.

In time, jet packs began to appear in action movies, with Sean Connery’s Bond making a much publicised flight in one of the early films, Thunderball. They continued to be used by stunt men for demonstration flights; and the opening ceremony of the 1984 LA Olympics included a jet-pack flight in the stadium. More recently, Robert Downey Junior brought jet packs back into the public imagination with his Iron Man antics. This kind of thing makes for great TV and it fires the imagination but there’s a difference between carefully planned stunts and commercial applications in the real world and you’ve got to ask yourself how realistic a jet-propelled flying suit really is.

In fact, a number of very real projects are now underway and the future looks bright for jet-suit travel. The early jet packs appearing in the 1960s could keep a man in the air for less than a minute, although the minute or so they achieved must have seemed pretty spectacular. These machines were based on rocket propulsion. A rocket engine needs fuel and oxygen to create thrust and, by implication, all rockets have to carry both fuel and oxygen onboard. Even the hydrogen peroxide based designs were, in effect, a rocket although the chemical process involved wasn’t quite burning.

The American military looked at the jet pack as a means of delivering soldiers into battle and gave serious thought to the idea of using them in the Vietnam War. In the end the idea was abandoned. Flight times were simply too short using rocket propulsion.

There are other problems too. An aircraft stays in the air because it has wings. So long as the vehicle continues to move forwards, air will flow over the wings and create lift. In contrast, a man with a jet pack has no wings. If the thrust from his jet pack ends (and it will end very abruptly when he runs out of fuel) he will start heading towards the ground. Needless to say, this could be a fatal event.

A jet pack pilot has to land in a controlled manner before he runs out of fuel. Since flight times are very short, he has to think about where he might land more or less as soon as he gets airborne. Professional stunt pilots made it look easy but in reality the technology was too limited and too dangerous to use on a large scale.

Now in the early 21st century, comes the renaissance. Advances in electronics and materials have improved the performance of jet packs but, better still, engineers have begun to look at  jet engines to maintain altitude.

A jet engine works on a similar principle to a rocket except that the oxygen that sustains the burning of fuel comes from the earth’s atmosphere. For this reason, all the liquid carried by the pilot is fuel and he can stay in the air for much longer.  British company Gravity Industries offers a jet-propelled suit that can stay airborne for between 3 and 4 minutes. This is still a very short flight time but it’s enough to look far much more convincing on a YouTube Video, and enough to make some practical tasks possible. 

For example, the royal navy has simulated transfer of a jet-pack assisted soldier from a small motor launch to a larger ship. In other words, they could board a hostile ship at sea without getting in close or using helicopters.

So, if you’re looking to start your own jet-pack company and you decide to go with the current vogue of using jet rather than rocket technology, where are you going to find a jet engine capable of blasting you into the sky?

Well, that part isn’t quite as hard as you might think. The current wave of jet-pack designers were able to find a pre-existing industry in small jet engines for radio controlled model aircraft. In effect, you can buy a few small jet engines off the shelf and start strapping them together in your garden shed without bothering yourself with the niceties of jet engine design.

 So long as you can bolt two engines together each with a potential thrust of 50kg, then you might just be able to get off the ground. Remember that fuel is quite heavy and will have to be carried on the pilot. The “Daedalus” suite designed by Gravity Industries burns kerosene in the jet engines in combination with atmospheric oxygen. In order to change direction and to augment the thrust coming out of the back pack, the pilot uses additional jet engines that are strapped to the pilot’s wrists.

Gravity Industries was created by Richard Browning, a former BP engineer who dreamt up the idea for a jet-pack suit while still working for the oil giant. As his confidence in the project grew, he established his own company with the intention of developing an “Iron Man” like suit. Incredibly, he succeeded. The Daedalus suit is so close to the Iron Man outfit that it’s barely credible and his product is now available for the bargain price of £340,000.

At this point, it’s probably worth introducing a word of caution. Browning looks like an athlete and has extensive experience as a royal marine reservist. How is the average guy in the street going to fare if he buys this kind of device and tries to take off in his back garden? Answer: he may kill himself but that won’t stop an awful lot of people wanting to own one.

Thus far, cumulative sales for the jet pack are low. Browning charges about £100,000 for a live performance of his technology and has performed demonstration flights all around the world. The latest version of the Daedalus suit has a display inside the pilot’s helmet showing speed, altitude and remaining fuel. His current record for forward movement is well over 80mph. 

More recently, Browning added a web between the legs that he claims can create life like a wing, simply by spreading his legs during forward flight. If he’s right and he can create a functional aerofoil between his legs, he could markedly reduce fuel consumption.  

Gravity Industries is that rare thing, a British born start-up that might yet have a bright future but Browning faces fierce competition from similar companies all over the world. The French inventor Franky Zapata has built a machine he calls the “Flyboard” and it looks like a prop from Back To The Future.  It’s essentially a skate board with a fuel tank and small jet engines attached to it. The pilot is able to fly by standing on top of the board as a statue bestrides his plinth. 

In the world of full-scale aircraft, design engineers and a test pilot are entirely different people. Not so the world of personal jet-pack inventors where the leading personalities like to risk their neck in public. If you’re going to do this kind of thing then you might as well do it in high-profile way and in August 2019, Zapata crossed the channel using the Flyboard. It was a performance that won him a mention on the 6 o’clock news.

Sadly, Zapata’s journey to the top has not been without set back. Although he was able to sell some Flyboards, the market for people who wanted to fly over shallow water soon saturated and a financial deal with the Americans turned sour. He went on to develop a second flying device that wasn’t quite so demanding on the pilot. There is a cross over between the design of personal jet-packs and the emergent market for small personal flying cars. All of these jet packs look like fun but how many could you realistically export and how is Zapata or indeed Gravity Industries going to make headway in a crowded field?

Funding the ongoing process of jet-pack design remains something of a challenge with many investors reluctant to commit to what is still an unproven technology with very low sales. In reality, most of the major protagonists have struggled with cash flow.

With this in mind, Browning is looking to organise an air race similar to the Red Bull air race, where people with jet packs pay money to compete. If it catches on he may secure a regular income stream.

David Mayman is an Australian who spent years developing a 90lbs own jet pack. His company, Jet Pack Aviation sells jet packs for $340,000. He claims to be able to teach someone to fly in seven to 10 days for the bargain price of $50,000.

It sounds like a lot of money and it is. Quite apart from the risk to life and limb this kind of thing isn’t cheap. Like Zapata and Browning, Mayman has struggled to find adequate funding and is currently looking at a related but different products, some of which bear a suspicious resemblance to the speeder bikes first featured in the Star Wars movie, Return Of the Jedi. Prior to Mayman’s work, a speeder bike was the stuff of dreams but now it’s very close to becoming a reality. A jet-powered speeder bike would be more stable than a jet pack, offer more protection to the user and perhaps most importantly, it could sell more units.

According to the company website, it can take off and land vertically and it may yet be possible to buy and fly without a pilot’s licence.

Not to be out done, the Swiss have produced an innovator of their own and he knows how attract publicity. Yves Rossy is a Swiss ex-military pilot who has been working on his own jet suit for many years. More recently, he managed to obtain sponsorship from the government of Dubai but even he has run into problems with money.

There are other issues too. Because of the low altitude that a jet-pack pilot flies at, there wouldn’t be time for a parachute to open in an emergency and if you watch the YouTube videos, most demonstration flights seem to be occurring over open water. Coming down hard and coming down suddenly is going to be difficult to survive and there have already been several ditchings. Only this week one of his team lost his life. Frenchman Vincent Reffet was part of Jetman Dubai when he died during training in undisclosed circumstances. When you look at the kind of kit they’re trying to master, it’s hardly surprising.

What stands out about the current wave of jet-pack innovation is that it’s been created by driven individuals and not by large pre-existing aerospace companies. The last few decades have demonstrated that small start-ups can succeed where larger companies seem to list excuses but a small company will always struggle with cash flow. 

Research and development is a long-winded process and its notorious for eating up cash. Doubtless the military and also the rescue services will develop an interest in this kind of work as will the very wealthy boy-racer types, but it’s a little too early to see yourself jetting off to the office like Ironman.