Jetpack Dreams

I haven't yet read Mac Montandon's book Jetpack Dreams, but thanks to this video it's made its way to the top of my book heap.


Jetpack Dreams Trailer from Mac Montandon on Vimeo.


Read more:
Disneyland Jetpack (1966)
10,000 Years From Now (1922)
Jet Pack Video (1966)
Bell Aviation's Rocket Pack (1964)
Jet Flying Belt is Devised to Carry Man for Miles (New York Times, 1968)
Where's My Jetpack? (2007)
How Do You Like Them Apples?

10,000 Years From Now (1922)

The February 12, 1922 Ogden Standard-Examiner (Ogden, UT) published this page, speculating on the world 10,000 years hence. The piece is a shortened article by Hugo Gernsback with illustrations by Louis Biedermann. Excerpts appear below.

The up-to-date scientist has little difficulty in predicting certain things that will happen in ten or fifty years, but a hundred centuries hence is a larger order, even for the most intrepid imagination. That practically nothing of our present civilization will be left after 10,000 years may be safely predicted. We may also prophesy that human beings, a hundred centuries hence, will live in entirely altered circumstances from those in which we now exist.

Our illustration depicts one of the future cities floating high in the air, several miles above the earth. The question of sustaining such a large body in a rareified atmosphere will prove to be of little difficulty to our future electrical engineers. Just as we construct leviathans of the sea to-day, some of them weighing as much as 50,000 tons we shall construct entire cities weighing billions of tons, which will be held in space not by gas balloons, propellers, or the like antiquated machinery, but by means of gravity-annulling devices. Already experiments have been made whereby it has become possible to reduce the weight of substances by electrical forces.

See also:
Closer Than We Think

Disneyland Jetpack (1966)

The Disneyland TV program aired Disneyland Around the Seasons on December 18, 1966. The episode contained this great clip of a man wearing a jetpack (or rocketbelt), flying around Disneyland. The entire program can be found on the DVD Disneyland: Secrets, Stories & Magic.

See also:
Jet Pack Video (1966)
Rebuilding Tomorrowland (1966)
Bell Aviation's Rocket Pack (1964)
Jet Flying Belt is Devised to Carry Man for Miles (New York Times, 1968)
Where's My Jetpack? (2007)
Tomorrowland, Disneyland Opening Day (1955)
How Do You Like Them Apples?
The Tomorrowland That Never Was (1965)
Rocket to the Moon (1967)

Bell Aviation's Rocket Pack (1964)

This awesome photo of Bell Aviation's Rocket Pack, demonstrated at the 1964 New York World's Fair, is featured in the book Exit to Tomorrow: World's Fair Architecture, Design, Fashion 1933-2005.

See also:
Jet Flying Belt is Devised to Carry Man for Miles (New York Times, 1968)
Jet Pack Video (1966)
Where's My Jetpack? (2007)
How Do You Like Them Apples?

How Do You Like Them Apples?

I guess "Where's my Jetpack?" can no longer be the battle cry of the paleo-futurism movement.

Mexican start-up Tecnologia Aeroespacial Mexicana (TAM) offers its custom-built TAM Rocket Belt for $250,000, which includes flight and maintenance training. On a full tank of hydrogen peroxide the belt weighs 124 to 139 pounds (the bigger the pilot, the bigger the belt), and provides 30 seconds of flight. TAM's sole competitor is Jetpack Inter national, a Colorado-based company that sells what it calls "the world's longest-flying jet pack." Technically speaking, it's true — the hydrogen-peroxide-burning Jet Pack H202 can stay in the air for 33 seconds, 3 seconds longer than TAM's model. The H202 weighs 139 pounds, and is competitively priced at $155,000, flight classes and all.

See also:
Where's My Jetpack? (2007)
Jet Flying Belt is Devised to Carry Man for Miles (New York Times, 1968)
Jet Pack Video (1966)
A Wonderful Day to Fly (1980)

A Wonderful Day to Fly (1980)

The 1980 textbook Building Dreams contains a story called, "A Wonderful Day to Fly." With picturephones, weather control and jet packs, the kids of the 1980s had quite a future ahead of them.

Someday, you may look outside on a clear day. Then you may call a friend and say, "It's not going to rain today. It's really a wonderful day for flying. Let's go!"



See also:
Picturephone as the perpetual technology of the future
Jet Flying Belt is Devised to Carry Man for Miles (New York Times, 1968)

Jet Flying Belt is Devised to Carry Man for Miles (New York Times, 1968)

The New York Times article from 1968 titled, "Jet Flying Belt is Devised to Carry Man for Miles," describes the device pictured above as a Buck Rogers flying belt. Oh, how close to the future New York Times readers must have felt on June 28, 1968. Little did they realize that jetpacks would be relegated to the paleo-future.

"....the police might use the belts for riot control, for setting up roadblocks in a hurry, for inspecting rooftops for snipers, burglars or others escaping from the scene of a crime."

If you have a TimeSelect subscription you can read the entire article here.

See also:
Jet Pack Video (1966) 21 Feb 2007

Jet Pack Video (1966)

A friend of mine contends that jet packs were the Segways of the 20th century. They promised to change the way that people traveled but were really just a novelty. I must confess that I find Segways fun, (no matter how nerdy I might look), and would love to try a jet pack if given the chance.

On second thought, I might let Buck Rogers have all the fun for now.